Many people have a visceral reaction to Palahniuk’s Guts, but it never hit me particularly hard. That and the underage incest impreg fantasies, it was always a bit of a turn off.

Honestly, for me, nothing beats good old Edgar Allan Poe, and he’s already in the syllabus.

[–] rainwall@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

My head immediately went to tell tale heart.

Poe had lots of fucked up stories. The red death is another that stuck with me.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I had started reading his short story collection (that contains Guts, forget what its called) back in high school after reading like three of his other books in a row (Lullaby, Survivor and Fight Club), and I was just burnt out on the shock factor thing.

Never finished the collection.

[–] vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago

That would probably be Haunted. Yeah, I see what you mean.

That said, Palahniuk will always have a special place in my heart for introducing me to one of my favorite authors, Amy Hempel. (See eg https://www.csub.edu/~mault/palahniuk.htm )

Also, from a Reddit AmA, my favorite quote about the writing process. Someone asked a question along the line of, how do you know when you are done writing? When it’s polished enough? And he answered something along the lines of “I have a simple rule. A writing project isn’t done until I want to kill myself and everyone else involved with it”.

I was in the final stages of writing my doctoral dissertation back then, and boy did it resonate with me.