Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread

by Chuck Palahniuk

Overview

Stories you'll never forget—just try—from literature's favorite transgressive author

Representing work that spans several years, Make Something Up is a compilation of 21 stories and one novella (some previously published, some not) that will disturb and delight. In "Expedition," fans will be thrilled to find to see a side of Tyler Durden never seen before in a precusor story to Fight Club. And in other stories, the absurdity of both life and death are on full display; in "Zombies," the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze: electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. In "Knock, Knock," a son hopes to tell one last off-color joke to a father in his final moments, while in "Tunnel of Love," a massage therapist runs the curious practice of providing 'relief' to dying clients. 

Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant; these stories represent everything readers have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345807120
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/19/2016
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	121,249
Product dimensions:	5.16(w) x 7.98(h) x 0.68(d)

About the Author

CHUCK PALAHNIUK is the author of fourteen novels—Beautiful You, Doomed, Damned, Tell-All, Pygmy, Snuff, Rant, Haunted, Diary, Lullaby, Choke, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, and Fight Club—which have sold more than five million copies altogether in the United States. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journey Series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest. Visit him on the web at chuckpalahniuk.net.

Hometown:

Portland, Oregon

Date of Birth:

February 21, 1962

Place of Birth:

Pasco, Washington

Education:

B.A. in journalism, University of Oregon, 1986

Website:

http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net

Read an Excerpt

Knock-­Knock
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Make Something Up"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Chuck Palahniuk.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Knock-Knock 1

Eleanor 10

How Monkey Got Married, Bought a House, and Found Happiness in Orlando 18

Zombies 28

Loser 40

Red Sultan's Big Boy 50

Romance 70

Cannibal 80

Why Coyote Never Had Money for Parking 89

Phoenix 102

The Facts of Life 122

Cold Calling 129

The Toad Prince 136

Smoke 146

Torcher 149

Liturgy 176

Why Aardvark Never Landed on the Moon 182

Fetch 195

Expedition 211

Mister Elegant 232

Tunnel of Love 246

Inclinations 255

How a Jew Saved Christmas 310

Editorial Reviews

03/09/2015
For the first time, Palahniuk (Beautiful You) collects his short stories, which feature his signature humor, horror, and grit. Old fans will relish Tyler Durden, from Palahniuk’s debut 1996 novel Fight Club, returning in “Expedition” to spread his twisted influence in Hamburg, Germany. Also included are previously published stories such as “Zombies,” in which the newest high school fad is lobotomy by defibrillator; “Phoenix,” in which a broken family deals with the aftermath of a house fire; and the cringe-worthy “Cannibal,” capable of turning stomachs. Not surprisingly, Palahniuk finds sincerity among his characters even in disreputable occurrences in “Romance” and “How a Jew Saved Christmas.” Some of his never-before-published stories show him experimenting with voice and style to mixed success, but the biggest winner is the novella “Inclinations,” which follows a group of teenagers checked into a “gay cure” hospital. Other stories deal with fire, bodily fluids, malfunctions, critiques of material society, bestiality, a bewitched tennis ball, and a murder at a Burning Man–type retreat. The collection is essential for Palahniuk fans and will likely win him some new ones. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Chuck Palahniuk and Make Something Up:


"Palahniuk doesn't write for tourists. He writes for hard-core devotees drawn to the wild, angry imagination on display and the taboo-busting humor."
—The New York Times 
 
"Palahniuk is a bracingly toxic purveyor of dread and mounting horror. He makes nihilism fun."
—Vanity Fair

“Palahniuk displays a Swiftian gift for satire, as well as a knack for crafting mesmerizing sentences."
—San Francisco Examiner

“Few contemporary writers mix the outrageous and the hilarious with greater zest.”
 —Newsday

"Few authors have captured the pathologies of modern life quite like Palahniuk."
—Rocky Mountain News

“Chuck Palahniuk is one of the most intriguing writers of our time.”
—Tucson Citizen

"For the first time, Palahniuk collects his short stories, which feature his signature humor, horror, and grit. [The] other stories deal with fire, bodily fluids, malfunctions, critiques of material society, bestiality, a bewitched tennis ball, and a murder at a Burning Man-type retreat. The collection is essential for Palahniuk fans and will likely win him some new ones."
—Publishers Weekly

"Palahniuk comes roaring back from a stretch of experimentalism with 23 tales celebrating his ongoing affection for the macabre... Pathos and panic and penitence from one of the darkest and most singular minds in contemporary American lit."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Even as you likely suffer debilitating motion sickness from the jarring emotional turns on every other page, you’ll be inescapably restrained by an author who knows exactly what he’s doing and has you right where he wants you. Palahniuk’s uniquely modern style throws out any antiquated conventions that could keep him from destroying any expectations that keep you in complacent narrative comfort."
—Booklist

From the Publisher

05/15/2015
Billed as Palahniuk's first collection, this volume features 21 stories and one novella, some never before published, As usual, the author's tales cover a wide variety of life experiences, some we would rather not think about. Whether exploring deceitful fathers, children using their sexuality to manipulate their parents, or teens whose latest fad is electrocuting themselves into a permanent stupor, Palahniuk takes his usual strange, off-kilter viewpoint on things we all deal with in life: fitting in, the desire for success, etc. Many of the stories are written as fables with anthropomorphized animal characters which try to find success in their careers or get through their teenage years. And Tyler Durden, the character from Fight Club, makes a brief appearance in "Expedition." Readers will find a similar tone in the Palahniuk-edited anthology Burnt Tongues. VERDICT You either love Palahniuk or hate him. For new readers, this compilation offers a small taste of the author's style. His faithful fans will be entertained, intrigued, and at times a little disgusted, but what else would we expect from Palahniuk? [See Prepub Alert, 11/3/14.]—Brooke Bolton, North Manchester P.L., IN

Library Journal

2015-03-02
Palahniuk (Beautiful You, 2014, etc.) comes roaring back from a stretch of experimentalism with 23 tales celebrating his ongoing affection for the macabre. It's been a while since we've seen Chuck at his most hard-core; he spent the last few years toying with satire, working his way into the heads of female narrators and curating the twisted anthology Burnt Tongues (2014). Here, he makes it absolutely clear that he's still the man who wrote "Guts," the infamous story that made fans pass out at readings. "The Toad Prince" makes "Guts" look like a fairy tale by comparison. It's the story of an enterprising young pervert who has infected his member with a fistful of vile diseases in order to launch a new era in extreme body modification fetishism. "Romance" takes apart traditional relationships with the story of a chubby dude who falls in love with a superhot Britney Spears look-alike who may or may not be dimwitted on a level approaching disability. There are some echoes here—"Eleanor" is written in a strange, imitative patois that strongly recalls the novel Pygmy (2009), and a trio of fables resembles David Sedaris' Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. But the core stories are pure muscle. The book opens with "Knock-knock," about a son trying to save his father from death with dirty jokes. The best (black) comedy comes from "Zombies," which finds America's gifted teens indulging in the hot new fad of taking a defibrillator to their skulls. The purest horror comes from "Inclinations," which begins with an adolescent girl using her unplanned pregnancies to collect Porsches from her parents before delving into a catalog of horrors at a sexual reorientation camp for teens. For fans, the book has "Expedition," which contains Palahniuk's first hints about Tyler Durden's true nature in advance of the upcoming Fight Club 2, to be released as comic books starting soon. Pathos and panic and penitence from one of the darkest and most singular minds in contemporary American lit.

Kirkus Reviews

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