Tag Archives: Chuck Palahniuk

There’s A New Literary Sheriff In Town

LitReactorI know most of the freaky weirdos that visit this blog don’t come here for my witty brand of irreverent humor. Don’t lie, I’ve seen the search engine stats. You’re into bizarre shit, I write about bizarre shit. Google does the rest. Chances are you discovered thejabber while searching some horrible combination of fetishes that by all rights should have the FBI beating down your door.

But maybe- just maybe- some of  you are more than the sum of your kink. Maybe some of you are writers. Writers looking to hone their craft. Or maybe you’re a book nerd, looking for a place to geek out. If so, allow me to present my latest writing venture- it’s called LitReactor.

LitReactor is a new website from the team behind ChuckPalahniuk.net, and will be devoted to the craft of writing and all things literary. We will be hosting a groundbreaking writer’s workshop; monthly classes taught by published authors and industry professionals; as well as an online magazine devoted to news, reviews, interviews, and articles.

The site goes live October 1st, but if you sign up for our mailing list now, you will receive a free compendium of exclusive writing advice from authors such as Chuck Palahniuk, Steve Erickson, Bret Easton Ellis, Craig Clevenger, Neil Gaiman, and Jack Ketchum. So head on over, and while you’re there, like and follow all the requisite social networking affiliates, which will feature supplementary material, not just content recycled from the website.

We’ve got a ton of great things planned, and look forward to sharing it with you all. And for those of you addicted to the flippancy of thejabber, don’t worry, we’ll still be churning out offensive material to clog the tubes of the internet like so many toilets.

ChuckPalahniuk.net’s Best of 2010

Cult Best of 2010

While we’re in the listing mood, The Cult (where I moonlight as a serious writer) has posted their best of 2010, and I’m proud to say two of my interviews made the cut! Earlier this year I had the opportunity to speak with Bret Easton Ellis and Anne Rice, literary giants both, and the rest is 2010 list-making history. Check it out:

Cult Best of 2010

James Ellroy: King of the Ladies

James Ellroy Demon Dog

Who let the dogs out?

My interview with James Ellroy, in which he reveals details of his upcoming TV show and his next quartet of books, is now live at ChuckPalahniuk.net.

Hot on the blood-slicked heels of last year’s Blood’s A Rover, James Ellroy returns with The Hilliker Curse, a memoir of his quest for atonement through women. Curse is a soul laid bare, an open chest wound at risk of infection, where anyone can stick their grubby little mitts in and poke around. Lesser authors might balk at displaying such honesty, but Ellroy remains committed to the cause. He is doing important work, telling important stories. This one just so happens to be his own.

James Ellroy Has Mommy Issues

Grok the Groin-Grabbing Gravity of Blood’s A Rover

James Ellroy Has Mommy Issues

Hilliker Curse

He also has a new memoir, which I have reviewed, over @ the Cult. 224 pages of scar-laced neuroses called The Hilliker Curse. The Demon Dog has no secrets (or shame.) It is very raw and very good.

Onanist. Pervert. Peeping tom. Glue huffer. Panty sniffer. Homeless drifter. John. By his own admission, James Ellroy has been each of these things; he wears it like a badge of honor. In his mind, as a child, he was a murderer. As an adult- a dedicated son and a devoted husband. But what a lot of people don’t realize, is that above all else, he always has, and always will be, a man whose life is ruled by women.

Click HERE for full review.

Also: Blood’s A Rover.

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Strange But True: A Short Biography of Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk

Photo by Kyle Green

On a more serious note, I have written a short bio of Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk for his official website (home of my many tasty book reviews.) Click the author for the bio.

Truth is stranger than fiction, at least for those blessed with interesting lives. The rest of us have no choice but to live vicariously through their stories. In the case of bestselling cult author Chuck Palahniuk, the embellishment of his exploits by fans has made it hard to tell exactly where reality ends and the storytelling begins. There are those who would have us believe he entered this world kicking and screaming, brandishing a pen, when in fact he comes from much more humble (albeit interesting) beginnings.

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The Sun Shines Out Ian McEwan’s Ass: SOLAR

Ian McEwan, popular author of (what I assume to be) stuffy British lady-books, returns with the pseudo sci-fi of Solar. The dense molecular cloud of my words collapses into a ball of plasma to form a review over at The Cult. READ IT, before it goes supernova.

I don’t know about everyone else, but I had Ian McEwan’s Atonement pegged as a lady book from a mile away. I’d never read the novel, but I’d seen the movie trailer and it had manipulative tearjerker written all over it. Hence- lady book. Whether I was right or wrong, this impression was the reason I initially had little interest in Solar. But then I read a post on IO9 calling it one of the year’s best science fiction novels and I became intrigued. I love me a good, literary sci-fi novel, so I set about acquiring a copy.

Solar by Ian McEwan

Oh, and apparently I can’t write a review without offending someone’s delicate sensibilities these days. This time around, someone took exception to the term “lady-book”. Seriously. Click HERE (you might have to scroll down.)

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Bret Easton Ellis Quits This Bitch

Or so he’d like you to think, but not so hard that you forget about him like Simple Minds. Check out my interview with Bret over at the Cult, where he talks about everything from retirement, to writing gay porn, to suing Ben Stiller. And while you’re at it, check out my recent interview with Ben Weinman of The Dillinger Escape Plan, and my oldie but goodie interview with Zeroville author Steve Erickson. Click on the images below.

Bret Easton Ellis interview

Ben Weinman interview

Steve Erickson interview

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Douglas Coupland is the Bee’s Knees

Generation A by Douglas Coupland

Therefore, if bees were to become extinct as they do in Generation A (which is not out of the realm of real life possibility,) Douglas Coupland would cease to exist. Then who would we go to for such insightful and witty satire?

Find out more about Coupland and disappearing bees in my review of the author’s latest- Generation A- fresh from the oven and all hot n’ crusty over at ChuckPalahniuk.net.

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Stick Your Finger In Vonnegut’s Asshole

You know you want to touch it

…to read my review of Look At The Birdie, his new posthumous collection of prehumous stories.

Or, if you are a prude, and don’t want to travel via anal wormhole, click HERE to be taken to ChuckPalahniuk.net the old fashioned way.

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I Fight Rawi Hage’s “Cockroach” To The Death

Time again for another anecdote laced book review over at Chuck Palahniuk dot net. Whether you love or hate immigrants, this is the book for you:

A young immigrant travels to the land of ice and snow to whisper tales of gore on how he calmed the tides of war.

Cockroach is the story of a Lebanese immigrant living in Montreal after a botched suicide attempt. The metaphor of immigrant as cockroach is usually a negative one, but in Hage’s novel our narrator imagines himself scuttling beneath the feet of the privileged elite as a Kafkaesque badge of honor. He is a womanizer and a thief, and when he is not sneaking into people’s homes and stealing food, he is recounting his childhood in war-torn Lebanon to his court appointed shrink.

Support dime-a-dozen bloggers and the literary arts. Read the review in all its roach squashing, immigrant hating glory HERE.

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