Make something up Stories you can't unread

Chuck Palahniuk

Book - 2015

"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. 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 clien...ts. And in "Excursion," fans will be thrilled to find to see a side of Tyler Durden never seen before in a precusor story to Fight Club. Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant; these stories represent everything readers have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk"--

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Subjects
Published
New York : Doubleday [2015]
Language
English
Main Author
Chuck Palahniuk (-)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
318 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780385538053
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Given that Fight Club author Palahniuk can be a lot to handle when he's just telling you one story, picking up Make Something Up might demand some psychological preparation. The anthology lines up 22 of Palahniuk's best short stories with no interest in easing you into or out of the disturbing, hilarious, and bizarre roller coaster of transgressive creativity. Vignettes of grotesque body horror are bookended by stories with titles such as Why Coyote Never Had Money for Parking and Why Aardvark Never Went to the Moon. 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. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Much of Make Something Up is not for the squeamish or otherwise sensitive reader, but none of it is to be missed by those who highly regard this popular writer.--Francis, Chris Copyright 2015 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

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) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

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 © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Knock-­Knock My old man, he makes everything into a Big Joke. What can I say? The old man loves to get a laugh. Growing up, half the time I ­didn't have a clue what his jokes were about, but I laughed anyways. Down at the barbershop, it ­didn't matter how many guys my father let take cuts ahead of him in line, he just wanted to sit there all Saturday and crack people up. Make folks bust a gut. Getting his hair cut was definitely a low priority. He says, "Stop me if you've heard this one before . . ." The way my old man tells it, he walks into the oncologist's office and he says, "After the chemotherapy, will I be able to play the violin?" In response, the oncologist says, "It's metastasized. You've got six months to live . . ." And working his eyebrows like Groucho Marx, tapping the ash from an invisible cigar, my old man says, "Six months?" He says, "I want a second opinion." So the oncologist, he says, "Okay, you've got cancer and your jokes stink." So they do chemotherapy, and they give him some radiation like they do even if the shit burns him up so bad on the inside he tells me that taking a piss is like passing razor blades. He's still every Saturday down by the barbershop telling jokes even if now he's bald as a cue ball. I mean, he's skinny as a bald skeleton, and he's getting to haul around one of those cylinders of oxygen under pressure, like some little version of a ­ball-­and-­chain. He walks into the barbershop dragging that pressurized cylinder of oxygen with the tube of it going up and looping around his nose, over his ears, and around his bald head, and he says, "Just a little off the top, please." And folks laugh. Understand me: My old man is no Uncle Milty. He's no Edgar Bergen. The man's skinny as a Halloween skeleton and bald and going to be dead by six weeks so it don't matter what he says, folks are going to ­hee-­haw like donkeys just out of their genuine affection for him. But, seriously, I'm not doing him justice. It's my fault if this ­doesn't come across, but my old man is funnier than he sounds. Maybe his sense of humor is a talent I ­didn't inherit. Back when I was his little Charlie McCarthy, the whole time growing up, he used to ask me, ­"Knock-­knock?" I'd say, "Who's there?" He'd say, "Old Lady . . ." I'd say, "Old Lady, who?" And he'd say, "Wow, I ­didn't know you could yodel!" Me, I ­didn't get it. I was so stupid, I was seven years old and still stuck in the first grade. I ­didn't know Switzerland from Shinola, but I want for my old man to love me so I learned to laugh. Whatever he says, I laugh. By "Old Lady" my guess is he means my mom who ran away and left us. All's my old man will say about her is how she was a "Real Looker" who just ­couldn't take a joke. She just was NOT a Good Sport. He used to ask me, "When that Vinnie van Gogh cut off his ear and sent it to the whore he was so crazy about, how'd he send it?" The punch line is "He sent it by 'ear mail,' " but being seven years old, I was still stuck back on not knowing who van Gogh is or ­what's a whore, and nothing kills a joke faster than asking my old man to explain himself. So when my old man says, "What do you get when you cross a pig with Count Dracula?" . . . I knew to never ask, "What's a 'Count Dracula'?" I'd just get a big laugh ready for when he tells me, "A ­'Ham-­pire'!" And when he says, ­"Knock-­knock . . ." And I say, "Who's there?" And he says, "Radio." And I say, "Radio who?" And he's ALREADY started to bust a gut when he says, "Radio not I'm going to cum in your mouth . . ." ­Then--­what the ­hell--­I just keep laughing. My whole growing up I figure I'm just too ignorant to appreciate a good joke. Me, my teachers still ­haven't covered long division and all the ­multiple-­cation tables so it's not my old man's fault I don't know ­what's "cum." My old lady, who abandoned us, he says she hated that joke so maybe I inherited her lack of humor. But love . . . I mean you have to love your old man. I mean, after you're born it's not like you get a choice. Nobody wants to see their old man breathing out of some tank and going into the hospital to die ­sky-­high on morphine and he's not eating a bite of the ­red-­flavored ­Jell-­O they serve for dinner. Stop me if I already told you this one: but my old man gets that prostrate cancer ­that's not even like cancer because it takes twenty, thirty years before we even know he's so sick, and the next thing I know is I'm trying to remember all the stuff he's taught me. Like, if you spray some ­WD-­40 on the shovel blade before you dig a hole the digging will go a lot easier. And he taught me how to squeeze a trigger instead of pulling it and wrecking my aim. He taught me to remove bloodstains. And he taught me jokes . . . lots of jokes. And, sure, he's no Robin Williams, but I watched this movie one time about Robin Williams who gets dressed up with a red rubber ball on his nose and this big ­rainbow-­colored afro wig and those big clown shoes with a fake carnation stuck in his buttonhole of his shirt that squirts water, and the guy's a hotshot doctor who makes these little kids with cancer laugh so hard they stop dying. Understand me: These bald kid ­skeletons--­who look worse off than my old ­man--­they get HEALTHY, and that whole movie is based on a True Story. What I mean is, we all know that Laughter is the Best Medicine. All that time being stuck in the hospital Waiting Room, even I read the ­Reader's Digest. And we've all heard the true story about the guy with a brain cancer the size of a grapefruit inside his skull and he's about to ­croak--­all the doctors and priests and experts say he's a ­goner--­only he forces himself to watch nonstop movies about the Three Stooges. This Stage Four cancer guy forces himself to laugh nonstop at Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy and those Marx brothers, and he gets healed by the ­end-­orphans and ­oxy-­generated blood. So I figure, what've I got to lose? All I need to do is remember some of my old man's favorite gags and get him started back laughing on the road to recovery. I figure, what could it hurt? So this ­grown‑up son walks into his father's hospice room, pulls up a chair beside the bed, and sits down. The son looks into his old man's pale, dying face and says: "So this blond gal walks into a neighborhood bar where she's never been before, and she's got tits out to HERE and a tight little heinie and she asks the bartender for a Michelob, and he serves her a Michelob, except he sneaks a Mickey Finn into her bottle and this blonde goes unconscious, and every guy in the bar leans her over the edge of the pool table and hikes up her skirt and fucks her, and at closing time they slap her awake and tell her she's got to leave. And every few days this gal with the tits and the ass walks in and asks for a Michelob and gets a Mickey Finn and gets fucked by the crowd until one day she walks in and asks the bartender, can he maybe give her a Budweiser instead?" Granted--­I have NOT landed this particular ­shaggy-­dog story since I was in the first grade, but my old man used to love this next part . . . The bartender smiles so nice and says, "What? You don't like Michelob no more?" And this Real Looker, she leans over the bar, all confidential and she whispers, "Just between you and me . . ." she whispers, "Michelob makes my pussy hurt . . ." The first time I learned that joke, when my old man taught it to me, I ­didn't know what was "pussy." I ­didn't know "Mickey Finn." I ­didn't know what folks meant when they talked about "fucking," but I knew all this talk made my old man laugh. And when he told me to stand up and tell that joke in the barbershop it made the barbers and every old man reading detective magazines laugh until half of them blew spit and snot and chewing tobacco out their noses. Now the ­grown‑up son tells his old dying father this joke, just the two of them alone in that hospital room, ­late-­late at night, ­and--­guess ­what--­his old man ­doesn't laugh. So the son tries another old favorite, he tells the joke about the Traveling Salesman who gets a phone call from some Farmer's Daughter he met on the road a couple months before, and she says, "Remember me? We had some laughs, and I was a good sport?" and the man says, "How're you doing?" and she says, "I'm pregnant, and I'm going to kill myself." And the salesman, he says, "Damn . . . you ARE a good sport!" At seven years old I could ­REALLY put that joke ­over--­but, tonight the old man's still not laughing. How I learned to say "I Love You" was by laughing for my old ­man--­even if I had to fake ­it--­and ­that's all I want in return. All I want from him is a laugh, just one laugh, and he's not coming across with even a giggle. Not a snicker. Not even a groan. And worse than ­not-­laughing, the old man squints his eyes shut, tight, and opens them brimming with tears, and one fat tear floods out the bottom of each eye and washes down each cheek. The old man's gasping his big toothless mouth like he can't get enough air, crying big tears down the wrinkles of both cheeks, just soaking his pillow. So this ­kid--­who's nobody's little kid, not ­anymore--­but who can't seem to forget these jokes, he reaches into his pants pocket and gets out a fake carnation flower that ­just-­for-­laughs sprays water all over the old crybaby's face. The kid tells about the Polack who's carrying a rifle through the woods when he comes across a naked gal laying back on a bed of soft green moss with her legs spread, and this gal is a Real Looker, and she looks at the Polack and his gun and says, "What're you doing?" And the Polack says, "I'm hunting for game." And this Real Looker, she gives him a big wink and she says, "I'm game." So--­POW!--­the Polack shoots her. It used to be this joke constituted a ­gold-­plated, bona fide, ­sure-­thing laugh riot, but the old man just keeps dying. He's still crying and not even making an effort to laugh, and no matter what, the old man has got to meet me halfway. I can't save him if he ­doesn't want to live. I ask him, "What do you get when you cross a faggot with a kike?" I ask him, "What's the difference between dog shit and a nigger?" And he's still not getting any better. I'm thinking maybe the cancer's got into his ears. With the morphine and what all, it could be he can't hear me. So just to test, can he hear me, I lean into his crybaby face and I ask, "How do you get a nun pregnant?" Then, more loud, maybe too loud for this being a ­mackerel-­snapper hospital, I yell, "You FUCK her!" In my desperation I try fag jokes and wetback jokes and kike ­jokes--­really, every effective course of treatment known to medical ­science--­and the old man's still slipping away. Lying here, in this bed, is the man who made EVERYTHING into a Big Joke. Just the fact he's not biting scares the shit out of me. I'm yelling, ­"Knock-­knock!" and when he says nothing in response it's the same as him not having a pulse. I'm yelling, ­"Knock-­knock!" I'm yelling, "Why did the Existentialist cross the road?" And he's STILL dying, the old man's leaving me not knowing the answer to anything. He's abandoning me while I'm still so fucking stupid. In my desperation I reach out to take the limp, blue fingers of his ­cold-­cold dying hand and he ­doesn't flinch even when I grind a Joy Buzzer against the blue skin of his ­ice-­cold palm. I'm yelling, ­"Knock-­knock?" I'm yelling, "Why'd the Old Lady walk out on her husband and her ­four-­year-­old kid?" Nothing kills a joke like asking my old man to explain himself, and lying there in that bed, he stops breathing. No heartbeat. Totally flatlined. So this kid who's sitting bedside in this hospital room, ­late-­late at night he takes the joke equivalent of those electric paddles doctors use to stop your heart attack, the ­hee-­haw equivalent of what a paramedic Robin Williams would use on you in some Clown Emergency ­Room--­a kind of Three Stooges ­defibrillator--­the kid takes a big, creamy, ­heaped‑up custard pie topped with a ­thick-­thick layer of whipped cream, the same as Charlie Chaplin would save your life with, and the kid reaches that pie up ­sky-­high overhead, as high as the kid can reach, and brings it down, hard, ­lightning-­fast, ­slam-­dunking it hard as the blast from a Polack's ­shotgun--­POW!--­right in his old man's kisser. And despite the miraculous, ­well-­documented healing powers of the Comedic Arts my old man dies taking a big bloody shit in his bed. No, ­really, it's funnier than it sounds. Please, don't blame my old man. If you're not laughing at this point, it's my fault. I just ­didn't tell it right, you know, you mess up a punch line and you can totally botch even the best joke. For example, I went back to the barbershop and told them how he died and how I tried to save him, right up to and including the custard pie and how the hospital had their security goons escort me up to the crazy ward for a little ­seventy-­two-­hour observation. And even telling that part, I fucked it ­up--­because those barbershop guys just looked at me. I told them about ­seeing--­and ­smelling--­my old man, dead and smeared all over with blood and shit and whipped cream, all that stink and sugar, and they looked and looked at me, the barbers and the old guys chewing tobacco, and nobody laughed. Standing in that same barbershop all these years later, I say, ­"Knock-­knock." Excerpted from Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread by Chuck Palahniuk All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.