Rating: 
Summary: yeah, right.
Review: Imagine if *talented* documentary filmmaker Michael Moore set up a tripod in a trailer park and just pressed 'record,' returning at the end of the day to claim the filled tape, you would have the first segment (titled 'People Together') of Chuck Palahniuk's new book, "Stranger Than Fiction," a nonfiction anthology. This first section might have you falling in and out of consciousness, as I was, with the author's description of boondock sex shows and combine demolition derbies, and...zzzzzzzz. Oh, sorry, nodded off for a moment. The second section, 'Portraits', is a series of blandly-written interviews with pseudo-celebrities (Juliette Lewis, Marilyn Manson, and a suck-up to Ira Levin, the only author who would write anything kind about Palahniuk's "Diary"). And the third section, 'Personal'--the most brief and interesting--deals with a handful of real-life experiences that have influenced Palahniuk's work (including the disturbing details of his father's death). Unfortunately, this autheticity and interest enters far too late to have any chance of redeeming this flat, meandering book, which seems to have no rhyme or reason except to help Mr. Palahniuk pay his bills this month. The stylistic cleverness, sharp satire, and dark humor that punctuated "Fight Club," "Survivor," and "Lullaby" seems like a distant ghost Palahniuk has lost contact with, and it shows. I'm really beginning to wonder if the aforementioned novels were as great as I remember them being, and if I just wasn't swept up in the tidal wave of philosophical brilliance in "Fight Club" that caused me not to question the author's authority. For a while, Palahniuk seemed to be ushering in an era of renewed expectation for modern fiction, but with his increasing yearly output, it's becoming painfully obvious he's having a hard time keeping up. I'd rather wait five years for one well-developed narrative or memoir instead of receiving two substandard pieces of writing in a year. But like Marilyn Manson, Palahniuk's shock value has ceased to be shocking, his style has become predictable, and if he hopes to keep his fan base, he'd better concentrate on expanding his talents outward as opposed to keeping them confined, as he has with "Stranger Than Fiction." Another total letdown, redeemed somewhat by the last section.
Rating: 
Summary: boring
Review: maybe its because i am closing in on sixty,but this book was a boring letdown with little new, daring or interesting in the way of inchoate stories. read it before by better writers is my summation of the book and the waste of money buying it in hardcover is infuriating. the reviews were better than the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice nonfiction
Review: Palahniuk's one of our generation's best fiction writers, and in this he proves that he's not a bad essayist either. While some pieces are less interesting than others (the piece about castles was just no fun), overall the book is great for a nice evening of eccentricities and fun stories.
Rating: 
Summary: Daily dramas, unusual beliefs, and motivated spirits
Review: There's a fine line between reality and fantasy sometimes, as evidenced by such strange oddities as the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival, rock musician Marilyn Manson, and individuals who lead peculiar lives. Enter author Chuck Palahniuk's universe to examine alternate visions of culture and the bizarre with Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories, a wide-ranging treatise which runs from the strange world of amateur wrestling to the phenomenon and work of search and rescue dogs. Enter his world and learn about daily dramas, unusual beliefs, and motivated spirits in the truly engrossing Stranger Than Fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Isolated greatness padded by short, unfocused stories
Review: Though he refers to himself as an Amy Hempel knockoff, Chuck Palahniuk resides among the best phrase-turners in American pop fiction - if he does nothing else - teasing readers with jabs for rabbit punches and haymakers to come even when the narrative runs from the rails. Palahniuk's distinct talent for clipped, blunt prose still punctuates "Stranger Than Fiction," an anthology of essays and rants collected from recent magazine assignments, but every other aspect of the book is uneven: It is shabbily assembled, and few pieces are in depth or well-considered enough to be stand-alone gems. A moneymaker for both author and publisher Doubleday but not much more, "Stranger Than Fiction" hardly lives up to its title: Steroids, Marilyn Manson and castles are interesting enough, but not in the realm of Palahniuk's novels. Revealing himself more than ever before, Palahniuk comes off as a guy's guy with a taste for adventure and socializing and multitasking, more content, at least in the non-fiction arena, to hit and run than turn a subject inside-out. For each segment that creates a full-bodied portrait - Palahniuk's committed, admiring feature on amateur wrestlers - there is the rootless, immature opener, "Testy Festy," a piece on a Montana sex carnival so pornographic it'll run off more potential buyers than it will attract, or the Tim O'Brien wannabe, "The People Can," as Palahniuk catalogs the life of a submarine well enough to frustrate the reader for its brevity. Palahniuk has planned an "on writing" book soon enough; in that case, best to leave out a short paean to Hempel and her minimalist style ("Not Chasing Amy") and expand it to the treatise Palahniuk intends, as evidenced by his Internet workshop. Same for the tribute to Ira Levin's socialite novels, "Sliver," "The Stepford Wives" and "Rosemary's Baby." The one story for which this book seems made is a portrait of Palahniuk's father, who as a boy watched his father kill his mother than himself, and then in 1999 was murdered at 59 by the ex-husband of his new girlfriend. Palahniuk refers to it in parts of a few separate essays but never makes it a story unto its own (the date of some of these essays become apparent, too, when Palahniuk refers to his father's death as in recent past in one work, and "a few years ago" in another). There is room for three or four "Fight Club" anecdotes, which again should have been poured into one rumination on the entire project. The haphazard morsel approach on serious subjects reads like random toss offs whether Palahniuk intended it or not, while featurettes on Juliette Lewis and Manson are entirely too long and boring - a postscript on the Lewis piece about Palahniuk being kidnapped in a limo is better than both the star-fawning works are combined. "Stranger Than Fiction" only becomes a must-read for ten pages during "You Are Here," a classic Palahniuk rant on ever-increasing tendency of aspiring writers to think of their own lives in seven-minute screenplays, unable to create the fictional motifs and vehicles necessary for a readable book. Palahniuk makes a compelling, focused argument disciplined right down to the piece's hook line: "Your seven minutes are up." Better fighting the abstract battle against intellectual apathy than celebrity journalism, Palahniuk hasn't exactly embarrassed himself here. But he shouldn't quit his day job either.
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