Early career Palahniuk wrote for his local newspaper for a short while but then began working for
Freightliner Trucks as a diesel mechanic, until gaining traction in his writing career. During that time, he wrote manuals on fixing trucks and had a stint as a journalist, a job which he did not return to until after he became a successful novelist. After attending a seminar by
Landmark Education, Palahniuk quit his job as a journalist in 1988. He performed volunteer work for a
homeless shelter and volunteered at a
hospice as an escort, providing transportation for terminally ill people, taking them to
support group meetings. He ceased volunteering upon the death of a patient to whom he grew attached. Palahniuk began writing fiction in his early 30s. By his account, he started writing while attending workshops for writers that were hosted by
Tom Spanbauer, which he attended to meet new friends. Spanbauer largely inspired Palahniuk's minimalistic writing style.
Fight Club After his first novel –
Invisible Monsters – was rejected by all publishers he submitted it to, he began work on his first published novel,
Fight Club. Palahniuk wrote this story in his spare time while working for Freightliner. After initially publishing it as a short story (which became chapter 6 of the novel) in the 1995 compilation
Pursuit of Happiness, Palahniuk expanded it into a full novel, which a publisher accepted. Initially, Palahniuk struggled to find a
literary agent and went without one until after the publication of
Fight Club. After he began receiving attention from
20th Century Fox, Palahniuk was signed by actor and literary agent
Edward Hibbert. Hibbert eventually guided and brokered the deal that took
Fight Club to the big screen.
Invisible Monsters, Survivor, and Choke A revised version of
Invisible Monsters, as well as his fourth novel,
Survivor, were published in 1999. A few years later Palahniuk completed his first
New York Times bestseller, the novel
Choke, which later was made into a
movie.
Lullaby 2011 In 1999, Palahniuk experienced multiple tragedies. At that time, his father, Fred Palahniuk, started dating a woman named Donna Fontaine, whom he met through a
personal ad under the title "
Kismet". Her former boyfriend, Dale Shackelford, was previously imprisoned for sexual abuse and vowed to kill Fontaine as soon as he was released from prison. Palahniuk reportedly believed that, using a personal ad, Fontaine was looking for "the biggest man she could find" to protect her from Shackelford, and Palahniuk's father qualified. After his release, Shackelford followed Fontaine and the senior Palahniuk to Fontaine's home in
Kendrick, Idaho, after they went out for a date. Shackelford then shot them both and dragged their bodies into Fontaine's cabin home, which he then set alight. In the spring of 2001, Shackelford was found guilty for two counts of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. In the wake of these events, Palahniuk began working on the novel
Lullaby. He stated that he wrote the novel to help him cope with having participated in the decision to have Shackelford receive the
death sentence.
"Guts" and Haunted While on his 2003 tour to promote his novel
Diary, Palahniuk read to his audiences a short story entitled "Guts", a tale of accidents involving
masturbation, which appears in his book
Haunted. The story begins with the author telling his listeners to inhale deeply and that "this story should last about as long as you can hold your breath." It was reported that 40 people had fainted listening to the readings while holding their breath.
Playboy magazine later published the story in their March 2004 issue and Palahniuk offered to let them publish another story along with it, but the publishers found the second work too disturbing to publish. On his tour to promote
Stranger than Fiction: True Stories during the summer of 2004, he read "Guts" to audiences again, bringing the total number of fainters up to 53 (and later up to 60 while on tour to promote the softcover edition of
Diary). In the fall of that year, he began promoting
Haunted, and continued to read "Guts". In June 2005, Palahniuk noted that his number of fainters was up to 67. At a 2005 appearance in Miami, Florida, during the
Haunted tour, Palahniuk commented that
Haunted represented the last of a "
horror trilogy" (including
Lullaby and
Diary). He also indicated that his then-forthcoming novel,
Rant, would be the first of a "science fiction trilogy". In 2008, Palahniuk spent a week at the
Clarion West Writers Workshop, instructing eighteen students about his writing methods and theory of fiction.
Adaptations In addition to the film,
Fight Club was adapted into a
fighting video game loosely based on the film, which was released in October 2004, receiving universally poor reviews. Palahniuk mentioned at book readings that he was working on a musical based on
Fight Club with David Fincher and
Trent Reznor.
Edward Norton said that he thinks it was unlikely that he and
Brad Pitt, who "can't sing," would reprise their film roles in a musical. Graphic novel adaptations of
Invisible Monsters and
Lullaby, drawn by comic artist Kissgz, a.k.a. Gabor, are available online. Following the success of the
Fight Club movie, interest began to build about adapting
Survivor to film. The film rights to
Survivor were sold in early 2001, but no
movie studio had committed to filming the novel. After the
attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, movie studios allegedly deemed the novel too controversial to film because it includes the hijacking and crashing of a civilian airplane. Following that, the film rights to
Invisible Monsters and
Diary also were sold. While little is known about some of these projects,
Jessica Biel was signed on to play the roles of both Shannon and Brandy in
Invisible Monsters, which was supposed to begin filming in 2004, but was still in development. On January 14, 2008,
the film version of Choke premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival, starring
Sam Rockwell,
Kelly Macdonald and
Anjelica Huston with
Clark Gregg directing. David Fincher expressed interest in filming
Diary as an
HBO miniseries. On September 11, 2014, the film version of
Rant was announced, starring
James Franco, with
Pamela Romanowsky writing and directing but the movie was never made. In 2016, a
Kickstarter campaign to produce an adaptation of
Lullaby, to be directed by Andy Mingo with a script by Palahniuk and Mingo, raised over $400,000, but the film was never produced. ==Writing style and themes==