Happy Birthday Chuck! {45yo}
It's the birthday of one of the few contemporary novelists to sell a lot of books to young men, Chuck Palahniuk , ( books by this author ) born in Burbank, Washington (1962). He wanted to be a writer in college, but his writing professors didn't like him. So he got a job as a diesel mechanic at Freightliner Trucks, which paid well but made him miserable. He became addicted to drugs and alcohol. And then he moved to a house near a hill that somehow blocked his TV's reception. At first he was unhappy without television, but it inspired him to start reading on a regular basis for the first time since he was a teenager. He discovered the work of contemporary fiction writers like Amy Hempel and Denis Johnson, and they inspired him to start writing fiction of his own. The first novel Palahniuk tried to publish was turned down by a series of publishers because it was too violent and bleak. So for his next novel, he decided to write something even more violent and even more ble...