Victor Mancini's a medical school dropout with a problem. He needs to pay for elder care for his mother, who's got Alzheimer's. So he comes up with the perfect scam: pretending to choke in upscale restaurants and getting “saved” by fellow diners who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, offer him financial support.Meanwhile, he cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops and spends his days working at Colonial Dunsboro, where his stoner colleagues are sentenced to the stocks for any deviation from the colonial lifestyle. Oh, yeah, and he's desperate to find the truth of his paternity, which his addled mother suggests may be divine.
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2 books in catalog
Transgressional fiction offers incisive, darkly comic explorations of marginalized, displaced, and angry characters living on the fringes of modern society, best exemplified by the 1996 novel Fight Club. American novelist and freelance journalist Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk established his literary career with this debut work, which was later adapted into a 1999 feature film directed by David Fincher. His extensive body of work includes nineteen novels, three non-fiction books, two graphic novels, two adult coloring books, and numerous short stories that continue to draw readers seeking sharp social satire.
Born on February 21, 1962, in Pasco, Washington, to Fred Palahniuk, a railroad brakeman, and Carol Palahniuk, an office manager at a nuclear power plant, Palahniuk grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He attended the University of Oregon's School of Journalism, graduating with a degree in 1986. Early in his professional career, he worked as a journalist at National Public Radio station KLCC in Eugene before moving to Portland to write for the Oregonian. Outside of journalism, he worked as a diesel mechanic and service documentation specialist for Freightliner and volunteered for a local hospice program. In his late twenties, he began writing fiction and attended workshops led by author Tom Spanbauer, who taught a technique called "dangerous writing" that emphasizes minimalist prose and painful personal experiences. Palahniuk eventually transitioned to full-time researching and writing, residing near Vancouver, Washington, and Portland.
Palahniuk's writing style is characterized by minimalist prose, staccato rhythms, and dark, cynical humor. Influenced by Spanbauer's dangerous writing technique, he draws on shocking, bizarre premises to craft incisive social satire. His narratives frequently focus on themes of alienation, consumerism, physical identity, and the struggles of subverted individuals. Readers exploring dark, satirical stories in the catalog will find his 2001 best-selling novel Choke alongside classic satirical suspense works such as The Stepford Wives.
