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When the wife told the mother-in-law that we were going to a book reading, the mother-in-law scoffed, “going to hear your favorite author read a book? Isn’t that a yuppie thing to do?” In some circles it may be, but then again most book readings don’t give you a bookmark with anal beads on it as a freebie handout. Welcome to Chuck Palahniuk’s book tour celebrating the release of his latest novel Snuff.

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For the uninitiated, Chuck Palahniuk is the author of Fight Club, brought to you in motion picture form starring dreamboat Brad Pitt. He’s also written eight other novels, each one dripping with wit, tangential factoids, and bodily fluids of various types. Love him or hate him, Palahniuk’s work is provocative and entertaining. And for those that really love him, he goes on tour to get face to face with his fanbase, offering various goodies in appreciation of you getting off your keister and coming to visit.

This was my second book tour stop. The first was for his horror novel/short story compendium Haunted. That stop was characterized by flying plastic body parts (“They make a great dog toy,” he deadpanned) and barbecue scented air fresheners, which added just enough olfactory ambience to make me nauseous while he read the story “Hot Potting.” Chuck was very affable, personally signing whatever you happened to bring for him to sign and chatting with everyone for a bit. He’s an author that really enjoys connecting with his fanbase and making an effort to make his visits special.

When I saw that he was coming around to promote Snuff I jumped on the opportunity to spend a couple more minutes with the author who really got me into reading again. The event was held at the Avalon Theatre in northwest Washington, DC, and arranged by Olsson’s Books & Records, a local bookstore chain of sorts. Admission was thirty dollars, but this included an autographed copy of Snuff, which after tax and the cost of the book made the book tour stop cost about four bucks and change. This trip was uncharacteristic in that it was stated he did not have time to personalize anything before or after the event. From the hurried tone of the evening it seemed as though he had another engagement, probably a plane, to catch. No matter, as I’m not the type to bring stacks of books and tell him how I named my dog after him and what not. It was a nice perk of the last one to get to shake his hand and offer a couple words and get a few in return last time, but no big deal.

Most of us were soaked by the rain by the time we got into the theater, though another couple was nice enough to offer us the protection of their giant umbrella. We had to wait for motherfucking Sex in the City to let out so we could get into the theatre, and a big old rainstorm came through while we were lined up down the block. Yet another reason to hate that garbage. As we filed in we were handed our copies of Snuff and the aforementioned bookmark with the anal beads that came with the warning “This is for your book, not your bum” in fine print by the pull ring for the beads. I wish I would’ve seen that two minutes sooner…

Outside of the lack of personalization and face time with Chuck, the evening went pretty much as the last one did. The emcee and interviewer, a local author who liked to cuss a lot, introduced Chuck and down the side aisle he came in all of his understatedness with I am assuming his publicist in tow. It’s funny that a guy that appears so slight and so normal is responsible for some rather subversive prose. He opened with a sweet story about his friends and their fourteen year-old diabetic cat, which he claims he used as a sound check device, then he got into the meat of the evening.

A trademark of an evening with Chuck Palahniuk is giveaways, and this night’s giveaways were blow-up dolls to go along with the sex theme of Snuff. Once he handed out a few he ran a contest to see who could blow theirs up the fastest. Here’s a picture of the lucky winner a couple seats down. The winners received a copy of some other book that I can’t remember but he said it was his favorite short story collection of the year. At the end of the night they handed out autograph hounds, which apparently was a big deal to people before electricity who would get them and have their friends sign them as mementos, that he had spent the past winter signing for the book tour. An autograph hound is also an object from Snuff, so it’s topical. I happened to snag one of those in the free for all.

After the initial giveaways he did a reading. Instead of an excerpt from Snuff, he read a new story that he wrote especially for his book tour. It was fucking hilarious. “Loser,” based on a real life friend, was about a girl who’s sorority happened to go to a taping of The Price Is Right. On acid. The girl gets called and eventually navigates her way to the showcase showdown where she guesses the pile of steaks that fit in a barbecue that fit on a speedboat that fits on a trailer that goes with an SUV cost “a million trillion dollars.” The story was written in the voice of a vapid sorority girl who was pretty out of touch with things like the cost of a loaf of bread ($8?) and anything else not pertaining to her sphere of experience. I don’t want to give any more of it away, so hopefully at some point the story will be transcribed online or included somewhere else.

The next portion of the evening was the interview. At the Haunted tour stop he more or less spoke for himself prior to the Q&A section. I’m sure it’s a bit tough to come up with a presentation to repeat over and over again, so having an interviewer probably allowed him to relax more. However, from the sound of things, the interviewer hit on a lot of things that he gets asked frequently. The answers were insightful and well thought out, though. He talked a bit about the success of Fight Club and it’s absorption into the popular culture fabric and his input into the movie adaptations of his works.

The truly insightful part was when the fans did a Q&A, as the interviewer admittedly had not read all of his books, which I thought was kind of weird. How are you supposed to ask someone good questions if you don’t know their stuff? Despite their reputation, hardcore Chuck “cult members” either weren’t there in droves or aren’t as hardcore (“Crazy motherfuckers,” the emcee put it) as they’re believed to be. The fans stepped it up, though he kind of was elusive in answers about his writing process. He didn’t divulge how much porno he watched while researching Snuff, though he did say a lot of the inspiration was from a fan he had met at a book tour stop that did some porno of her own.

I think the crux of the evening, and of Palahniuk’s body of work, is when a person asked how he’s able to make characters that do such vile and awful things into sympathetic characters. He replied that, and I’m paraphrasing here, that we as people learn at a young age that we can get people to like us by using certain attributes, be it our looks, sense of humor, intelligence, or what have you. And there comes a point in a person’s life when they realize that this thing has taken them as far as they can go, so they come up with a coping mechanism or scenario that allows them to avoid dealing with the world on a regular level, because people wouldn’t like them if they knew how fucked up they were under the thin layer of humor/smarts/looks that they show the world on a daily basis. His characters are lonely people looking for ways to connect with people without really connecting with them, be it beating the shit out of each other in an underground fight club, making yourself choke so that other people will save you and feel connected with you, or by fucking six hundred guys at the same time. Connections are being made, but they are inauthentic, and the person ends up lonelier than before.

Chuck also told a couple of his “true story” stories: the Pug Dog story and the Sea-Tac story. Both of which are gross, humorous, and true, the former told to him in a letter from a fan and the latter from a friend. Ask me to tell you them some time, but the Sea-Tac story almost made the wife throw up. Totally awesome.

In between the interview and the Q&A, Chuck brought along an added bonus, the trailer for Choke. The film is set to be released in September and looks really funny, though it appears that Hollywood has added a love story dynamic that I don’t really remember from the book, though it has been a few years since I’ve read it.

All in all, if the Chuck show comes to your town I highly recommend you going to see him. He’s an engaging guy that definitely knows how to show an audience a good time. If you’re expecting a gray haired academic in tweed peering at his own dusty book over his reading glasses you’ll be very disappointed, but if you’re looking to hear an author that’s passionate about his work, his fans, and his characters, you’d be hard pressed to find something better than Chuck Palahniuk book tour event. It’s equal parts lecture, story time, and tent revival, and 100% fun.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll go home with your own set of anal beads. As if you didn’t have them already. Sinners.