Chuck Palahniuk: “I Was Choking on Animal Hair!”

“Marilyn Manson has this skeleton of a 6-year-old Chinese boy,” says author Chuck Palahniuk with a grin, sitting in a sunny park in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. “He got it out once, with the idea of making a chandelier. He’s such an artsy-craftsy person, you know.”

Soft-spoken and polite, Palahniuk, 41, doesn’t come off as someone who would pal around with the Antichrist Superstar. Or like the kind of guy who would have penned Fight Club. His infamous anti-corporate debut novel immediately made him a cult icon — particularly among waiters who, like Fight Club’s hero, Tyler Duerden, enjoy adding something special to customers’ food (one told Palahniuk that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had tasted his semen five times).

“It’s less a novel than an anthology of my friends’ lives,” Palahniuk says of the book, which was filmed in 1999. A bomb when released, the movie, starring Brad Pitt, became one of the best-selling DVDs ever, a favorite of nü-metallers — especially über-fan Fred Durst.

Darkness runs through Palahniuk’s family history. As a 4-year-old, the author’s father, Fred, hid under a bed while his father fatally shot his mother and then himself. In 1999, Fred and his girlfriend were brutally murdered in Idaho by the woman’s ex-husband.

It’s little wonder, then, that Palahniuk’s books — such as Choke, Survivor and his latest, Diary — are as twisted as his taste in music. His new collection of short stories will be no exception.

“They make my editor sick to his stomach,” he deadpans. “And that’s always a good sign.”

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
Capitol, 1973
“The first time I took acid, I was 19, and I went to a Dark Side of the Moon laser show. I was grinding my teeth, so I picked up my scarf and started chewing. A few minutes later, I was choking on animal hair. I had picked up the mink coat of the woman sitting next to me. Before the lights came on, I bolted.”


The B-52's, The B-52's
Warner Bros., 1979
“I’m a lyric person, and I remember every word of a song after I hear it the first time. I first saw the B-52’s on Saturday Night Live doing ‘Dance This Mess Around.’ I had never heard lyrics that were clever and upbeat but at the same time sardonic. It was the optimistic spirit of the ’70s resurrected in the ’80s with a far more bitter tone to it.”


Massive Attack, Blue Lines
Virgin, 1991
“This album is chill music for me — music to write to. I’m writing short stories to this right now. I put this on repeat, something Andy Warhol used to do: He’d put singles on and play them unendingly to the point where the language would break down, and he would paint to that trancelike repetition.”


Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine
TVT, 1989
“This seemed like the first honest piece of music I ever heard. Trent Reznor told me he wanted to do the music for Fight Club — but he was just too wrapped up. After that, Trent asked if he could do the music for Survivor, my second book, if it ever becomes a movie — which I doubt.”


Nine Inch Nails, The Downward Spiral
Nothing/Interscope, 1994
“This was a continuation of my love for Pretty Hate Machine. There is that cut ‘Hurt’: ‘I hurt myself today to see if I still feel… ’ I could recite every lyric from that song, because I listened to it for days on end while I was writing Fight Club.”


Radiohead, Pablo Honey
Capitol, 1993
“I love this record because it has ‘Creep’ on it twice. I listened to this a lot [while writing] Choke, because I think ‘Creep’ is about somebody idolizing someone else, as does the protagonist of Choke, a med-school dropout. Now I hear from a lot of med students. They’re always sending me blister packs of Viagra.”


Henry Mancini, Breakfast at Tiffany's
RCA, 1961
“Every couple has the fictional couple they identify with. For my parents, it was George Peppard and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. This is a record that allows me to return to childhood. If I wasn’t conceived to it, I was conceived shortly after the movie ended.”


Toni Braxton, Secrets
LaFace/Arista, 1996
“This is just plain sexy, sensuous music. It’s a rewrite record. Once you have a first draft down, it’s easier to write to attention-getting music. And of course, Braxton is nearly naked on the cover. I love the concept of ‘Un-Break My Heart.’ It’s the most postmodern dance song of all time.”


Marilyn Manson, Mechanical Animals
Nothing/Interscope, 1998
“I met Marilyn Manson on a magazine assignment, and he wanted my advice on a novel he’s writing. We drank absinthe once. I’ll probably go to his show when he’s in town next week. It’s so fascinating to see somebody exorcise his demons in such a public way.”


Enigma, MCMXC A.D.
Charisma, 1990
“Music with lyrics in a foreign language is good first-draft music. It doesn’t confuse my internal narrative, and I can impose my own thoughts on the lyrics. They could be singing about heartbreak, angst or drug addiction. I wrote a lot of Survivor to this — the Gregorian chants have this quasi-religious aspect.”