Talk:Chuck Palahniuk

A-class or not
I've quick-failed an A-class review of the Biography project, because there are two fair use images without fair use rationales, and entire sections are without references. As this is sufficient to quick-fail a GA review, it must quick-fail an A-class review as well. B-class is the highest it can get for now. Er rab ee 13:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Removal of "References In popular culture" section
I've removed this entire section because A) WP discourages trivia sections, and that's what this was; and B) most of it was unreferenced—and unreferenced material may be removed at any time, per WP:V—and the references for the Panic at the Disco! material were not to a reliable source but to a discussion board. If this material is returned to the article it should be properly sourced, and, rather than just given as a list of trivia, it should be rendered in prose and integrated with the article as a whole. -- Shelf Skewed  Talk  12:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
 * This anti-trivia Wikipedia policy is so sad. Sometimes the most interesting part of the article is in the trivia. For a long time after explicit formulation of the policy, trivia sections continued to exist, but now enlightened wikipedians are going around deleting them. Someone should start a trivipedia or a WikipediB that does not desire to emulate a print encylopedia. The last link I can find to the deleted Chuck Palahniuk trivia section contains mention of his theorey that the same laugh tracks have been used since their invention in the 50's. Perhaps trivia-section-deleting illuminati might be so kind as to give a link to the trivia section, or even allow its continuation on the talk page. I see that happening on other pages. --Timtak (talk) 03:18, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I concur, the removal of the trivia has made the reading of articles less interesting. --DavidD4scnrt (talk) 09:28, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

it takes a lot more effort to create than to destroy. a lot of those deletions are indistinguishable from malicious vandalism. what you can do is revert the deletion and make it clear that the policy is to "merge" the trivia into more relevant places. A Trivia section is allowed but only as a last resort if no better place can be found to put the material. It is also important that the trivia section be well referenced. In many cases it is possible to restore a lot of content from a trivia section and even now you could still dig through the article history and start work on merging the best of it into relevant places. -- Horkana (talk) 15:59, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Image deleted
I hid the image Palahniuk_books.JPG with tags since it was deleted from wikimedia commons. I left all the info in the page in case someone knows if the image had a copyright on it or not, as it could be reuploaded. The image in question.

--Kevman459 (talk) 04:26, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Criticism
Speaking as someone who's not admittedly altogether familar with Palahniuk's work (I've read one or two of his books, but I liked them), I think the criticism section is either biased and/or slanted. Is this really the general consensus of his work? I understand that he's controversial, but I find it hard to believe that there's never been any reviews or reliable sources that attempt to counter them. I mean, I could just as easily make an almost identical criticism section for 90% of the published authors out there, including J.R.R. Tolkien or J. K. Rowling. On a related note, the first part referred to an article that's no longer there, so I removed it.--CyberGhostface (talk) 00:13, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, a Criticism section is generally going to include sources that are biased against the target. But are you arguing that a criticism section shouldn't exist at all? Ashmoo (talk) 08:09, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, look at Chronicles of Narnia's section on 'criticism' (renamed to 'controversies'). Although there's a lot of weight given to Philip Pullman ranting, there's also some attempts to include rebuttals by other people. I think at the very least the same could be done here.
 * Although, if you want my opinion, I think criticism would be better suited for individual articles on his novels and not heaped together on his own article.--CyberGhostface (talk) 14:45, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Having also worked on the Chronicles of Narnia section you mentioned, I agree in principal. However, when including 'rebuttals' we must ensure that the section doesn't turn into a back-and-forth forum style debate. The best way to do this is to insist on WP:N & WP:RS commentaries. Ashmoo (talk) 09:14, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Is he really homosexual?
Is he really gay? Or is someone making it up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.51.65.172 (talk) 08:03, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, he's gay.--CyberGhostface (talk) 21:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * He talks about it briefly in a new article in the London Times, re about his never discussing his homosexuality with his father, etc. See: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4396841.ece67.142.130.49 (talk) 19:28, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * So why isn't this discussed in the WP article? I remember it being included about a year ago or so.  This is a really important part of who he is and I also think it's important for many other reasons as well.  And there's thousands of other WP articles on gay people that explicitly reference their homosexuality.  I plan to either add it or reverse the changes in a week or so if no one has a reason why it shouldn't be in the article. --Evolross (talk) 21:29, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There's no (good) reason to remove it, so by all means, add it back in.--CyberGhostface (talk) 23:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * All the information about how he was "outed" is also missing including his threatening message to the author of the magazine article that outed him. That stuff should all be back in here and it used to be.  I'm not sure why anyone would remove that unless someone was purposely "cleansing" this article...--Evolross (talk) 18:13, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Then restore the edits if you have the proper citations.--CyberGhostface (talk) 18:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm glad to see that it has been restored. However I think it should be under a "Personal Life" section and not mixed in with his career information.  Anyone opposed to that reorganization?  Most articles referring to people put this kind of information in a "Personal Life" section.Evolross (talk) 20:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree, it really has no relation to his career at large yet should definitely be included in the article. I encourage whoever knows the proper citations to make a Personal Life section and move the info there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.190.34.219 (talk) 01:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Photograph of Author
Palahniuk now looks not much like the author picture shown in the article. For Palahniuk now (he is a massive, a rather monumental bodybuilder type now), see the London Times: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4396841.ece —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.130.49 (talk) 19:29, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, Wikipedia's policy is that free photos must be used over fair use, no matter how out of date or poor quality said photo may be. (For example, this used to be Stan Lee's main photo before I replaced it with this.) But if you can find a free photo of Chuck Palahniuk that's better than the current one, then you should definitely replace the current one. My recommendation would be to go to Flickr and either A.) Find a suitable image that's already commons-licensed or B.) Ask the owner to release it into the public domain for Wikipedia. That's where I've gotten most of my mine from.--CyberGhostface (talk) 21:50, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

replaced w/ new --Wiseoleman17 (talk) 06:40, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank, that's a good pic.--CyberGhostface (talk) 19:16, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Qualification of Subject
Classification of Chuck Palahniuk as a Western Philosopher seems justifiable. Flux (talk) 07:15, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Criticism section
My main problem with is this is that there's no balance to it. It's just negative reviews. Palahniuk isn't the literary equivalent of Gigli--he's received a number of positive reviews. I think the article would be better benefited by having the section be about critical reaction both good and bad. And before anyone says "So fix it yourself", I'm not able to for a number of reasons, so that's why the maintenance templates are there in the first place, to direct editors to them.--CyberGhostface (talk) 19:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

2011
My point still stands three years later. Just because nothing has been done doesn't mean that the template should be removed. The section as-is still faulty. I don't see why this article needs a section devoted to just negative reviews. It would be like making a "criticism" section for Stephen King and just posting all the negative reviews that he has received over the years. Short of him being Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, it shouldn't be impossible to write a more neutral section that focuses both on positive and negative critical reception.--CyberGhostface (talk) 00:54, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

2012
Okay, I've removed it for the time being as nothing has been done or discussed in the four years since I've brought it to attention. Hopefully this won't be a problem for anyone.--CyberGhostface (talk) 23:40, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

2014
OK, I've come back to this article after many years, and see that the criticism section is gone. I agree that being entirely focused on negative criticism is a problem, but the solution is to add more balanced criticism rather than remove it altogether. I'm going to dig up to old section and re-include unless someone gives a reasonable objection. (And hopefully balance out the criticism). Ashmoo (talk) 15:40, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I've re-included the criticism section. I also spent an hour searching the internet for book reviews. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to find any reviews that were positive about Palahniuk in general. Some reviews were positive about individual books, but only reviewers who hate him chose to assess his style as a whole. I will keep looking for more even handed assessments. However, if none exist, I think that is also an acceptable outcome and does not violate WP:Neutral. Some artists are generally disliked by professional critics but still have a popular following, and if this is the case with Chuck, the article should reflect that. Ashmoo (talk) 08:32, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Criticism section (2010)
I cleaned up the formatting of the criticism section because as it is it's somewhat awkward and clumsy. I also re-added a passage, that Palahniuk's work has been compared to "Goosebumps for adults." I think this is relevant criticism, and anyone who knows anything about literature would agree with it. The reason that Michiko Kakutani hasn't torn any of his books apart yet is because they aren't worth a serious critic's time. Whoever keeps deleting it should provide justification. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.47.2.174 (talk) 14:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The "Goosebumps" comment has been removed by two different editors, most recently by me, because it was added without a supporting reference and had the appearance of being just a random potshot. If the "Goosebumps" description can be supported with a reference from a reliable source, then please provide it. I reverted the other changes you made because you took a paragraph that was directly related to the one above--the paragraph on the Salon piece, followed by Palahniuk's response to it--and moved it down so that it appeared that Palahniuk's response was to criticism in general and not to the Salon piece specifically.-- Shelf Skewed  Talk  14:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Tell-All
Is he anti-semitic? I read the first few paragraphs of this book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.87.130.64 (talk) 11:05, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know how you would get that impression from the first chapter of Tell-All. Plus, you certainly can't judge a person's character from a single chapter out of his entire bibliography.  I have never gotten the feeling that he is a anti-semitic, and I've read all of his work.--–m.f (t • c) 13:08, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

WP:RSN
I have responded to the Rfc placed at Reliable_sources/Noticeboard. Location (talk) 01:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

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OE source

 * https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/palahniuk_chuck_1962_/#.WUaxfRiZNo4 --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 17:00, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

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image
I've updated the infobox image to this one (a close-up -- the previous one was 11 years old). There's also this one, which would be better if he weren't looking in a weird direction. Opening this thread because I got a couple more, um, fun? pictures but I'm not sure if they would be appropriate for the article. At his BookCon autographing booth, when fans wanted to take a photo with him, he offered to put them in a choke hold for the picture. Definitely the most unusual author-fan interaction I saw. :) one, two, three. I opted not to add them, but figured I'd leave them here should someone disagree (I don't know how the fan in the pictures is, btw). &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 15:15, 5 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for updating the image, I like this new one better (especially considering the age of the previous infobox photo). I have a picture of him putting me in a chokehold from an event a couple years ago, and another of us in a fighting pose. I love that he does that at events. But, I think I agree – probably not fit for this article. – Broccoli &#38; Coffee (Oh hai) 18:10, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Ha, I didn't know that was a regular move for him. It's a good gimmick, I guess. Not much variation among everyone else. Well, except, of course, for Mary Higgins Clark who insisted on punching people in the face while making devil horns at the camera with her other hand. this is not true &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 20:43, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Controversy tag in the Reception and criticism section necessary?
Is the tag in the Reception and criticism section necessary? It seems to be saying that the info needs to be integrated into the rest of the page somehow ... unless I'm misreading it? I don't know, just seems like Palahniuk is definitely a contentious, controversial dude so having a separate criticism section makes sense. It speaks to a pretty widely held view of him, held by both fans and critics. Why have the tag there? Tactical Fiend (talk) 00:26, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

More sources
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/81751-is-chuck-palahniuk-too-big-to-fail.html?consumer WhisperToMe (talk) 07:36, 18 December 2019 (UTC)