If you could teach/be taught one of chuck's books in high school, what would it be?

Fight Club I think is too obvious, more people would just be watching the movie for the class then read the book

Invisble Monsters could have a lot of discussion to go with it. not only on gender, but dealing with power and fame, how we assign places for people in society and whatnot

also, Survivor would make a great class

That's exactly what I said! You rock.

I knew i copied that from somewhere

I took a semester's worth of classes one summer at NYU, and one of the teachers there was the published novelist (and killer poker player) Ellen Miller. And, more than anything else, the one thing I remember her saying was that if you wanted to really get into a new author that you shoud always read their first book, first. Why? Because that's the book where you'll find all their big themes at the purest, their rawest, least refined versions of what they'll most likely be writing about for the rest of their lives.

I thought that was pretty smart. So to that end, I [I]would[/I] recommend that kids read Fight Club, more than any of the others. All of Chuck's biggest issues are there. Even though he touted his last three books as "Horror," they're still hitting the same notes as the first four: re-creation through re-invention. Only now it's through magic, fate, and creative the most horrible history for yourself to sell to the world later (a response, maybe, to the "anti-fame bug" from Invisible Monsters).

Wish every high school taught Fight Club. The world would maybe be in a bit better shape if they did.

[QUOTE=willtupper]I took a semester's worth of classes one summer at NYU, and one of the teachers there was the published novelist (and killer poker player) Ellen Miller. And, more than anything else, the one thing I remember her saying was that if you wanted to really get into a new author that you shoud always read their first book, first. Why? Because that's the book where you'll find all their big themes at the purest, their rawest, least refined versions of what they'll most likely be writing about for the rest of their lives.

I thought that was pretty smart. So to that end, I [I]would[/I] recommend that kids read Fight Club, more than any of the others. All of Chuck's biggest issues are there. Even though he touted his last three books as "Horror," they're still hitting the same notes as the first four: re-creation through re-invention. Only now it's through magic, fate, and creative the most horrible history for yourself to sell to the world later (a response, maybe, to the "anti-fame bug" from Invisible Monsters).

Wish every high school taught Fight Club. The world would maybe be in a bit better shape if they did.[/QUOTE]
Same reason to always get the first album of a musician you like
but going by that reasoning though, shouldn't they pick up IM first since he wrote that before Fight Club ?

[QUOTE=nathaniel parker]Same reason to always get the first album of a musician you like
but going by that reasoning though, shouldn't they pick up IM first since he wrote that before Fight Club ?[/QUOTE]

That made me smile.

[QUOTE=EducatedGuess51]That made me smile.[/QUOTE]
?
its all true !!

[QUOTE=nathaniel parker]?
its all true !![/QUOTE]

that's why!

Survivor - to show those kids not to trust anyone.

[QUOTE=storm47]Survivor - to show those kids not to trust anyone.[/QUOTE]

word

[I]Haunted [/I]for Religious studies. I can do it!

Would like (when I'm a bitter old twit) to design and teach an English or philosophy course around all of Palahniuk's works, or at least a good chunk of his mess. And a minimalism writing course using his writing book as text, if it ever comes out. I'll do it at my old state college where they don't give a fuck, about much, ehh, details, about muchIN details.

Incidentallyallll, fight club was assigned in my existentialism course, way back whenever. ya!

Survivor should be required reading for a home economics class!

in general, as a high school student, i would want to read invisible monsters for a class. as nate said above, it deals with issues that can be disscussed well in a class setting. it would be fun also for the gross out factor that most of the girly girls would go through! haha!

Damn it! I can't find Invisible Monsters anywhere! I can't order it, cause I'm moving to another city next month. Damn it!

[QUOTE=storm47]Damn it! I can't find Invisible Monsters anywhere! I can't order it, cause I'm moving to another city next month. Damn it![/QUOTE]

can't find it? just go to a boarders! it's everywhere.

[QUOTE=LeHaHi]can't find it? just go to a boarders! it's everywhere.[/QUOTE]

Dude, I'm in Serbia. It's like you're trying to find it in Kongo... no chance at all... Maybe in a year or so. Anyway, I'll order it when I settle down in Belgrade.

[QUOTE=storm47]Dude, I'm in Serbia. It's like you're trying to find it in Kongo... no chance at all... Maybe in a year or so. Anyway, I'll order it when I settle down in Belgrade.[/QUOTE]

ohh, sorry! i kept thinking, in my small closed minded american mind, where can't you get a copy of Invisible Monsters? I live in Wyoming for God's sake, and I got my copy at a locally owned bookstore. but, Serbia would be tricky. good luck.

Chuck would probably work better on the college level. First, parents of high school parents would start all sorts of trouble if their children brought home one of Palahniuk's books, with all the bizarre sexual stuff. This is the type of stuff a teacher gets in deep trouble for. Secondly, you'd get a more mature discussion of his works on the college level, as the students are more experienced. Chuck's one of my favorite authors (and one of the few I read from the 20th century), but I can't see me teaching him in one of my English classes, no matter how much I'd enjoy it. Maybe one day I'll move on to teaching college, and then I can get Chuck on the syllabus.

[QUOTE=nathaniel parker]Fight Club I think is too obvious, more people would just be watching the movie for the class then read the book

Invisble Monsters could have a lot of discussion to go with it. not only on gender, but dealing with power and fame, how we assign places for people in society and whatnot

also, Survivor would make a great class[/QUOTE]

yeah I totally agree. we all know fight club could be discussed in a class
but between Invisble Monsters and Survivor
I could see Survivor being discussed in a class more

'Diary' !
Why does no one ever talk about [I]Diary[/I]?
In my final essay for my college course I used the book for ideas because it has such interesting theories on art n stuff.
I LOVE this book, it's brilliant, I think it has the best imagery of all Palahniuk's books, I would have loved to study it, I talk about it's story and themes all the time.

[QUOTE=LeHaHi]Survivor should be required reading for a home economics class!

in general, as a high school student, i would want to read invisible monsters for a class. as nate said above, it deals with issues that can be disscussed well in a class setting. it would be fun also for the gross out factor that most of the girly girls would go through! haha![/QUOTE]

Totally agree.

[QUOTE=owenwarland] parents of high school parents would start all sorts of trouble if their children brought home one of Palahniuk's books, with all the bizarre sexual stuff. This is the type of stuff a teacher gets in deep trouble for. [/QUOTE]

But this is also true. Still, it would be the coolest thing to discuss with me AP Literature class. (I would so ask- what would you write on a postcard from the future?)

[QUOTE=SiLeNtPuNk]'Diary' !
Why does no one ever talk about [I]Diary[/I]?
In my final essay for my college course I used the book for ideas because it has such interesting theories on art n stuff.
I LOVE this book, it's brilliant, I think it has the best imagery of all Palahniuk's books, I would have loved to study it, I talk about it's story and themes all the time.[/QUOTE]
Wasn't it Plato or Aristotle that coined, "everything is a self-portairt?" And yeah, like how he plays with the stereotype, "all artists must suffer." Though, It might have a hard time getting through with all the references to piss and shit.

[QUOTE=EducatedGuess51;870039]Pretty self explanatory. Read somewhere that someone would like to teach fight club. I was wondering what other people think. So, which book do you think would make the best addition to high school required reading and why?[/QUOTE]

I think owenwarland pretty much hit it on the head. In American public high schools, there's so much in the way of regulation, small town morals, and histrionic parents, so much blatant censorship and backlash against any teacher who rocks the boat, that you'd be crazy to teach Palahniuk's ficiton at that level. And you'd find yourself deliberately avoiding the hardest and most evocative aspects of his writing, and softselling some tamed-down, neutered version of it.

Hell, if you taught Fight Club--the most obvious choice if you're only going to teach one of his books--you'd run the risk that high school students would read it like a How-To manual. As fast as they started their own secret fight club in the backlot or the gym, you'd undergo an instant curriculum change, and maybe a job change to go with it. You might even get dragged into a law suit.

Chuck's work is much more at home in an adult learning environment, where you can go as far as you want in exploring the themes. And you don't have to keep reiterating priggish moral cautions if you see your students actually enjoying it. But even bringing Chuck into the college classroom, doesn't his work cease to be "cult" just as fast as it's part of numerous curriculums? As soon as it's dried, tested and tried, standard for university and sometimes taught in high schools, it will be the quaint "subversive" literature of a bygone age. Fight Club will be Lord of the Flies. And people will need to read somthing else, something new and underground, in order to really feel stirred.

fight club

Diary would be great for studying themes and imagery....perhaps its a little less sexually charged than some of the others as well.

Choke definetely, although you'd probably need to get signed permission slips to read that book in class. But it would definetely appeal to the 'everyman' that most highschool students are. Plus all the accounts of incognito sex would have made my highschool life a little more tensed, charged. Because then, everyone's got the same quiet idea in their heads.

So imagine Palahniuk's books were taught in high schools.
What would you [I]learn[/I] from them?

[QUOTE=Vendetta;901069]So imagine Palahniuk's books were taught in high schools.
What would you [I]learn[/I] from them?[/QUOTE]

that you can make napalm from mixing orange juice and petrol,
how to get rid blood stains form your bed (or something I don't remember),
that if you are sexocholic you should start collecting rocks,
and other stuff like that.....

My senior year in highschool in my AP English class we read and discussed Invisable Monsters. I have read most of Chucks books and I'm very happy that Invisable Monsters was my first.

My first exposeure to Chuck was reading Fight Club for a class in political theory, and it turned me on to all things Palahniuk.

I am going to be teaching an intro to creative writing class next year at the college level, and Chuck will be required reading. Unfortunately, the class is more short stories and poems, so i think I'm just going to pull some stories from Haunted, most likely Slumming and Dog Years, maybe an excerpt from Fight Club that isn't part of the movie.

When I get the chance to teach novels, I think I'll have to go with Choke over Invisible Monsters. I just think there is more to disect in a regular literature class, although Invisible Monsters would work great in something dealing with gender and class.

But for the high school level, I think Diary and Lullaby are about the only two you could get away with, and I think high schools kids could get more out of Diary. But you could also sneek some of his short stories into high school without losing your job, too.

I would rather his books never be taught in high school, at least not now

because in high school you have the majority of idiots treating it like a fad,

despite how his books promote taking control of a toolish life (thats at least what they say to me)

maybe in 10 more years when more professors deem him culturally significant

I'm in high school. I'm in the Gifted Program, too.
We're some pretty smart kids.
I think Invisible Monsters would be a good book for us to read.
Unfortunately, plenty of high school students have never been exposed to writing such as his, and probably wouldn't read it because they don't like his style.

I also think that in general, the high school population would be a little too immature about all of the sex in the books.

I read Fight Club for my senior year of high school AP English class. But I'd probley do Survivor just because I know it would have some good discussions on sex, religion, media and all this other stuff.

I read Fight Club for my senior year of high school AP English class. But I'd probley do Survivor just because I know it would have some good discussions on sex, religion, media and all this other stuff.

i'd teach lullaby. the underlying themes of the epidemics caused by our society's progression and the fragility of human life are incredibly important in this book, and i think it'd be an amazing way to get kids to think about the impact they're having even just existing.

I'm in high school now and I wish that we could read Rant in our AP English class.

I took a college English course in high school with the great Rachel Maverick (she's been published) and she gave us the choice of reading one book through the semester that we would discuss throughout. My group read Fight Club, and another group read Invisible Monsters.

I found that most people didn't understand the message of the book; it just flew right past their ears and nothing stuck. So I have to agree that it should be taught in a college setting, because most people just don't understand the concept on their own. I find that more college students get it though.

Either way, I think any of his books would be a great pick for a class because they perpetuate interesting themes. It just depends what mode of thought the teacher wants to go with.

Survivor would be great.

Fight Club should be the best, but few students would try to discover beyond the movie.

Choke is good too, but I don't think it's the kind of book that teachers would like to teach, and not something that students would sit down and listen to, or discuss properly.

I'd love a course on Survivor. A lot of the themes would spark great discussions and debates.

I would say "Survivor" would fit very well in any psychology or anthropology class. It manages to disect the fascination western culture has with the media, and would make an excellent way to demonstrate just how far we will go to create icons for ourselves. As well as the idea, if you didn't know it was about to happen, would it really still happen or is it only because you know that it does happen?

Amen to that, I love the way the narrative reflects on you as the comatose patient.

I wrote an essay about Invisible Monsters, and my English teacher told me he wanted to read the book and teach it to his grade 9 class.
He read it.
He didn't teach it.
I wonder if he found it inappropriate...

To be honest, I'd have to pick "Survivor".
It was so well written and had you hooked until the end of Chapter 1.
The book would have students really debating about what's going on in the story and sort of see how that can be related to the world.

In terms of the underlying messages, Fight Club would probably be most well suited.

Personal opinion: Rant. I fucking love that book.

Survivor.