And this is why, every high schooler should read Chuck

Well put. I agree whole-heartedly.

you see, i agree, i wish i could scream that in my english teachers face. but high school is a place where one has to consider whats appropriate
there are people in my class, namely one mormon, who would freak out in a bad way if he read one chapter of choke. i doubt that a book about sex addiction would go too far in school
fight club maybe, but the book still endorces violence and "terrorism" lemme put some extra quotes for that """"""
i think the best thing we can do for kids is to find them out side of school, do the whole guerrilla attack on society and pass out copies.
i know it blows, but schools cant handle this, university classes maybe, high schools still suck.

heres to a brighter tomorrow hopefully without leaders brought up by survivor and big brother.

Its diffrerent for us, because us C-funk fans are intelligent enough to not want to go out and act this shit out. If we are smart enough to appreciate the works for what they are and not "a book aobut sex addiction and a book about fighting" then there's nothing we can do to convince teachers/schools and stuff. They wont take from Palahniuk what we all do.

For me, his books changed my life, the way i write, the way i read, he opened up new doors to creativity i never thought i could open.

My belief is teachers will search to god for a deeper meaning in a 'classic' book. If you hand them a modern book no matter how credited the author it's hard to push them twards it because if a kid likes it, it cant have real good meaning to it.

I totally agree with everything said here, Chuck books are really the only books i've read, and i've read them multiple times.

Sadly though i saw fight club the movie before i read the book, but either way. The movie/book completely made my life do an about face, and I owe everything i have in my life now, to fight club; and Chuck.

Anyone else who says 'Pride and Prejudice' is absolutely terrible shall get their ass kicked by me. Jane Austen was the first great woman writer. That has to count for something here, in your whole foward-thinking dogma thread.

how is it that forcing one book on them is better than forcing another? the true tragedy of american education is that it uses force at all.

You're completely right, because as anyone who's ever been in high school knows, as soon as a teacher forces you to read a book you are automatically going to hate it. That's why a whole generation of us hate books that are good otherwise: Catcher in the Rye, Great Gadsby, and pretty much anything Shakespeare ever wrote. Making kids read Chuck's stuff would cause them to hate it, not embrace it.

part of chuck's appeal to young people is the feeling that they've personally "discovered" it.

Good points, i should have thrown that in there actually about the force thing. It's why I didn't really like them probably. It's like when you're a little kid and your're about to clean your room because you remember, then your mom says, right before you start cleaning, "don't forget to clean your room!". And then suddenly you feel like doing something else and cleaning your room sucks. Good points, in the meantime I just let everyone borrow my Chuck books and they thank me two days later. And yeah, the discovery is a big part too. Sorry, just another one of my 1am post-homework rants.

And Jane S., The Pride and Prejudice thing is my opinion, I didn't like it and most young people I talked to in my school (this was sophmore year) who read it didn't like it as well. But I'm glad you did so I got an opposing opinion on the subject, and maybe I'll pick it up again eventually. It just didn't turn me on to anything or make me feel any different, that's all. Peace!

Actually, next year in senior year we get to read A Clockwork Orange, antoher book that changed my life, so that's pretty cool.

bbqsauce, what grade are you in?

this past year in senior year in english we read british literature, which was a total bore. i had to look outside the parameters of school to find something interesting to read. i picked up fight club as a book to do a book report on. i had watched the movie, but the book had more meanings then the movie could ever elaborate on. i just finished choke and learned more about the hardships of addiction can have on a person then what any teacheer could tell me. i feel if were horse-fed interesting books like catcher in the rye and the great gatsby, maybe we wouldn't have become a generation of people hating to read for fun. chuck's works have broadened my horizons about life and the society we live in. i try to preach to the masses at my school, but my message falls on deaf ears. i hope people could be as smart as their potential allows them too and not just settle for being normal clones of each other.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by ModernMe51A [/i]
[B]And Jane S., The Pride and Prejudice thing is my opinion, I didn't like it and most young people I talked to in my school (this was sophmore year) who read it didn't like it as well. But I'm glad you did so I got an opposing opinion on the subject, and maybe I'll pick it up again eventually. Peace! [/B][/QUOTE]

Aww, now I feel bad cause you were so nice when I was really mean to you! Well, glad you feel that way I guess. I wish I could be as courteous as you are when someone attacks me. I guess it just gets to me sometimes when people complain about the books they have to read in school--and the way that you said 'Pride and Prejudice' was 'terrible', but the other classics you mentioned were just too historial or something, not outright bad. You might want to watch the way you phrase stuff sometimes .

Uh,..."And this is why, every high schooler should read Chuck?"... Shouldnt just EVERYBODY read Chuck? correct me if im wrong. i could be making a horrible mistake. ( sarcastic )

You should post it. Probably a lot of people here would be interested in reading it.

though we like fight club and all of chucks books. forcing people to read his stuff isnt how to do it. fight club was about making choices.
if people choose not to read, let them be the ones to clean up after us when we fully inherit the contenent

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by RgG [/i]
[B]bbqsauce, what grade are you in? [/B][/QUOTE]

The 'leventh, sir

[QUOTE]if people choose not to read, let them be the ones to clean up after us when we fully inherit the contenent.[/QUOTE]

easy there, killer. before you inherit the [I]continent[/I], you should probably be able to spell. lol

Ah, Kitty. You are the moderator of us all.

LOL. no, just the spelling police.

There needs to be a balance between modern literature and the classics in school. There is nothing wrong with Jane Austin, Dickens,Orwell, Pasternak etc, because mostly, there are some great stories which us high schoolers should read.

have you read 1984? or animal farm? i want 2 days of my life back!
and kitty, i usually post when im too tired to review what i wrote, and i cant spell at the best of times, so.... lay off the chastization... is that a word? huh? what thread am i in again....?

If it isn't a word it really really should be...

Personally I really liked 1984 and animal farm. I'm one of the only kids in my school who actually reads for fun (and isn't at home watching American Idol or something stupid like that. *Shudder*. So maybe I'm just a freak like that, I don't know. I know that I'm the only person in my class who doesn't hate Lord of the Flies with a passion, because I was the only one who didn't have to read it for school. There's something about taking great books with fantastic symbology, and when you break them down in a high school setting and have tests over them and stuff, they just become an object of hatred. If kids read Chuck in school, and they have to sit through hours & hours of a pedantic English teacher saying, "Tyler's kiss is symbolic of the kiss of Judas" and blah blah blah, the kids would grow to hate it. Also, if you had it taught in school, all of this that we do on this forum, discussing the different meanings of the books, like if Joe was in heaven or not, would be over. There would be a single way to interpret Chuck's works and all other discussion of what it might mean would die.

This might possibly be the most disconnected post I've ever written. Oh well.

At first i totally agreed with the statement that the creator of this topic made, but then i read the other posts and I realized that forcing Chuck on students may not be such a good idea. I enjoy reading, but I only do it for fun and on my own time, I almost never read the books assigned to me, despite the fact that (I hear) the books we are assigned are very entertaining. I have never been asked to read catcher in the rye or the great gatsby etc. and now I actually want to read them, but if I had been asked to read it in school I probably would have just said screw this and opened up Fight Club.
The problem is though that many people don't like to read, no matter what their friends say, which is one of reasons why it may be a good idea to force books on the students in the hopes it may spark some interest in reading. So in the end I would say assign Chuck and maybe give one test to see if the students read it, and let them interpret it for themselves. Chuck did have an effect on my life too (though not nearly as big as what ive seen here), and I just want others to experience it for themselves.

I see what you're all saying. So maybe if say, I became an English teacher, I would do "suggested reading" instead. List more modern books and the class can vote on which one they would like to read, then assign a test at the end that has no right or wrong answer, but it allows the student to open up their own meanings into any symbolism behind that particular book. And if they pick Fight Club, we'd get to see the movie at the end!

A suggested reading list is a good idea if you're a teacher, or a professor especially. I could see reading Chuck at a college level, because there people are more eager to learn and to interpret. But I don't see how making kids read Chuck in high school would ever work. I think the whole idea should probably just be steered away from.

Having read the posts on this thread I get the sense I am much older than most and my point of view will differ substantively from those of you still in high school or college. That said, reading books, reading books of any kind is an opportunity to further one's education (at your own pace), to improve one's understanding of the language and to learn about how the world appears to others and how to write (very important no matter what you end up doing in life). Still, I can recall a number of books that I "had" to read, that my teachers and profs wanted me to read and it was a chore and maybe I didn't get much out of th eexperience. Nonetheless, don't underestimate the assignment; don't think, "Oh, Christ, Jane Austen." I'll be honest, I didn't enjoy her books very much either, but I did learn how to write better by reading her prose. I also learned about values and how they have changed. By no means will you enjoy evrey book that comes your way, but try to take something away, even if it's as cursory as "I didn't like it, but India sounds like a wonderful place to visit (think Passage to India)."

Authors that should be taught but normally aren't:

Milan Kundera
Georges Perec
Albert Camus
Robertson Davies
Evelyn Waugh
and, certainly, our boy Chuck

Just get out there and read. I enjoy historical fiction and only recently discovered Bernard Cornwell. His stuff ranges from the Napoleonic Wars, the American Revolution, ancient Britain (think Arthur and his knights), the Holy Grail and even the Civil War. Great stuff. Find it and read. Peace.

i'd prolly like alot of the books we cover if i actually picted them up by myslef.
we had to read lord of the flies for school in grade 10, i loved it... till we spent 3 months on it... kids are dumb.
i'd prolly have liked the great gatsby if i picked it up on my own,,, and if gatsby was a hallucination like tyler,,, that would have been awsome, i kept hoping it would turn out like that.
oh well, i did a presentation on fight club today and killed a small portion of my teacher inside. i bashed the classics and such, and brought up the topic of this thread... looking back i could have done less damage, but meh, least i dont go blowing buildings up

gatsby probably would have been a lot better if he and the narrorator were the same guy...except gatsby was in love with the narrorator's cousin, and them being the same person might have been kind of crossing a line.

My heart goes out to your teacher.

While I have not read all of Chuck's books ([U]Choke[/U] and [U]Lullaby[/U]), I would not recommend high school teachers to use his work for class. Chuck's work is the type which should not be taught. One should devour his books at their own pace (I love how someone earlier said that), and one should take their own meaning of what the book(s) meant. As for university professors, I would not know because I am not yet in college. Still in high school.

I could not get "into" Jane Austen, so I do not like her. [U]1984[/U] and [U]Animal Farm[/U] were both great books, while [U]Lord of the Flies[/U] was not that great. I did not like [u]Lord of the Flies[/U] because I hated the ending. Plus, to me, the story was not that great. I have not read the rest of the books mentioned (i.e. [U]The Great Gatsby[/U]), and the recommended authors of [I]framstedt[/I].

i was just skimming over the 'view new posts page' and i know ive seen this thread a jillion times before- but- i thought it said [b]And this is why, every high schooler should smoke Crack[/b].

Wesley, i just don't know about you sometimes. Where do you get these things?

i dont knowwwwww. its innnnn my brain...

seriously, i just glanced and read it wrong. im a doofus. yes, doofus.

Ahh, well it appears I have arrived. Try not to sob too hard, as lusty as you all are for me.

I, myself, am a junior in high school and happened to fall upon [U]Fight Club[/U] as a freshman. Palahniuk gave me answers to questions I'd been asking all my life. For days I sat, daydreaming that I was walking through the smoking ruins of civilization, on my way to building better things, to turning myself into a self-governing, survival machine. I dreamt of those barren superhighways. I dreamt of leather clothes that would last me the rest of my life.
But, like a stupid kid, I took his book a little too seriously and got myself in trouble. I was suspended in ninth grade for "promoting rebellion" because I put up flyers with Palahniukisms scribbled all over them. Got interrogated by both the principal [i]and[/i] his henchmen (I was dumb enough to put my e-mail address on the fliers and hence I was tracked down rather quickly). The fliers, consequently, were titled [b]"Project Mayhem"[/b].
On a positive note, however, I did get several other people interested in [u]Fight Club[/u], though I somehow doubt it meant as much to them as it did to me. In tenth grade, after failing American Literature on purpose (I've had a bad high school career), I was of course doomed to take it again, and during that second time I forced my teacher to read [u]Fight Club[/u] and thus, given how determined I was, she allowed me to do my final research paper on it.
That bitch still has my only copy. But anyway...
Chuck Palahniuk can be dangerous in the hands of teenagers, because most of them are equally as stupid as me and equally as desperate for change. I don't doubt, however, that in ten years when [u]Fight Club[/u] is finally recognized internationally as a groundbreaking work of mastermind genius, we will be reading it in school, the way we now we read Salinger's [u]Catcher in the Rye[/u] (another book I took too seriously).

Best post EVER. That was awesome and inspiring and thank you for sharing.

im quite fond of the little cretin!

viva la cretin!

cretins rule!

henchmen. great word, too, btw. very third reich.

it's cool that the book had so much of an impact for you...and even cooler that you realized that you took it way too seriously.

School.... ahhh yes... forced reading... soo much fun...
I'm a junior also, and just about to embark on the journey of reading The Great Gatsby on Tues..

Anyways i don't know if I want to turn this thread into a discussion on and ideal school system but.... for the sake of enlightenment i'll go ahead.

Schools should be places where kids take courses on certain topics... and in each topic there should be a reading list... every kid chooses the book to his or her liking and reads away..
--Then everyone brings to a discussion the view point that was presented in their book as well as what they think of what the author said. This way a lot of points will be heard and kids can make up their minds themselves on what to believe...

As far as reading CP in school... it won't happen... not to be pesimistic... but for all the above listed reasons in the thread ( almost all the works of CP contain "inappropriate material" and its a shame... But i agree that kids can take more away from it if they read/discover the book on their own.

hi people, this is like my first post ever so hi everyone.
anyway, i agree with most of the posts on this. if half the people in my school read fight club, they'd prolly be out there mixing equal parts of gasoline and orange juice or something cause that's how stupid they are...i think im like the only person in the whole school who actually reads...my english teacher's never heard of jack kerouac...

Not having ever heard of Jack Kerouac should be a punishable offense. I am not joking. Your teacher is a looser.

I have to totally agree. I wish I had read fight club in high school. I wish it had changed my life earlier. whien the change would have been more dramatic. I'm not the same person I was before I read fight club. I'm more of who I wanted to be. Fight club has given me the confidence to do things I would have been to chicken to do. my eyes are open. This should be assigned reading.

He he... I made my professors include Chuck in our course. We did Fight Club (the film) and Lullaby. The best thing is that one of them will have to read ALL his books, including Diary. He'll thank me for it..

ok, i've been resisting posting this because it's practically suicide on this board, but...
i don't think that anyone in high school should read chuck palahniuk. first off, some of his books (if not all of them) will end up being misconstrued. it's not like the meaning of his stories is easy to gleen. instead, you'd just end up with a bunch of high school kids thinking it would be a great thing to go around blowing shit up. i just don't think that a lot of high schoolers would end up understanding the meaning of his books.
yes, i think he writes good fiction, but i don't think it's something to be teaching high schoolers.

yeah

this is a bit stale

you're prob. right trypd. the books would destroy their fragile little minds.

it's a south park reference. but i was being sincere in agreeing with you.

righto