And this is why, every high schooler should read Chuck

[QUOTE=ModernMe51A]I put this somewhere else in the site at the buttocks-end of one of the threads, but I feel it should be said.

Pride and Prejudice was absolutely terrible, 1984 was really good but flew over too many kids heads, and Slaughterhouse Five was too historical for some kids in my school to comprehend. So they hate those books. Now they hate reading and watch reality TV shows like American Idol and Joe Millionaire and this is what is now standard for creativity, and these kids will one day lead our country..."pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty carpool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles."Chuck wrote that whole compelling speech because with this new idea of creativity that is passing through high schools, that speech may be more of a Nostrodamus prediction than just a brilliant, thought provoking monologue. Our country, our world, may crumble because of shitty books and shittier yet easier to understand reality TV series. Kids hate books. Boring books. The only reason I am making something of my life now is because my friend Ashley gave me a copy of Choke before my SAT's and said "read." I read Choke, my SAT score skyrockets 140 points. Now I am writing my own book and my friends noses are buried deep in the chapters I've written...cocaine snorting style if you need the visual, they're reading and enjoying and giving me something to strive for now. And I used to hate reading before Fight Club, before Choke, Survivor, everything Chuck wrote. Chuck is the PROPER gateway narcotic. Literary marijuana. Opening us up to ideas we would have never known and morphing our minds into something more than just 3 to 4 pounds of conformist ideas, obeying most of what we hear and accepting what is right in front of us as being the only true and real thing. There books showed me that there is more thought behind every situation that we encounter. If you read his books the right way, having a bad day is a thing of the past. You realize to make the best of your days, skip over the bullshit and jump into actual worthwhile possibilities.
If kids are forced to read Fight Club or Choke in school, this country would become a smarter place. It may seem like a stretch, but hey, the discovery of fire started with nothing more than a spark, and now look at the worlds techonological advancements...then again the more I think about it, the more I wonder if I could have let that first innaugural man-made fire blaze on or if I would have pissed on it. Either way, every kid should read Chuck, it sure changed me and all my friends for the better.
That's just my thoughts, place feedback.[/QUOTE]
I agree with you 100%....i am currently in high school...and yeah...most of the stuff they make us read is boring....and i really think i would have liked or enjoyed class more if we would have read some of Chuck's stuff....it's more entertaining and really makes you think...

[QUOTE=Aurelius Caulfield]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).[/QUOTE]

I agree with this guy.
Fight Club could help and/or educate a lot of teenagers, but most of them would be like the guy in fight club that said, "When he said you are not your job..I was like, Yeah!"
Some teens will rebel [I]against[/I] fight club and become dorkier, others will take it seriously and throw out all their possesions, and then the ones without girlfriends will blow up the school. In the end, the smart ones will become smarter and the dumb ones will become dumber.
You have to leave good books out of high school, that's why they teach Mythology.

1984 was a good book...animal farm was kinda gay
and i think it was just piss me off if everybody knew wut i was talking about when i randomly quote fight club in public
i like the confused look on their faces
i like posting papers on my school walls that say "the liberator who destroyed my property has re-aligned my paradigm of perception, i reject the basic assumptions of civilization especially the importance of material possesion"

and i like that barely anyone understands...but they wonder, o how they wonder

I think Chuck is, in itself, a modern classic, his take on universal topics, such as the purpose of existence, is a refreshng 'so what?' instead of 'to be or not to be'. A good counterpoint to "I am unique and beautiful because I am human". Students shall learn that they are not beautiful and unique snowflakes, but the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

Kids have grown criminally stupid these days... Hell, a good number of the teachers aren't much better. I'm in my sophmere year of Highschool and I've been teaching myself the Second World War since 7th grade. I could tell you more than my history teacher could. Today we were watching Shindler's List in that class and I look over to find half the class sleeping or putting on makeup. Anybody who would rather put on mascera than learn about the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto should be hung. No judge, no jury, hung. I cannot wait till one of these dipshit jocks becomes president and nukes some poor country and plunges the world into a nuclear holocaust. You know there are plenty of kids out there that are just that dumb. I'm gunna stop before I get myself more pissed off than I should be. Either way, kids need to read more... of their own accord.

I've read all the aforementioned books before I read them in school, and I love every single one of them. It's the way the books are presented that creates a problem.