Tell-All Book

There was a time that I bought Chuck Palahniuk books on release day and tore through them in less than a 24-hour period. I can still one-shot his insanely short novels (novellas by anyone else's standards) but I've long since stopped rushing out to buy them. What happened? Where did it all go wrong? Let's discuss, shall we?

Rant was a punch in the face when it first came out. I will be the first to admit that I didn't understand it because I was young and dumb. I think the format threw me. I've never been a fan of books written in the style of interviews. Anyway, I just didn't get the book. But that's my bad. I have since reread Rant and found it to be among the best of Palahniuk's output. I was hoping for the same magic again, which is why we're here. But, first, a little more history.

Next was Snuff, a little more streamlined and understandable than Rant, but not very good. Still, I was hoping for an upswing with the next book. Every author has their bad period (no one knows this better than a Stephen King fan), and I imagined the next book would be Palahniuk back to his stellar ways. Oh, what a hopeful summer-child was I...

If Rant was a punch to the face, the next book to touchdown, Pygmy, was a nuclear bomb up the ol' Hershey Highway. I remember opening that yellow-binded bastard and reading the first paragraph and blinking uncontrollably. I flipped through the book, reading the beginnings of every chapter (something I don't think I've ever done, nor have I done since), trying to see if the entire book was actually written in such a confusing style. After a while, I dropped into a rhythm and managed to finish the book, but again, it just wasn't any good. What was I missing? Mind you, this was before I joined Goodreads, therefore, I had no idea I was in the vast majority when it came to raging over Pygmy.

And then Tell-All came out, a 179-page "novel" that I paid full price for in hardcover. I can't remember how much, but I know it was easily over twenty bucks. For 179 pages. Surely this book would be the succinct, miracle-return of one of my favorite authors. I finished the book in two sittings. Not because it was good but because the font was huge and there's more gibberish than there is story, meaning the "novel" is padded with italic bullshit of the cluck, whinny, bark... variety. Add to that all the name-dropping, which is, admittedly, true to character, but annoying as fuck. If you're going to read this, everything in bold can be skipped. It's actors names and conditions and products. Maybe some of the names dropped are funny, given context, but more often than not they are superfluous. When reading a 179-page "novel", one should not feel the need to skip text, but good on the author for putting that shit in bold and making it easier to pass over.

The first time I read this, the twist aggravated me because I saw it coming at the midway point. It's so goddamn forgettable that I couldn't remember what happened at the end. I didn't mind the twist so much this time around, but something else annoyed me in its place.

I've never known Chuck Palaniuk to hold a reader's hand. I think that's one of the reasons I loved Rant so much the second time around. Palahniuk hid the twist so damn well and never comes right out to tell the reader what they might have missed. Here, in Tell-All, Palahniuk spends a considerable amount of time assuming you, the reader, are denser than a bucket of cement. He spells out every little detail, making sure you see how clever he was, thoroughly destroying any sense of accomplishment the reader might have felt by figuring it out on their own. Stephen King once said, "Description should start in the author's mind and end in the reader's." I like that quote. Maybe I should email it to Chucky-boy.

In summation: This wasn't near as bad as my first experience with this book, but it was still a hard pill to swallow. I would say that later Palaniuk deserves a reread, especially if you loathed these books the first time. Had I been a member of GR back when this came out, it would have easily garnered a one-star from me. Not much better than now, but there was a little improvement. I plan to reread all of the ones I hated simply because Rant was so much better the second time around. This one proved not to be so bad, but I think that's more because I'm not reading it directly after Pygmy, because this "novel" surely is no return to form for my one-time hero.

Final Judgment: Better than the first time reading but that's not saying much.