Dean Tim Gleason presented Chuck Palahniuk ’86 with the Portland Alumni Spotlight Award on January 25 at the Hotel Vintage Plaza. Palahniuk reads one of his nonfiction essays.

Author Chuck Palahniuk ’86 introduced his new book with these words. Palahniuk has brought his dark humor to another tale of post-modern living with Choke, released May 15.

Palahniuk’s first book, Fight Club, established him as an edgy, new voice in fiction, and a hot commodity. The book, which was published in 1996, won the 1997 Pacific Northwest Bestsellers Association Award, the 1997 Oregon Book Award and was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. He has since published Invisible Monsters and Survivor.

Choke is told from the point of view of a dropout medical student, Victor Mancini, who has devised a choking scam in restaurants. Mancini hits a different restaurant each night where he begins to fake choking halfway through the meal. Mancini’s theory is that whoever steps in to rescue him will feel responsible for his life and donate money to him.

"You gain power by pretending to be weak. You save people by letting them save you. By choking, you become a legend about themselves that they’ll cherish and repeat until they die. They’ll think they gave you life."

He is usually right. Mancini, who has a dead end job doing historical reenactment in a reconstructed colonial town, uses the money from his scam to pay for his mother’s Alzheimer’s care. Meanwhile, he seeks out sex addiction groups, not to cure his own addiction, but to find sex partners. Out of this chaos, Mancini tries to piece together his identity and discover his past.

When thinking of story ideas for his writing, Palahniuk is often interested in themes around what motivates a character.

"I’m always really fascinated by scams that people do in order to get their emotional needs met," he said.

Though Palahniuk graduated from SOJC and worked for small newspapers in Oregon after graduating, he left journalism to work as a diesel truck mechanic at Freightliner. He thought he wouldn’t start writing until after he retired but found himself writing again in 1992 when he took a "Dangerous Writing" workshop with Tom Spanbauer.

When Fight Club began to take off, Palahniuk thought, "This is what I want my life to be about—writing full time, not writing in my spare time."

While waiting for Choke to hit bookstore shelves, Palahniuk has begun work on another book and has returned to reporting, seeking out nonfiction projects that might serve as background for his fictional work. He has written short stories and nonfiction appearing in publications such as US, Playboy, Gear, Black Book, The Los Angeles Times and STORY.

Choke is slated to be made into a movie produced by Beau Flynn, who acted as executive producer for Requiem for a Dream. Palahniuk said, as with Fight Club, that he is interested in seeing someone else’s interpretation of his work.

Palahniuk participated in a conference in early April at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, where academic papers and creative works related to his fiction were presented.

"All of the things spurred by my work have been so much better than my work," he said. "It’s fascinating. The ideas they have are amazing. I’m just the excuse they need to get together. That is one of the most incredible things to see."