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    People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks
    People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks
    People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks
    Audiobook44 minutes

    People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks

    Written by Chuck Palahniuk

    Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Nobody excavates the landscape of American darkness in cultural and personal terms the way Chuck Palahniuk does. Nobody captures the tiny moments that change our hearts forever with such stark, clear-eyed beauty. He takes us here, somehow gently, into that very darkness, which ripples beneath us, between us, and silently within us.

    — Clark Gregg, director and actor

    The first rule of writing for the world-renowned author of Fight Club, Choke, and Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk, is to expect the unexpected. As Vanity Fair declared about him, “He makes nihilism fun.” In his bold new Scribd Original, Palahniuk takes a rare look at his own life, the source material for his bestselling, zeitgeist-changing, and searingly memorable dark fantasies.

    He not only shares the challenges he’s overcome and the nightmares he still lives with but also names the people, places, and things that have inspired him and made him the uncommon artist he is today. A devoted student and longtime teacher of writing, Palahniuk structures this very personal reflection as a lesson in how to tell a story and characteristically opts for a thrillingly atypical approach. He writes, “This landscape will unfold more like collage than any highway printed on a map. My point is: It’s not what’s inside your clothes, it’s how you take your clothes off.”

    Via direct and indirect routes, the reader is toured from the smallest of small towns in which Palahniuk grew up—Burbank, Washington—to cities made famous by serial killers; from a weight room in a dank cinder-block bunker under the bleachers of the local high school, where young Palahniuk strengthened his body and mind, to a recurring dream that may not be a dream at all but a childhood memory that to this day makes crossing bridges sheer terror for him.

    He also revisits some of his influences—Vonnegut, Heller, Salinger—men who coped with the traumas they endured in war by using them to fuel their creative work. And for the very first time, he divulges another crucial influence: Noburo Fukuda, an unsung hero who was often derided as “nuts” and “queer” by the mostly white community in and around Burbank. On a family day trip to a series of overheated sheds for locomotive and stock-car repair, Palahniuk, just a boy, opened a door to an adjoining shed and discovered an unlikely paradise: a Japanese garden alive with hummingbirds, columbine, and phlox, with waterfalls coursing down a mountain at its center. Fukuda, an immigrant from Japan, freely gave locals this sanctuary, a place to which Palahniuk still returns in his imagination to fend off his own traumas. Fukuda also gave the author a model of what one man can do alone, through imagination and hard work, showed him that being different, an outsider, has unexpected gifts that can make for unexpected beauty.

    Poetic and explosive, profoundly human and intimate, People, Places, and Things is a tribute to every person compelled to defy convention in pursuit of their own vision. And, more, it’s an invitation, with every line, every digression and confession, and every leap taken, to convert the messy and startling, the ugly and beautiful stuff of life, into art—not just by breaking the rules, as Palahniuk does here, but by risking your very skin to find your own.

    Editor's Note

    Unexpected personal essay…

    Palahniuk knows how to tell a story in unexpected, fascinating ways, and this personal essay (a Scribd Original) from the “Fight Club” author doesn’t disappoint. Palahniuk shares the people, places, and things that shaped his writing growing up in the Pacific Northwest — from serial killers to secret gardens to Sears catalogs.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEverand Originals
    Release dateOct 27, 2021
    ISBN9781094412870
    Author

    Chuck Palahniuk

    Chuck Palahniuk’s fourteen novels include the bestselling Snuff; Rant; Haunted; Lullaby; Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher; Diary; Survivor; Invisible Monsters; and Choke, which was made into a film by director Clark Gregg. He is also the author of the nonfiction profile of Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. His story collection Make Something Up was a widely banned bestseller. His graphic novel Fight Club II hit #1 on the New York Times list. He’s also the author of Fight Club III and the coloring books Bait and Legacy, as well as the writing guide Consider This. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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    Reviews for People, Places, Things

    4.5/5

    378 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I loved this short piece. Is writing is sublime. I hope to find more.
    • 5/5
      Simply engaging. Reminding me of a younger me who hope to one day right things.
    • 4/5
      Were that all autobiographies this short, powerful and densely packed.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful narration. Does justice to the writer's emotions. Loved it!
    • 4/5
      Very engaging short memoir about the power of making human connections, with family, friends and the wider community. Even a short meeting has ripples that are felt for a long time afterwards.
    • 4/5
      Using scrbd whenever I get spare time
      Interesting books of all time

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Palahniuk read by Ballerini - what an unexpected and perfect pairing! Everyone will love this!

      4 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Be prepared to pay attention. This was very much an Alice in wonderland situation on the authors life. A mini autobiography. But should you zone out for a second you will be lost. I did enjoy it and would listen/read again.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A collection of short stories, graphic novels, and writing advice book is very interesting and everyone must like this.
    • 5/5
      Chuck Palahniuk can create a whole world from a sentence. For a man who says he is a beginner story writer like everyone, the way he tells a tale brings the feelings into the middle of the throat. Thank you Chuck.

      4 people found this helpful