Chuck Palahniuk's Pattern

I haven't posted in quite a while, I know. But I've just been reading a lot, and relaxing over summer break, and I haven't felt like keeping up with this blog for a while. Today, I come to put down in writing something I've been thinking about for a while. See, I read Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk last year, and this summer I read two more of his novels: Choke and Survivor. I enjoyed reading them, but halfway through Survivor I began to wonder why it wasn't exciting me as much as the other two did. And it came to me then that, as many differences as the three novels have, they each follow a very obvious pattern.

Sure, not all of Palahniuk's books are like this (Haunted, I know, isn't). But I haven't read any others yet, so this is starting to get on my nerves. I wanted to write down exactly what that formula was, so here it is:

• Male protagonist who is an anti-hero
• Male friend of protagonist who has crazy ideas or does crazy things
• Protagonist meets female who is crazy or does/says crazy things
• Protagonist has sex with female (or at least comes close to it)
• Protagonist gives numerous facts about chemicals, mixtures, cleaning, ear cleaning, diseases, etc.
• Protagonist gets help that he doesn't need (addiction groups, professional counselor who diagnoses things he doesn't have)
• Protagonist takes airplanes, talks about stuff that occurs in them besides what is necessary for the plot
• Something bad happens to protagonist in the end/receives backlash

Basically, it just feels like they're all the same book after a while. Just punch in a new backdrop, and the book writes itself. That's not to say that Palahniuk is incapable of originality. Each individual novel is pretty good. Fight Club is incredible, and Choke is pretty good too. The problem I had was when I read Survivor, and I could tell exactly what was going to happen (and not just because, like Fight Club, it started at the end). Worse, the back cover boasted that it was "unpredictable."

Now that I think about it, Kurt Vonnegut's novels had a lot of similarities as well. The difference, though, is that his novels seemed like they were supposed to be connected. He reused a lot of the same names, places, and ideas, such that it felt like his stories might take place in the same universe.

I do like Palahniuk, but I hope that more of his books are different...