After seeing Palahniuk speak a few months ago, I read _Fight Club_ and then tore through all but one of the rest of his novels (still haven't made it to _Survivor_.) What Cory said: it's good stuff.

Thanks for the pointer, Cory!

The Salon review struck me as amazingly mean-spirited and I'm glad to hear an alternate review.

He's giving a reading here in Portland on the 3rd. It is usually a madhouse, but he's a decent showman.

The blog at bookslut.com (I so wish I'd thought of that name first) has a number of good responses to the salon review of diary, and some comments on salon's reviewing practices in general. Worth a look.

I, too, was struck by the harshness of the piece. Whenever a reviewer begins a review by admitting that she loathes the author in question, any hope of a balanced response is dashed. I read on anyway, hoping for at least some Dorothy-Parkeresque skewering, but all I got was petty and petulant. There are some things that Salon does very well, but reviewing books is not one of them.

As a Salon reader, I was surprised by the viciousness of this attack and the one-sidedness of the response letters they chose to publish after the review. There seems to be an overwhelming feeling by the reviewer that Palahniuk's novels are for male-geek-loners. As a female[geek]socializer, I'm offended and puzzled by this viewpoint, as I am by the inability of the reviewer to get beyond the literal when it comes to "mistakes" in these wonderfully bizarre works.