Chuck Palahniuk was a journalist and a mechanic before he began writing fiction in his mid-thirties. Fight Club captivated a loyal audience that has followed Palahniuk through his fourteen subsequent novels, short stories, and other works. In a genre that’s been described as “transgressive fiction,” his books star characters who find ways to break free from the confines of community expectations.

This month, Palahniuk releases his first collection of short stories, Make Something Up: Stories You Can’t Unread (Doubleday, $27). Each one is a dose of his dark humor and minimalistic, slightly unnerving prose, and could inspire either fantasies or nightmares. Also just released is a graphic novel sequel to the original Fight Club, Fight Club 2 (Dark Horse Comics, $4), the first in a series.

On Thursday, May 28th at 7 p.m., Palahniuk will be at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue for what can’t exactly be described as a book talk. Games will transpire, stories will be told, prizes will be won, and audience questions will be answered — in a hint of what’s to come, Palahniuk asked DCist if the Synagogue has a large chandelier, but did not elaborate.

DCist recently spoke with Palahniuk to discuss his newest publications, his upcoming evening in D.C., and more.

This interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.

DCist: Your book of short stories is called Make Something Up: Stories You Can’t Unread. What does the concept of not being able to unread something mean to you, and how do you provide that as an author?

Chuck Palahniuk: In my life, there have been landmark works and stories that have stayed with me forever. I will always remember stumbling across Citizen Kane for the first time on TV; the first time I saw Sunset Boulevard; the first time I saw Harold and Maude. Or the first time I read “Strays” by Mark Richard, the first time I read “The Lottery”. These stories were told so well, and they were unlike anything I’d ever seen before. They seized my imagination in a way that really made a mark in my head. So I don’t just remember the story itself, I remember the entire context in which I first read or saw the story.

That’s what I was trying to replicate with these stories, and make each one unique and strong enough to linger in the reader’s mind. It might not initially be perceived as a good thing, or an entertaining thing, but to linger long enough that the taste to the reader will change. And eventually the culture kind of comes around to accept those things that are initially rejected, like Harold and Maude was hideously rejected when it came out. But it stayed in the culture long enough to become a classic. So, it’s those things that you might not like at first is what I was trying to create.

DCist: So ultimately, it’s a positive thing for the reader if a story can’t be unread?

CP: Exactly.

DCist: You mentioned a few stories that you couldn’t unread or unsee. What is the last thing that you couldn’t unread, or that you might recommend to DCist readers?

CP: There is a short story collection by Nami Mun called Miles From Nowhere, and it’s just devastating. It’s fantastic writing, and the stories are unforgettable.

DCist: What made you want to write a sequel to Fight Club, and why as a graphic novel?

CP: Well, initially I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t realize that people were going to be asking me about Fight Club for the rest of my life, and that the story would have such legs. So eventually I thought it would be nice to let Fight Club be just one small part of a much larger mythology. Kind of like what George Lucas did with Star Wars — Star Wars was ultimately revealed to be just one very small part of an enormous story that was stretched into the past and the future. That’s what I decided to do with Fight Club.

And, a graphic novel because if I did it either as book, or if it was done as a film, it would be compared to the original book or the film, and would suffer by comparison. I felt it had to be a brand new medium, and a graphic novel couldn’t be compared directly to either of the predecessors.

DCist: What was the experience like writing short stories or a graphic novel, as opposed to a full-length book?

CP: Short stories are always a blast to write. They tend to be things that are inspired in a moment, and I tend to write them very quickly. Then I take them on tour and I road-test them, reading them to sometimes dozens or hundreds of audiences, just to get them perfect and find out where people laugh, and to make the stories more effective. Those [in the collection] are stories I’ve collected over the last 15 years and they cover a lot of tours.

With the graphic novel, it was a collaborative process that was so much fun. I get to work with people who are the very best in their field, and they got to teach me this entirely new form of storytelling where anything was possible. They wouldn’t be offended or censor me on any point. So, it felt very much like being in junior high school and planning something with your friends.

DCist: Speaking of that, how do you decide on boundaries when writing a story that’s on the darker side? Is there anything you want to say but don’t?

CP: Most of the things that I write are things that people have told me, and I feel that as long as it honors the story that’s told to me, and it’s depicting some existent aspect of human experience, then I shouldn’t hesitate in putting it on the page. So many of us feel like we’re freaks because we don’t see the full extent of existence depicted in stories. We see just this very narrow spectrum of what’s considered allowable. So my goal is always to try to document and communicate the extreme stories of a lot of people, so that people with similar stories don’t feel so isolated.

DCist: So do you feel that anything is fair game?

CP: I do, as long as it’s justified by the telling of the story, and that it’s not done gratuitously or to exploit a topic.

DCist: What was it like to watch the movies made of your books, and what did you think of them?

CP: So there’s been Fight Club and Choke, and we have several others in the process of development for movies. But Fight Club and Choke stayed so close to the book that I couldn’t complain. In a way, the process for me is about letting go of the story and allowing someone else to interpret it according to how they see it. I don’t feel very much ownership. In fact, I’m hoping the other person will in a way adopt this child and take it to the next level.

DCist: On a related note, who would you want to play you in a movie?

CP: Hm, boy. I think Edward Norton is a very smart actor. It would be very difficult to find an actor as smart as Edward Norton right now. Or even James Franco. Franco is also, you know, very smart, though he doesn’t always play book-smart characters, but I think as a person, he’s much smarter than he lets on.

DCist: I’ve heard that your events tend to have a lot of surprises. Can you tell us how you plan your tour events, and what the audience in D.C. can expect?

CP: The events always involve as much audience participation as possible. I try to keep the audience sort of on their feet and paying really close attention for fear of what might happen in case they aren’t paying attention. So there’s this element of a kind of terror built into it. I’m very hesitant to say what actually happens for fear that the [Sixth & I] Synagogue will shut us down [laughs], but it is a very colorful and a beautiful spectacle. That was our goal, to create a visual, non-verbal spectacle periodically throughout the event, so that people will remember it on that level. There will be as much emotion and light and sound as there was just language. We don’t want the events to be about language.

DCist: And what about the stories that you’ll be reading? Will you be disappointed if nobody faints?

CP: You know, that’s not really the goal anymore. It was fun while that lasted. But a couple years ago I read the story “Zombies” on tour, that’s in the collection, and it was much more satisfying to see all these young people so involved in a story that they were crying at the end. But I’m not sure I want to have that effect again either.

DCist: What do you think it was about “Zombies” that made them cry?

CP: I think “Zombies” acknowledges this overwhelming fear that young people feel, that is unacknowledged in the culture. Young people are at a point in their lives where they’re not sure if they’re going to find a mate or establish a career. Everything sort of hangs in the balance for them, and there’s so much pressure. Yet everyone expects them to have fun, and be vibrant, and be these outgoing, giggling things. But actually, your twenties are possibly the most frightening part of your life. The story really acknowledges that, this huge pressure and terror of that period of life.

DCist: And what would you like to write about that you haven’t yet?

CP: Oh, I’ve got so many ideas. I’ve got notebooks full of treatments of stories I want to write. And yet I don’t want to give them away. I’m always looking for new contexts in which people tell stories, and I’ve got a dozen or more that could become novels.

One thing that I’m fascinated by is these refurbished cruise ships, where people basically live all their retirement in a cruise ship, and never really coming ashore very often.

DCist: What is it about cruise ships in particular?

CP: Just this idea of being completely … peripatetic. Is that the right word? [It was, I Googled it later.] Being constantly in motion. Especially these people toward the end of their lives, where they spent most of their lives in one place, and now they’re spending the rest of their lives never in the same place for more than a few hours. Constant migratory motion seems so counter to our normal way of life, a kind of a constant fleeing or questing for something, and yet never arriving anywhere. Plus the artificiality of it — people being in this artificial setting of luxury, that carries them around, that’s constantly trying to entertain or distract them.

DCist: Huh. A friend of mine once worked on a cruise ship, and she said the contracts were only four months long. I guess they didn’t expect anyone to work there longer than that.

CP: A magazine once offered to set me up as what they call a ‘gentleman greeter,’ if you can do a certain number of ballroom dance steps, and cruise ships will hire you as an extra guy who just dances with old ladies constantly. On cruises there are always far more women than men. The idea was that I was supposed to go onto a cruise ship for four months, but I just couldn’t give up four months for one magazine assignment.

DCist: And do you stand by that decision?

CP: I do, you know, I’m not gonna live forever. Four months is a long time. But it’s such an endlessly wonderful metaphor, from Titanic to the St. Louis’s “Voyage of the Damned.” I’d like to tell a ship story someday.

Tickets to the event are available here for $35, and include one signed copy each of Make Something Up and Fight Club 2. Doors open at 6 p.m. There will not be a signing at the event.