A fun littl book, tough it drags at times. This book is less a book of essays or a novel per se, and more of an examinaton by Palahniuk on what th... (show more)
Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon (Crown Journeys)
Want to know where Chuck Palahniuk’s tonsils currently reside?
Been looking for a naked mannequin to hide in your kitchen cabinets?
Curious about Chuck’s debut in an MTV music video?
What goes on at the Scum Center?
How do you get to the Apocalypse Café?
In the closest thing he may ever write to an autobiography, Chuck Palahniuk provides answers to all these questions and more as he takes you through the streets, sewers, and local haunts of Portland, Oregon. Accord... (show more)
Want to know where Chuck Palahniuk’s tonsils currently reside?
Been looking for a naked mannequin to hide in your kitchen cabinets?
Curious about Chuck’s debut in an MTV music video?
What goes on at the Scum Center?
How do you get to the Apocalypse Café?
In the closest thing he may ever write to an autobiography, Chuck Palahniuk provides answers to all these questions and more as he takes you through the streets, sewers, and local haunts of Portland, Oregon. According to Katherine Dunn, author of the cult classic Geek Love, Portland is the home of America’s “fugitives and refugees.” Get to know these folks, the “most cracked of the crackpots,” as Palahniuk calls them, and come along with him on an adventure through the parts of Portland you might not otherwise believe actually exist. No other travel guide will give you this kind of access to “a little history, a little legend, and a lot of friendly, sincere, fascinating people who maybe should’ve kept their mouths shut.”
Here are strange personal museums, weird annual events, and ghost stories. Tour the tunnels under downtown Portland. Visit swingers’ sex clubs, gay and straight. See Frances Gabe’s famous 1940s Self-Cleaning House. Look into strange local customs like the I-Tit-a-Rod Race and the Santa Rampage. Learn how to talk like a local in a quick vocabulary lesson. Get to know, I mean really get to know, the animals at the Portland zoo.
Oh, the list goes on and on. (show less)
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Reviews (See all 272) Write a reviewfor this
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Chuck writing about his hometown Portland? You'd think he'd take a break from his normal scattered crazy fiction stories, but it's astonishingly mo... (show more)
Chuck writing about his hometown Portland? You'd think he'd take a break from his normal scattered crazy fiction stories, but it's astonishingly more of the same in this book. Worth reading if you live in Portland or plan on visiting soon. (show less)
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This is much, much more than a travel guide; it's practically a personal conducted walking tour of the less-conventional side of Portland, Oregon by the cult author, who's also a native.
There's a minefield of information: from a quick guide to local slang, to the best food recommendations (including recipes), right down to the names and contact numbers of the operators of strange museums, a self-cleaning house, haunted hotels, sex clubs and even the individual animals at the Oregon zoo.
... (show more)This is much, much more than a travel guide; it's practically a personal conducted walking tour of the less-conventional side of Portland, Oregon by the cult author, who's also a native.
There's a minefield of information: from a quick guide to local slang, to the best food recommendations (including recipes), right down to the names and contact numbers of the operators of strange museums, a self-cleaning house, haunted hotels, sex clubs and even the individual animals at the Oregon zoo.
What is unexpected (or perhaps totally in keeping with Palahniuk's quirkiness), is how he wraps each attraction with a story of the place or person he talks to and personal nuggets in the form of a postcard entry at the end of every chapter.
As he says at the end of the book, "This book is not Portland, Oregon. At best, it's a series of moments with interesting people."
Palahniuk not only participates in local customs like the outrageous Santa Rampage (the cover pic of the author in full garb as proof), he also gatecrashes a Rose Festival parade with a mannequin to upstage the parade princesses on floats, and chews up a lady's fur coat sleeve in a drugged out state at the Pink Floyd laser light show.
The reader gets to ride along on these whacked-out adventures and go under the skin of the man (just a little bit) behind his iconic works. (show less)
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This is a nice profile of Portland--a place that I've never been to, but would now like to visit--and my favorite part about it is Chuck's voice is in tact in this book (I just finished his latest, Pygmy, today and had a tough time staying engaged with the choppy dialect). I like the autobiography that weaves in and out of this collection of journalistic interviews and lists.
Having read Stranger Than Fiction first, I can see where this book started some threads that Chuck went back and e... (show more)
This is a nice profile of Portland--a place that I've never been to, but would now like to visit--and my favorite part about it is Chuck's voice is in tact in this book (I just finished his latest, Pygmy, today and had a tough time staying engaged with the choppy dialect). I like the autobiography that weaves in and out of this collection of journalistic interviews and lists.
Having read Stranger Than Fiction first, I can see where this book started some threads that Chuck went back and expanded into full non-fiction pieces. In the very front of the book is a map of Portland that is flagged with all kinds of locations pertaining to Chuck and the stories in the book.
Pygmy left such a bad taste in my mouth, and I'm happy to have some kind words for Chuck about Fugitives and Refugees. This is a great little book: a fast, engaging read, that will make everyone see (or imagine, in my case) Portland in a different way. (show less)
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