Skip to main contentThe best-kept open secret of Portland's literary scene is history. Last week, Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk made public his 11-year relationship with another man.
The revelation, in a now-deleted "audio blog" on www.chuckpalahniuk.net (a.k.a. "The Cult") ends a long-running media cat-and-mouse game. Since his electrifying debut novel, Fight Club, became a publishing sensation and celebrated movie in the late '90s, Palahniuk has maintained a shroud of privacy over his personal life, even while amassing a rabid fan base.
The juggling act survived dozens of stories written about the 41-year-old author. (Over the years, at least two publications have mistakenly reported that he is married to a woman.) Ironically, Palahniuk's unveiling of his romantic life seems the result of fears that a reporter was about to kick him out of the closet--worries ultimately proved groundless.
Early last week, the author, touring Europe to promote his new novel, Diary, phoned in one of his frequent MP3 reports to The Cult. The post, which was soon deleted, was in response to an upcoming article in Entertainment Weekly. According to subsequent online chatter, Palahniuk believed EW staff writer Karen Valby intended to out him--so he tried beating the magazine to the punch. He also seems to have talked a little trash about Valby, stirring fans' ire.
In fact, the five-page feature story in the Sept. 26 issue of EW story makes no mention of Palahniuk's relationship. Valby does describe the author's amusement at erroneous reports regarding his spouse. "Palahniuk has no wife," Valby writes, "and declines to discuss his personal life on the record...."
Dennis Widmyer, the 26-year-old Palahniuk fan who runs The Cult from his Hicksville, N.Y., home on Long Island, declined to comment directly on the initial audio post. He says he deleted it at the joint request of Palahniuk and Doubleday, his publisher. (Doubleday declined to comment on the situation.)
On Tuesday, Palahniuk called in again.
"Hey, this is Chuck, calling from England, where it's been...a day of misgivings," Palahniuk said. "I've never done this writer thing before, and I have no idea how to manage any of it. I just thought I could do it without being the center of attention.... Let's just back off, relax, not kill anybody and call it good." An EW spokeswoman says that, in fact, the magazine received no threats or other harassment from Palahniuk fans.
With the cat thus out of the bag, Palahniuk posted yet another cell-phone call on Thursday.
"Hey, this is me again," Palahniuk said. "I wanted to make it very clear that I misrepresented, because I mis-remembered, some of the details about Karen's private life. I deeply regret doing that. It was something I did out of anger and fear, and it was something I did inaccurately, and something I wish I had not done."
Palahniuk, who moved to Portland from Washington state 20 years ago, remains in Europe this week. He did not return messages left at his Portland number. During his current tour, Palahniuk's been reading a short story called "Guts," which has reportedly caused fans to vomit and faint. Such tales add another layer to the mystique surrounding a writer who has nurtured an intense, persona-driven relationship with his readers.
Both before and after Brad Pitt immortalized Fight Club antihero Tyler Durden on the big screen, Palahniuk's pugilistic prose galvanized a fan base unlike any in contemporary literature. He diligently answers fan mail and turns reading gigs into borderline performance art that draws huge crowds, including fans so devoted they scar themselves to match Fight Club's ravaged characters.
According to Widmyer, The Cult currently receives about 5,500 visitors a day. The site includes a writers' workshop and features on other authors.
"Chuck's getting people who never read before to read," Widmyer says. "People analyze his popularity on a very superficial level, but really what he's doing is no different than what Oprah's doing. It's just for different people."
Palahniuk's romantic orientation is widely known in Portland's literary community, but some have speculated that he resisted going public for fear of alienating fans, or seeing his books banished to the gay/lesbian lit niche.
"I don't know if this is a real issue for someone like him," says Robert Bade, who manages the gay/lesbian section at Powell's City of Books. "But even knowing that it might be might cause him to hesitate. It just shows how insidious homophobia is, that a vital author has to worry about what should be a non-issue."
Judging by the initial response on The Cult, Palahniuk--outsider voice par excellence--may not have anything to worry about.
"Chuck's involved with a male partner?" one fan writes on a site bulletin board. "More power to him."
WWeek 2015