Left Bank Books and Mad Art Gallery are pleased to announce a discussion and book signing with Chuck Palahniuk author of Snuff (Doubleday, $24.95), and Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff (Doubleday, $22.95) at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, May 27. This event is free and open to the public. Chuck Palahniuk, an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist of Ukrainian ancestry born in Pasco, Washington, best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, will be reading from and signing copies of his new book Snuff. This wild, lethally funny, and thoroughly researched novel brings the huge yet under-acknowledged presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction at last. Who else but Chuck Palahniuk would dare do such a thing? Who else could do it so well, so unflinchingly, and with such an incendiary (you might say) climax? Books for signing must be purchased from Left Bank Books or at the event. The first 150 people who purchase Snuff from Left Bank Books will receive a ticket to have their book personalized by Chuck Palahniuk. Presigned copies of Snuff and previous titles will be available at the event. No memorabilia will be signed. Donald Ray Pollock grew up in Knockemstiff, Ohio. He dropped out of high school to work in a meatpacking plant and then spent over thirty years employed in a paper mill in southern Ohio. Currently, he is a graduate student in the MFA program at Ohio State University. His stories have appeared in the Berkeley Fiction Review, the Journal, Third Coast, Chiron Review, Sou'wester, Boulevard, and Folio, and he has contributed essays on politics to the op-ed page of the New York Times. Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are woebegone, baffled and depraved-but irresistibly, undeniably real. Rendered in the American vernacular with vivid imagery and a wry, dark sense of humor, these thwarted and sometimes violent lives jump off the page at the reader with inexorable force. A father pumps his son full of steroids so he can vicariously relive his days as a perpetual runner-up body builder. A psychotic rural recluse comes upon two siblings committing incest and feels compelled to take action. Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence, a bracing absence of value judgments, and a refreshingly dark sense of bottom-dog humor. For more details about ticketing, please contact Left Bank Books by e-mail at info@left-bank.com or by telephone 314-367-6731. Please note: We cannot guarantee how long this event lasts, so please arrive on time to make sure you have the opportunity to see the author.
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