Guts

All this ‘sudden’ discovery of the Palahniuk short story ‘Guts’ is lame. Predictably, parents would object to it being assigned in high school English, but it’s been out for almost 6 years, and included in his novel Haunted. Chuck even used to read it aloud for groups.

But even better than the actual short story, is Chuck’s essay ‘The Guts Effect’ in which he discusses why he stopped doing it at readings. Because people were passing out. 67 people actually. And that essay is terrific, well written, and illustrates the power of storytelling.

A year and a half ago, a NY girl was reading the story on the subway platform, waiting for the L train to come, and passed out just from reading it. Her blog post about it is awesome and worth reading as well.