Make Something Up

Knock-­Knock

My old man, he makes everything into a Big Joke. What can I say? The old man loves to get a laugh. Growing up, half the time I ­didn t have a clue what his jokes were about, but I laughed anyways. Down at the barbershop, it ­didn t matter how many guys my father let take cuts ahead of him in line, he just wanted to sit there all Saturday and crack people up. Make folks bust a gut. Getting his hair cut was definitely a low priority.

He says, Stop me if you ve heard this one before . . . The way my old man tells it, he walks into the oncologist s office and he says, After the chemotherapy, will I be able to play the violin?

In response, the oncologist says, It s metastasized. You ve got six months to live . . .

And working his eyebrows like Groucho Marx, tapping the ash from an invisible cigar, my old man says, Six months? He says, I want a second opinion.

So the oncologist, he says, Okay, you ve got cancer and your jokes stink.

So they do chemotherapy, and they give him some radiation like they do even if the shit burns him up so bad on the inside he tells me that taking a piss is like passing razor blades. He s still every Saturday down by the barbershop telling jokes even if now he s bald as a cue ball. I mean, he s skinny as a bald skeleton, and he s getting to haul around one of those cylinders of oxygen under pressure, like some little version of a ­ball-­and-­chain. He walks into the barbershop dragging that pressurized cylinder of oxygen with the tube of it going up and looping around his nose, over his ears, and around his bald head, and he says, Just a little off the top, please. And folks laugh. Understand me: My old man is no Uncle Milty. He s no Edgar Bergen. The man s skinny as a Halloween skeleton and bald and going to be dead by six weeks so it don t matter what he says, folks are going to ­hee-­haw like donkeys just out of their genuine affection for him.

But, seriously, I m not doing him justice. It s my fault if

CHUCK PALAHNIUK is the author of fourteen novels-Beautiful You, Doomed, Damned, Tell-All, Pygmy, Snuff, Rant, Haunted, Diary, Lullaby, Choke, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, and Fight Club-which have sold more than five million copies altogether in the United States. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journey Series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest. Visit him on the web at chuckpalahniuk.net.

Praise for Chuck Palahniuk and Make Something Up:


"Palahniuk doesn't write for tourists. He writes for hard-core devotees drawn to the wild, angry imagination on display and the taboo-busting humor."
The New York Times 
 
"Palahniuk is a bracingly toxic purveyor of dread and mounting horror. He makes nihilism fun."
Vanity Fair

Palahniuk displays a Swiftian gift for satire, as well as a knack for crafting mesmerizing sentences."
San Francisco Examiner

Few contemporary writers mix the outrageous and the hilarious with greater zest.
  Newsday

"Few authors have captured the pathologies of modern life quite like Palahniuk."
Rocky Mountain News

Chuck Palahniuk is one of the most intriguing writers of our time.
Tucson Citizen

"For the first time, Palahniuk collects his short stories, which feature his signature humor, horror, and grit. [The] other stories deal with fire, bodily fluids, malfunctions, critiques of material society, bestiality, a bewitched tennis ball, and a murder at a Burning Man-type retreat. The collection is essential for Palahniuk fans and will likely win him some new ones."
Publishers Weekly

"Palahniuk comes roaring back from a stretch of experimentalism with 23 tales celebrating his ongoing affection for the macabre... Pathos and panic and penitence from one of the darkest and most singular minds in contemporary American lit."
Kirkus Reviews

"Even as you likely suffer debilitating motion sickness from the jarring emotional turns on every other page, you ll be inescapably restrained by an author who knows exactly what he s doing and has you right where he wants you. Palahniuk s uniquely modern style throws out any antiquated conventions that could keep him from destroying any expectations that keep you in complacent narrative comfort."
Booklist