Chuck Palahniuk upon the death of a patient to whom he had grown attached. Palahniuk began writing fiction in his mid-30s. By his account, he started writing while attending workshops for writers that were hosted by Tom Spanbauer, which he attended to meet new friends. Spanbauer largely inspired Palahniuk's minimalistic writing style. When he attempted to publish his novel, "Invisible Monsters", publishers rejected it for being too disturbing. This led him to work on his most famous novel, "Fight Club", which he wrote as an attempt to disturb the publisher even more for rejecting him. Palahniuk wrote this story in his spare
Haunted (Palahniuk novel) carrot," referring to both the mother in the first story and to the total denial of all the parents involved. Purportedly all three of these incidents are based on true stories. According to Palahniuk, the first two tales came from his friends' experiences and the third he heard while shadowing sexual addiction support groups as research for "Choke". In one of these groups, he met an extremely thin man. When Palahniuk asked him how he stayed so thin, he told him "I had a massive bowel resectioning." When Palahniuk asked what he meant, he told him the story which was