Palahniuk describes himself as a minimalist; he quotes the structuralist Jacques Derrida, and talks about narrative devices such as “burnt tongue” (snagging a reader’s progress by using an unusual phrase – a device Shakespeare used, though he didn’t know its name).While it’s undeniable that this literary philosophy has worked magnificently for him, I’m not convinced that, when he’s writing well, Palahniuk’s qualities – economy of style, wit and invention – are substantially different from those of any other good writer, whether it’s Jonathan Coe, Emily Bront?r James M Cain.When he isn’t on his game, there’s not much minimalist about Palahniuk at all; if anything, he has a tendency to repetition. “Half my friends call it a cult and half have done it,” according to Palahniuk. The writer has said that some of the ideas in his work, notably that the sources of our fears should be confronted and embraced, were inspired by what he heard when he was attending Landmark meetings. He says he’s widely disliked for Fugitives and Refugees, his entertaining travel book on the city which was published last year. It alienated locals so intensely, he claims, that he decided to move up the coast. “I am persona non grata in this town,” he says.(“If he really believes that,” a Portland journalist told me, “he is insane.

People here are proud of him.” Like cartoonist John Callahan, the band Pink Martini, or Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love, the reporter adds, “Palahniuk is a quirky claim to fame for a city that has few others.”)A recurring theme in Palahniuk’s life and work is the need to create artificial events in order to mix with people: Cluedo nights and charades; fight clubs and storytelling evenings. In 1988 he enrolled with Landmark Forum, the controversial “group awareness programme” strongly influenced by the cult “est”. I sat with the medical examiner, and he gave me case histories – children he had abused, murders he’s suspected of having committed.”In any case, says Palahniuk, who believes in God but not divine judgment, “I don’t see the death penalty as destroying a man’s existence I see it as destroying this incarnation. There’s no going back.”"What if there was?”"There isn’t.”"But if you could?”"I don’t regret it.

(Shackelford had an appeal turned down at the end of June.)”Are you at ease with that decision?”"I requested it. Fred had been divorced for 20 years when he saw Fontaine’s personal ad, headed “Kismet”.”He started dating her,” Palahniuk says, “not knowing she had a violent ex-husband.” Coming home from their third date, they were surprised by her former spouse, Dale Shackelford, who shot them both dead. “That was April 1999.”Palahniuk says that his father, deprived of his mother by the first tragedy, dated a succession of women in an effort to replace her. Then, when he’d apparently succeeded, it turned out he’d simply found the muzzle of a different gun.”He came full circle,” says Chuck.The writer, who was taking the anti-depressant Zoloft in the aftermath of the tragedy, requested the death penalty. When Fred met a new girlfriend, Donna Fontaine, in early 1999, he got Chuck to talk to her on the phone because she liked the book so much.