Customer Reviews

Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

While certainly not for everyone, this little book belongs on many a shelf as well as in many a backpack - here's why (or why not, as the case may be):

* A fan of Mr. Palahniuk's work? A Must Have. Biographical sketches, funny and sad, poignant and pathetic, give flashbulb glimpses of the man and insight into his writing. As pure entertainment, 4.5 out of 5 stars.

* Looking to do something different in Portland, OR? Assuming all of the attractions noted haven't been overrun and wiped-out by rabid Fight Club wannabes, Fugitives and Refugees will lead you to some seriously off-the-map attractions. 5 of 5 stars but, like any travel guide, F & R will become less and less useful over time until it becomes a snapshot of a historical moment, "Chuck's Portland As It Was".

* Travel guide fan? Armchair explorer? Love reading about all those places you just know you'll never actually take the time to visit? This is among the oddest guides you'll find. 4 of 5 stars. Point off for its brevity.

* Jaded Portland Local? Too hip for your asymmetrical haircut? Got a "been-there-done-it-all-bought-the-ironic-tee-shirt" attitude? Do you now dislike Mr. Palahniuk and his books because of his popularity? 5 of 5 stars for you since this little book will give you more self-righteous "I Told You He Sold Out" proof to drop on your friends over six dollar lattes or twenty-five cent beers than any of his upcoming books and film releases ever possibly will.

Over-all grade: 4.625 out of 5 stars (rounded up for Amazon's whole-number system.)

The main draw of this book for me is Palahniuk's "postcards", his one to two page long memories scattered throughout the book. These are models of economy, which immediately grab the reader's interest and have lots of little surprises (not all of them pleasant). Especially hilarious are his tales of his role in an MTV video, and of a protest stunt by anarchists that ended up looking like a protest against Italy. (Sorry to be vague, but it defies summary.)

The rest of the book is a altie travel guide of the _Lonely Planet_ backroads style. Sights range from the scenic to the seedy, emphasis on the off-beat, though there is a welcome, and unexpected, chapter on the city's gardens.

His affection for his town shines through most every passage of every section. There may not be much left of the frontier, which a century and a half ago prompted Thoreau to say "I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe", but what's left is wild enough, and still distinctively American.

This is about as close as you are going to get to a autobiography of Chuck Palahniuk, but hey, it is all good. Fugitives and Refuggees is not your ordinary travel book. This book looks deep into the "other" side of Portland. Most of the book talks about places to eat, see, and also one of my most favorite chapters where you can go for some good strip shows in Portland. I have to say that I love Laurie (Chuck's roomate) and how when she was younger, she would go sneak into her father's bed, and give him "oral pleasure". Some of the thing's that Chuck did when he was younger was strange, but yet I am glad to see that I got to know a little bit more about one of my favorite authors. So if you want to go to Portland, then read this book. There are some strange landmarks there too, and some of the shows there are fun to go to. Some of them are strange, but they still worth checking out.

This book is a total break from Chucks novels, which is refreshing. It's easy to see where he has picked up a lot of the material for his other books. I've passed through Portland a couple of times, however, the only thing I've ever done is gas up and stop for some fast-food. Every girl I've met from Portland was hot. It's a place I'd like to explore, especially after reading this book. I did live in Seattle for 6 months, and did some exploring. There is a lot of history in the great northwestern United States. As for the sleazy strip clubs and such; I feel they cheapen an area, and give it an undesirable atmosphere. Chuck never tries to sweeten the pot. He goes for the guts, which I find 'fresh' and compelling. Like another reviewer stated--the Chamber of Commerce wouldn't like potential citizens of Portland to use this book as a guide to the city. I for one would.

Well, i just love chucks roommate, Little LAURIE!

But onto bigger and better things. Chuck i will finance you to live in SAN DIEGO, and find the cool things like you did with Portland. But i don't care if you write a book, just help me go look for this crap. YOU ROCK DUDE!

but Santa weed and rum sounds like the best combo.

I think the tunnels under POrtland deserve more attention in the national media.

some of the fun activities in Portland: STRIP CLUBS!

i'm so rude and crass, forgive me, But seriously, Sex is okay right?

wanna know what i'm talking about? PLease JUST BUY THE BOOK! and read it. don't just let it collect dust in that old milk box container storage unit called bookshelf number one.

NIGHT NIGHT!!

Let me start by saying that I didn't pick this book up 'cause I'm a huge Chuck P fan. I liked the film of his book Fight Club, but the only novel of his I've read is Choke, and I found it to be muddled and rather weak. However, I did live in Portland for four years in the early '90s, when I was going to college there, so this seemed like a cool book to check out. Palahniuk's vibe is clearly aimed at the 15-50 quirkster/hipster demographic, and he hits on all cylinders with his portrait of the city nicknamed "Little Beirut" by Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Elder.

The book is broken up into twelve chapters. "Talk the Talk" presents the key bits of PDX slang you'll need to sound like a local (most of which were unknown to me). "Quests" lists fourteen different "adventures" or things to do in and around the city. Samples include visiting the famous self-cleaning house, or spending an afternoon in eviction court. "Chow" is on food, of course, and is probably the most disappointing chapter. "Haunts" lists sixteen places to commune with ghosts and spirits in places like haunted hotels and bathrooms. "Souvenirs" is a throwaway two-page chapter listing five offbeat places to buy stuff. "Unholy Relics" is a list of nine offbeat museums, like the Vacuum Cleaner Museum.

"Getting Off" is the longest chapter, and as one might guess, it's all about the city's sex scene, from strip bars to swinger clubs. Notable is the annual "I-Tit-A-Rod" race, in which the goal is to visit as many strip clubs in twelve hours as possible (no one has come close to making all fifty). A more genteel chapter follows this, highlighting the city's more interesting gardens and parks. "Getting Around" is a relatively tame hodgepodge of transportation related sights, including a decommissioned nuclear submarine. "Animal Acts" is almost entirely about the Portland Zoo, with small sections about the feral cats of Portland Stadium, and a few pug-related items. "The Shanghai Tunnels" is about Portland's legendary tunnel system and the
variety of tours one can take through them.

Palahniuk moved to Portland after graduating high school in 1981, and separating each chapter are "postcards" of his time in the city. These are brief stories and escapades that chart a chronological course of his becoming more and more involved in Portland. Particularly hilarious are his tales of the annual "Santa Rampage" (imagine several hundred Santas battling riot police), and an end of the millennium party at the old Baghdad Theater. As a whole, the book is not one likely to be endorsed by the Portland Visitors Bureau, which is kind of the whole point of it. Like any city, Portland's civic leaders would like to present a shiny, happy facade of bland progress. Fortunately, we now have Palahniuk's valuable unsugarcoated portrait, one which only someone who truly loves the city could have penned.

This isn't a novel, it's something of a travel guide, just in case anyone was still uncertain about this aspect. This is almost like William Burroughs' "Junky" being a guide to New York City in the 1940s, except it's not in a novel format. It's not your traditional Fodor's Guide to Nonsensical Travel, this is a pretty loose, irreverent, and different take on the city Palahniuk calls home, Portland, Oregon. This is almost like William Burroughs' "Junky" being a guide to New York City in the 1940s, except it's not in a novel format.

I like this book because it introduces you to a side of Portland that is not often seen or written about in mainstream and tells the reader about the oddball characters, bizarre happenings and goings on, and provides a guide to some irreverent, half-assed, and often fascinating landmarks that you wouldn't find elsewhere, including many places special to Palahniuk himself.

That said, Palahniuk is flat-out misrepresenting his city. I've been to Portland frequently, and while it is an interesting place, Palahniuk really hams up his prose and descriptions here to the point of being disingenuous. Palahniuk manages to make Portland out to be as addictively seedy as a 1980s-era Times Square, as full of creative miscreants as pre-tech boom San Francisco, and as gloriously full of bohemian life as 1920s Paris. This is simply not the case, Portland exists on a much smaller scale, as I'm certain its residents would attest to. It is somewhat disappointing to see Palahniuk shill so badly for his city as to distort matters this far... reading this one would think you're going to run into a mad drunken artist every moment.

I also have to question the wisdom of Palahniuk writing this novel. Since it has been published, Palahniuk has publicly bemoaned that some of what he has written about has disappeared, or even been changed by the attention he's brought. It seems rather blind of him not to have anticipated this... as it's been throughout time with humanity, like in Alex Garland's fine novel "The Beach," when you bring relatively unknown things to wider audience, often they are ruined or changed for the worse.

If my feelings about this book seem mixed, I can assure you - they are.

A transgressive travelogue is a seductive, although hardly original, idea. (This will not escape anyone who has seen an episode of the "reality" television program, "Wild Chicago.")
A "guide" that would document the underworld of a city, all of its forbidden zones, its sleaziest grottoes---how fascinating! FUGITIVES AND REFUGEES, unfortunately, is nothing of the sort. It is, rather, a lifeless catalogue of a few tacky tourist attractions, none of which are particularly transgressive or subterranean.

In the most blaise manner imaginable, the book mentions some of Portland, Oregon's oddities: world's largest hairball, a strip club run, a "strip bingo" tournament (it's not as interesting as it sounds). All of this is written in a prose that is both dead and deadening.

The author describes himself as a "novelist." Any genuine "novelist," however, knows that his/her task is to bring an imaginary world to life, to make chimeras breathe and talk. FUGITIVES AND REFUGEES is not vivid. It is not descriptive. It is not even detailed.

We (readers) get the impression that the author has never even visited most of the places that he mentions. Otherwise, he merely lacks descriptive power. If that's the case, then he's not a real writer.

The entire book has a "grocery shopping list" feel and look.

The author seems to feel that his life is, a priori, interesting to his readers. But his anecdotes ("postcards") are hardly captivating. He seems to feel that a writer is a writer even before s/he has written. But the work gives birth to the writer, not the other way around.

The title, by the way, was taken from GEEK LOVE---a real book written by a real writer.

A transgressive travelogue is a seductive, although hardly original, idea. (This will not escape anyone who has seen an episode of the "reality" television program, "Wild Chicago.")
A "guide" that would document the underworld of a city, all of its forbidden zones, its sleaziest grottoes---how fascinating!

FUGITIVES AND REFUGEES is nothing of the sort. It is, rather, a lifeless catalogue of a few tacky tourist attractions, none of which are particularly transgressive or subterranean.

In the most blaise manner imaginable, the book mentions some of Portland, Oregon's oddities: world's largest hairball, a strip club run, a "strip bingo" tournament (it's not as interesting as it sounds). All of this is written in prose that is both dead and deadening.

The author describes himself as a "novelist." Any genuine "novelist," however, knows that his/her task is to bring an imaginary world to life, to make chimeras breathe and talk. FUGITIVES AND REFUGEES is not vivid. It is not descriptive. It is not even detailed.

We (readers) get the impression that the author has never even visited most of the places that he mentions. Otherwise, he merely lacks descriptive power. If that's the case, then he's not a real writer.

The entire book has a "grocery shopping list" feel and look.

The author seems to feel that his life is, a priori, interesting to his readers. But his anecdotes ("postcards") are hardly captivating. He seems to feel that a writer is a writer even before s/he has written. But the work gives birth to the writer, not the other way around.

The title, by the way, was taken from GEEK LOVE---a real book written by a real writer.

Regardless of your sanity, Fugitives and Refugees is a snapshot of Portland life, life gone insane, and for good reason. Portland has a distinct history, chock full of pirates, prostitutes, and other ne'er-do-wells, setting it apart from most of mainline America. It's a cheap place to live, according to Chuck, and hordes of Artists and other extremists have given themselves over to the charms of Portland's insanity. "This gives us the most cracked of the crackpots. The misfits among misfits." And Chuck Palahniuk calls it home. His crowned jewel of western America. His muse and creative energy. A place where everyone lives three lives, with no regrets or inhibitions. I am sane, by comparison to these folks. And its good to know there are crazier places than California. This is a totally cool book! Other recent books I recommend, full of misfits and fun: The Fan Man by Kotzwinkle, The Losers' Club by Richard Perez