Throngs of eager college students lined up in front of the Wordsworth Bookstore Friday night in hopes of catching a glimpse of Chuck Palahniuk, the unlikely celebrity author of "Fight Club." The Portland, Ore. writer has been shoved into the limelight following the success of the 1998 movie of the same name. Palahniuk, once a blue-collar truck worker, has become a prolific writer, churning out four works - "Invisible Monster," "Survivor," "Choke," and his latest, "Lullaby" - in recent years. As his fan base has increased, so has the lore surrounding the nihilistic writer. It is difficult to mention his work without pointing out some of well-publicized personal demons surrounding Palahniuk. When he was a child, Palahniuk's grandfather murdered his grandmother. Adding to the drama was the recent brutal murder of his father and his father's girlfriend by her maniacal ex-husband.

The evening's program began with Palahniuk's reading of selections from his new novel, "Lullaby," followed by a viewing of the now ubiquitous "Fight Club" at the nearby Brattle Theater, where a packed house was waiting for him to speak and watch the movie starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt.

Dressed in a thermal top and army pants, the author looked not unlike one of his most famous creations, Tyler Durden. His attitude, as well as his attire, was quite in line with the aura surrounding his famed character. After being introduced to the audience at the Brattle, Palahniuk entered holding a balloon animal saying he'd tolerate a question and answer session only as long as the balloon animal, which he then threw into the audience, didn't hit the ground. He continued as the balloon floated throughout the theater, answering questions concerning the nature of Brad Pitt, the dorkiness of Ed Norton, sex beads, the creative process, and how he feels about the commercial success of "Fight Club." After about twenty minutes of discussion the author said "adios" and left to continue his reading tour of "Lullaby."

Palahniuk's new publicity has also increased the critical eye to the hype surrounding director David Fincher's adaptation of "Fight Club." Some critics dubbed Fincher's adaptation of Palahniuk's material as an "unmotivated hyper-reality," or simply "macho porn." It is hard, viewing the film once again, not to agree. The movie is more caught up in the style of Brad Pitt's second-hand jacket than it is in the reason he spits blood all over a mob boss's face.

Fincher's film is marked by a misplaced sense of shock and visceral delivery - an attempt at portraying the insane logic of a troubled writer. The blatant and copious misuse of film techniques for the sake of entertainment further lessens the sting of Palahniuk's ideas. This transparency is especially apparent when witnessing the abundant college attitudes, which occupied both the screening and the talk, degrading the relevancy of such a work to a pastiche.

Experiencing "Fight Club" in this light, the movie becomes, as Robert Ebert so famously put it, ". a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy - the kind of ride where some people puke and others can't wait to get on again." Perhaps, like Edward Norton in the movie, we've met Palahniuk at a very strange time in his life and the better is yet to come in the preferred form of the novel.