It's very cool to have you here on the show.
I know you don't do these kinda things a lot,
so thank you for being here.
[Audience Member] I love you, Seth.
Thank you sir.
If you couldn't hear what he said,
he just said, "I love you Conan".
(audience laughs)
Sound of the audience.
Writers never get to do this
Yeah.
First of all, there's so much to talk about but your...
God!
(audience laughs)
Got to regain control of this show,
but how?
How?
(chuckle) (audience laughs)
Your books are known for sort of their dark substance.
They're very original,
but they have a sort of a dark quality to say the least.
When you give readings,
people have been known to pass out.
Some people even throw up during the readings
when you do it.
And that's not... I'm not even kidding about that.
That's true. Is that not correct?
36 People this year on tour
and eight of those people were in Italy
and hearing it in Italian, which was great.
It was the best compliment of all time.
Well, what are you telling?
You're reading from a story
or you're reading from a selection of your work
and it's so disturbing to them
that what do they do?
They just keel over?
Oh, they pee their pants sometimes.
They stand in line to get a book signed
for two or three hours with their pants wet.
I do not want to be standing next to that person.
Right.
And then I have to shake their hand.
Right.
They laugh, they pass out.
Two people have gone to the hospital.
It's just amazing.
(audience laughs)
Now your publisher actually got upset with you
at one point, because I would think
getting that kind of,
I mean you're getting such a strong reaction,
it means you're doing something right obviously,
but your publisher was not happy
when in one of these signings
people started to fall over, pass out,
need oxygen during the signing.
They actually got upset. Is that right?
It was a young man at Columbia university,
in the Roone Arledge concert hall.
It was enormous.
It was like 2000 students. This man falls backwards,
falls forwards,
falls on the floor, vomits,
starts to aspirate his vomit,
starts to bark like a dog while he's passed out.
At that point,
the publishing people come to the foot of the stage
and they say, 'ah Chuck, over here'.
They say, "Do not read another word of this story.
Go right to Q&A,
you've done enough damage."
I have to go back to the podium
while the paramedics are taking
this poor barking, choking man out.
And I have to say, who wants to hear the rest of the story?
And it's 2000 hands,
everyone except for the random house people.
And so I finished the story.
And it went fine.
By the way, just me interviewing you
has caused Molly Sims to just start...
just this interview.... What is your problem?
Are you okay?
I'm so sorry.
I mean he hasn't said anything shocking at all
and you're just.
No. I took a drink. And he was like,
by the way I have mono and...
(audience laughs)
I got choked
Wait.
And I'm so sorry.
You have mono?
No. It was a joke gone awry.
I double drank and started choking.
Can I drink now?
Yeah and I'm so sorry.
I got mono from her and Quentin Tarantino.
I am sorry, I was just choking.
[Chuck] You want mono?
You know, I thought it was so cool to have you on.
We're going to find out all these amazing things
and then look, what's happened.
If I hadn't killed all that time upfront.
Think of all the time we'd have now.
I apologize.
It's that joke I did about McCartney.
(audience laughs)
He refers to his four teeth as the Fab Four.
Now. It's winning them over now.
Now what kind of stuff specifically are you reading
that's causing people to get so upset?
Like what were you reading in that instance?
It's a funny story
about three ways that masturbation can go wrong.
And the first one is very funny.
I know two.
(audience laughs)
I'm curious about the third.
It can kill you.
It can kill you?
It almost killed somebody
I met in a sex addict support group
while I was researching a book.
And so these are the three true stories
that I heard from sex addicts.
And so these are true stories about how masturbation
can cause great harm.
And they were so disturbing that..
They're hilarious stories.
They're fantastic stories.
Undoubtedly
(everyone laughs)
Is that in the latest book?
It'll be in Playboy magazine next year.
Good. Okay. Could save my life.
Now, Fight Club is probably your best known work.
And it's delicate cause and effect,
but because fight club was so popular
and really the central idea was people getting together
and just fighting each other
as a way of, getting closer to something real.
That popularized
fight clubs across America. Is that true?
Oh yeah.
Brigham Young university had as many as
7,000 Mormons beating on each other.
Isn't that great.
Yeah, they won't drink coffee,
but, "let some coffee, I can't have it.
Now let's strip to the waist
and beat the crap out of each other."
The governor's son got arrested for running a fight club
in a temple of Mormon, a Mormon temple,
Right.
In Provo, Utah.
Right.
So that's a great compliment too.
Right.
(audience laughs)
So you've caused vomiting,
you've almost killed Molly Sims here
and now you've got Mormons beating each other in the temple.
It's great.
The book Diary is in bookstores now
and I hope you'll come back sometime,
cause there's a lot more to talk about.
And is that possible? You think you'd ever come back?
Yeah. Next year, ask me back.
I'd love to, please.
(audience laughs)
I think we got our own fight club right now, pal.
Oh wait that hurt even standing up.
Chuck Palahniuk everybody.
We'll take a break. We'll be right back.