Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon

By Chuck Palahniuk

Want to know where Chuck Palahniuk's tonsils currently reside?

Been looking for a naked mannequin to hide in your kitchen cabinets?

What goes on at the Scum Center?

How do you get to the Apocalypse Cafe?

In the closest thing he may ever write to an autobiography, Chuck Palahniuk provides answers to all these questions and more as he takes you through the streets, sewers, and local haunts of Portland, Oregon. According to Katherine Dunn, author of the cult classic Geek Love, Portland is the home of America's "fugitives and refugees." Get to know these folks, the "most cracked of the crackpots," as Palahniuk calls them, and come along with him on an adventure through the parts of Portland you might not otherwise believe actually exist.

Here are strange personal museums, weird annual events, and ghost stories. Tour the tunnels under downtown Portland. Visit swingers' sex clubs, gay and straight. See Frances Gabe's famous 1940s Self-Cleaning House. Look into strange local customs like the I-Tit-a-Rod Race and the Santa Rampage. Learn how to talk like a local in a quick vocabulary lesson. Get to know, I mean really get to know, the animals at the Portland zoo.

Oh, the list goes on and on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vintage Digital
• Release date: Oct 31, 2010
• ISBN: 9781409058984

Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk nació en el estado de Washington en 1962. Es licenciado en periodismo y ha trabajado en una empresa de fabricación de contenedores, en una cadena de montaje y como mecánico. Escribió su primera novela, El club de la lucha, en tres meses; casi tan rápida fue también su conversión en un bestseller que, además, terminó siendo adaptada al cine. Actualmente es un autor de gran éxito cuyonombre aparece muy a menudo en la lista de los más vendidos en Estados Unidos. Otros títulos del autor son Monstruos invisibles, Asfixia, Nana, Diario. Una novela, Error humano, Fantasmas, Rant. La vida de un asesino, Snuff, Pigmeo, Al desnudo, Condenada y su continuación, Maldita. Todas ellas están publicadas por Literatura Random House y Debolsillo. Vive en la Costa Noroeste de Estados Unidos.

Reviews for Fugitives and Refugees

[sadiebabie · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This was...ok. Its a book about Portland, giving his insider's view of it and it is interspersed with little memoir postcards. The memoir parts of it were good, very entertaining and a little twisted. I enjoyed them. However, they were slightly fleeting. The rest of the book reads way too much like your average tourist guide, no matter the "alternative" view of Portland he gives. It was interesting to read, and funny in places, but I thought he'd have put a little more creative spin on things. It kind of felt like a quickly tossed together thing to feed the flames of Palahnuik fandom. But I still think he's a really good writer.

[drewsof · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5, teetering towards a 4, out of 5. I've read enough interviews with Palahniuk and seen him enough times now to know one refrain of his perfectly: he wants to capture moments. That's his driving force, as a writer: to capture a moment for posterity. Maybe it's a perfect sentence, maybe it's a place he loves, maybe it's a person he knows or an anecdote they told. And that's what he does here, in an unadorned and beautiful way. Yes, this is a travel guide - but it's also a reflection on a time and a place and a man. Portland has changed a whole lot in the 10 years since this book came out and I'll bet it'll change more before I go back again... but it gave us the man who wrote all these wacky books. This was his chance to give a little something back.

More at RB:

[spoonbridge · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

On a recent trip to Portland, Oregon (that eternal rival for Minneapolis’ title of “most bike friendly city”), I found that Fugitives and Refugees, Chuck Palahniuk's autobiographical travel guide to the iconic Pacific Northwest city was an invaluable companion to my visit. Describing the towns various quirks; the Voodoo Doughnuts, Shanghai Tunnels, and Powell’s City of Books (all of which I, tourist that I am, had to experience on my stopover), Palahniuk’s essays present a lot more than a mere travel guide. In spite of being more than a decade old at this point, Palahniuk’s personal tour through a few of the odder denizens and locations in a very odd city paints a vivid and affectionate portrait of the history and background of Portland, both in the grand scheme and in Palahniuk’s personal relationship with the city. Exploring the city’s seedy underbelly of sex shows and hauntings, Palahniuk’s ties his own experiences deeply into the culture of Portland through various “postcards” written from different periods of his life there.

Particularly useful was the glossary and list of slang and pronunciations so the visitor can blend in with the locals. In the years since this book has been written, as indicated the presence of the tv series Portlandia, Portland continued to rise in prominence as a home for America’s “fugitives and refugees” (as Palahniuk attributes to Geek Love and Portland-dweller Katherine Dunn) and as an urban renaissance “city that works. It is interesting to see in Palahniuk’s account the very beginnings of this growth of Portland as a city “young people go to retire,” a place more than just a grungy small Pacific Northwest town filled with weirdos, but as a poster city for such a movement. Portland, I must say, is on my short list of American cities were I ever to leave Minnesota, and Fugitives and Refugees, I feel, presents a thought provoking background.

[yougotamber · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book makes me want to take a trip to Portland. There's enough information here to have a very unique trip! Also the stories told between the guides were very enlightening, especially to a fan of Pahalniuk.

[araridan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

the only book worth reading by Palahniuk...unusual places to visit in Portland, Oregon

[arsmith_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As far as travel books go, this is a pretty interesting one. I was in Portland for a year and still never did and saw all the things in this book. Some insight into Palahniuk’s zaniness.

[snoopingbunny · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A good off-beat "guide" to the great city of Portland, Oregon. An entertaining and, yes, moderately strange memoir from Chuck Palahniuk.