A Knock Out

Sting's album ''Brand New Day'' is in the CD player of Palahniuk's pickup truck. Wearing a Boston terrier T-shirt in honor of his two pups, Imp and Chick (Manson owns Boston terriers too!), he's driving up to Hood River, Wash., to show off an $800,000 castle he's interested in buying. Depending on whether the movie rights to Diary sell, Palahniuk hopes to purchase the castle and turn it into a writers' colony. ''Boy, I'd like to create a structure for my old age, since I don't have kids,'' he says. ''And also to provide that for other people as well, so that there's a sort of faux family of people devoted to a common passion.'' The fifth floor of the castle is a beautiful open space, with four skylights, that looks down on the White Salmon River. ''Can you imagine a better space for a workshop or a reading?'' he asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet. ''People would pee.... Manson would love this! He would pee!''

''Writing gave me the world,'' Palahniuk explains later, so he wants to extend a hand to other frustrated scribblers. If he hadn't hit it big with ''Fight Club,'' he'd be just another schmuck clocking in at some crappy job. ''I would be a really alcoholic person because that's really big in my family,'' he says. ''Until I started writing, every Friday was about going out for that big act of denial where you drink so much that you forget the fact that you have to go to work on Monday morning.'' Now he wakes up every day at 4 a.m., ready to wrestle with his passion for patterns and words. He listens to the same song on repeat, maybe Radiohead's ''Creep'' or, for ''Diary,'' Depeche Mode's ''Little 15.'' He's happiest when he's onto an idea for a new book, so he's going to keep cranking out one or two a year.

He spends hours each day personally answering reader mail, sometimes including odd packages with Jesus night-lights and cheap rhinestone jewelry. But then people want second and third letters. They want intimate relationships. So at a recent University of Oregon book event, he had to think fast to shut a fan down. ''We're in this huge auditorium, full of people,'' he remembers. ''A kid way up in the top says, 'Sooo, uh, Mr. Palahniuk. Could you tell us something about your private life, maybe your private sexual life?' In front of 1,800 people! And it felt like, Okay, I have to think on my feet, what a great, fun challenge. So, I'm like, I was so proud of this, 'Well, actually, uh, I've chosen not to talk about those aspects of my life, blahblahblah, but what did you have in mind?' It was such a funny turnaround, it got a huge laugh. The kid was mortified.''

Turnarounds are a gas, especially when you get your pals in on it. ''When reporters call my friends, my friends start lying: 'Ah, yeah. He lives in a castle! He's a heroin addict!' And so they tell these contradictory stories, so it's fun for them.'' When the press makes references to Palahniuk's wife, everyone has a big giggle. ''My lovely wife!'' he smiles. In fact, Palahniuk has no wife, and declines to discuss his personal life on the record, preferring to keep his fans guessing (which they're not shy about doing). ''I just don't want the spotlight pulled away from my work,'' he says.