[media-credit name=’DEREK MONTGOMERY/Herald Photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Chuck Palahniuk, author of the novel “Fight Club” that spawned the movie of the same name, read two gut-wrenching stories to a packed house at Wisconsin Union Theater Monday night.

Palahniuk visited the University of Wisconsin auditorium as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series while promoting his book “The Haunted,” due out in May of this year. As the author stood alone on stage, he told hundreds of students and fans that his rise to success has a trick-twist ending “no audience would buy.”

“I can’t get past the fact that I’m standing here right now,” the author said in his soft voice.

Palahniuk ended his lecture on a similar note, adding when he first toured for “Fight Club,” he “never had more than four people at an event.”

In fact, the man who wrote bestsellers “Choke” and “Lullaby” has already made achieved presence on the UW campus. UW English professor Rebecca Walkowitz said she shows the movie “Fight Club” in her Introduction to Modern Literature since 1900 course.

“It’s a great example of an unbelievable narrator,” Walkowitz said of the film and book’s main character, who goes nameless throughout the story. “It draws people in and many students have seen it already.”

Walkowitz added she has also known her colleagues to “definitely teach” Palahniuk’s work in their classes.

The first excerpt Palahniuk read for the audience, “Hotpotting,” followed a storyteller’s graphic recollection of people boiling to death in thermal springs in a Northwest lodge town.

Indeed, Palahniuk’s storyteller character reflects the author as the audience remained silent during the majority of the story, laughing when he told a humorous passage and audibly squirming as he described a boiled boy’s skin that hissed and looked like fritters in the hot water.

As he wrapped up the story, he looked out to the crowd, asking, “We lost a lot of people on that, didn’t we?”

“Sorry about that, kind of,” he added.

As with most of the author’s reading events, people left in the middle of a story, either from shock or disgust. Palahniuk has made attendees faint or throw up at past events due to the explicit content he reads.

As Palahniuk began to introduce his next piece, “Exodus,” several people immediately stood up and walked out.

The “sex story that Playboy wouldn’t buy” included a passage revealing that a CPR practice dummy used to train police officers, “Breather Betty,” had sperm from 12 to 15 men in its mouth cavity.

The author’s daylong stop in Madison, where he discussed writing with UW students at Helen C. White Hall and a DLS-sponsored dinner, ended in a question-and-answer session.

The author politely answered students’ questions and gave them a three-foot plastic daisy after he answered their queries — ranging from his favorite novel [“The Great Gatsby”] to his favorite hate mail [the first one he ever received].

Ben Spike, a UW sophomore who recently started “getting into Palahniuk,” said he enjoyed the lecture and believed the writer resonates with a college crowd because of his “rejection of pop culture.”

“You come to college and try to find yourself … and students can identify with him because of the uncertainty in [Palahniuk’s] stories,” Spike said, adding people starting college need to live in the present — a theme echoed in his books.