He has already done so with his latest novel, Adjustment Day, a satirical fantasy in which, threatened with a new war draft, American society is overturned via an armed insurrection. Photograph: Allstar/20-CENTURY FOX/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar In Fight Club, and in his latest novel Adjustment Day, Palahniuk’s men find brotherhood in violence.

If you’re moving from success to success, you don’t have that daydreaming period that will allow you to come up with something new and unique.”

“This is going to sound so asinine and name-dropping, but when we were making Fight Club, Brad Pitt had made some movies he wasn’t particularly happy with – one was Meet Joe Black – and he said every movie is the antidote to the one you just made that the real blessing of failure is that it is the only thing that gives you the isolation and time to reinvent yourself. And there’s the awareness that I’m the person who got me to this place, and I’m still that person, so I can still turn it all back around, and come up with something really strong and vibrant and interesting.” There are larger issues in life – the embezzlement is dwarfed by my father-in-law’s death. “Writing was initially my way of saving money, because if you’re writing, you’re not spending. What does it feel like, suddenly being so financially precarious? There’s a long, silent look down. Very little of what I do is invention – most of what I do is journalism Depending on the terms of his next book deal, and on how much money is recovered in a settlement, Palahniuk may have to sell his house to stay afloat. “Money seems to have been taken over such a long period that they haven’t even established yet how much was taken, and from what accounts.” Palahniuk says the accountant, Darin Webb, would lie, telling him that the publisher hadn’t made the cash available, or that he was preoccupied with caring for his mother who has Alzheimer’s. “It’s looking like my payment for at least my last two – perhaps four – books has been taken, and so that leaves me with no reserves to write the next book,” he says. But sitting in the lofty space where he teaches writing in Portland, he is gentle and thoughtful, choosing his words carefully.

I’d idly assumed that the author of Fight Club, Choke and other vivid studies of all kinds of American violence would be an expansive raconteur, maybe even a bit boorish and alpha. “It’s been a spring to remember,” he murmurs. And to top off Chuck Palahniuk’s 2018 so far, there was the death of Anthony Bourdain – fondly remembered by Palahniuk for a TV show they made together in 2007, doing a gastronomic tour of the novelist’s hometown, Portland, Oregon. Then came the suspicion that his income for the last few years had been embezzled by an accountant at his literary agency.

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