After reading the accompanying essay, I suppose what's most horrifying about "Guts" isn't that its based on true stories, or that it makes people faint but that it takes something this graphic to induce physical trauma in contemporary audiences when Oliver Twist and Ciderhouse Rules caused the same reaction a few decades ago. What is about today that makes audiences more jaded and less susceptible to "light" horror?
"Guts" is next level graphic. As Palahniuk pointed out in his essay it was usually the "corn and peanuts" detail that pushed people over the edge. Maybe its the intricacy that causes the discomfort. When I think of other contemporary stories that are gratuitously gory I consider Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and that skinning scene in Murikami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. In both books the big horror scenes are about skinning; a totally irregular act that very few people encounter in this day and age. Masturbation on the other hand is one of those societal taboos that everyone has (at least) dealt with.
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