Understanding Chuck Palahniuk

Douglas Keesey

Description

An introduction to the fictions of the Fight Club author, who is both loved and loathed

Ever since his first novel, Fight Club, was made into a cult film by David Fincher, Chuck Palahniuk has been a consistent presence on the New York Times best-seller list. A target of critics but a fan favorite, Palahniuk has been loathed and loved in equal measure for his dark humor, edgy topics, and confrontational writing style. In close readings of Fight Club and the thirteen novels that this controversial author has published since, Douglas Keesey argues that Palahniuk is much more than a "shock jock" engaged in mere sensationalism. His visceral depictions of sex and violence have social, psychological, and religious significance. Keesey takes issue with reviewers who accuse Palahniuk of being an angry nihilist and a misanthrope, showing instead that he is really a romantic at heart and a believer in community.

In this first comprehensive introduction to Palahniuk's fiction, Keesey reveals how this writer's outrageous narratives are actually rooted in his own personal experiences, how his seemingly unprecedented works are part of the American literary tradition of protagonists in search of an identity, and how his negative energy is really social satire directed at specific ills that he diagnoses and wishes to cure. After tracing the influence of his working-class background, his journalistic education, and his training as a "minimalist" writer, Understanding Chuck Palahniuk exposes connections between the writer's novels by grouping them thematically: the struggle for identity (Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, Choke); the horror trilogy (Lullaby, Diary, Haunted); teen terrors (Rant, Pygmy); porn bodies and romantic myths (Snuff, Tell-All, Beautiful You); and a decidedly unorthodox revision of Dante's Divine Comedy (Damned, Doomed).

Drawing on numerous author interviews and written in an engaging and accessible style, Understanding Chuck Palahniuk should appeal to scholars, students, and fans alike.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Modern
• América
• Shoulder to Shoulder
• Delivered
• The Heart of Me
• Flattery
• Right of asylum
• Surrogacy
• Modern history
• Testimonial
• Forgiveness
• General officer
• Snuff film
• Harold and Maude
• 21st Century
• Ray Bradbury
• Inception
• General
• Klute
• American
• Prince Charming
• Jean M. Auel
• Anecdote
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Harold et Maude
• Annabel Chong
• Chuck Palahniuk

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 30 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781611176988
• Langue: English

Extrait

UNDERSTANDING CHUCK PALAHNIUK
UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE
Matthew J. Bruccoli, Founding Editor
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
Volumes on
Edward Albee | Sherman Alexie | Nelson Algren | Paul Auster Nicholson Baker | John Barth | Donald Barthelme | The Beats Thomas Berger | The Black Mountain Poets | Robert Bly | T. C. Boyle Truman Capote | Raymond Carver | Michael Chabon | Fred Chappell Chicano Literature | Contemporary American Drama Contemporary American Horror Fiction Contemporary American Literary Theory Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1926-1970 Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1970-2000 Contemporary Chicana Literature | Pat Conroy | Robert Coover | Don DeLillo Philip K. Dick | James Dickey | E. L. Doctorow | Rita Dove | Dave Eggers Louise Erdrich | John Gardner | George Garrett | Tim Gautreaux | William Gibson John Hawkes | Joseph Heller | Lillian Hellman | Beth Henley | James Leo Herlihy David Henry Hwang | John Irving | Randall Jarrell | Gish Jen | Charles Johnson Diane Johnson | Edward P. Jones | Adrienne Kennedy | William Kennedy | Jack Kerouac Jamaica Kincaid | Etheridge Knight | Tony Kushner | Ursula K. Le Guin Jonathan Lethem | Denise Levertov | Bernard Malamud | David Mamet Bobbie Ann Mason | Colum McCann | Cormac McCarthy | Jill McCorkle Carson McCullers | W. S. Merwin | Arthur Miller | Stephen Millhauser | Lorrie Moore Toni Morrison s Fiction | Vladimir Nabokov | Gloria Naylor | Joyce Carol Oates Tim O Brien | Flannery O Connor | Cynthia Ozick | Suzan-Lori Parks | Walker Percy Katherine Anne Porter | Richard Powers | Reynolds Price | Annie Proulx Thomas Pynchon | Ron Rash | Adrienne Rich | Theodore Roethke | Philip Roth Richard Russo | May Sarton | Hubert Selby, Jr. | Mary Lee Settle | Sam Shepard Neil Simon | Isaac Bashevis Singer | Jane Smiley | Gary Snyder | William Stafford Robert Stone | Anne Tyler | Gerald Vizenor | Kurt Vonnegut David Foster Wallace | Robert Penn Warren | James Welch | Eudora Welty Edmund White | Colson Whitehead | Tennessee Williams August Wilson | Charles Wright
UNDERSTANDING
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Douglas Keesey

The University of South Carolina Press
2016 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN 978-1-61117-697-1 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-61117-698-8 (ebook)
Front cover photograph by Ulf Andersen
http://ulfandersen.photoshelter.com
For my wife and partner
All of this is really about Helen Bailey
CONTENTS
Series Editor s Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Understanding Chuck Palahniuk
Chapter 2 The Struggle for Identity: Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, Choke
Chapter 3 The Horror Trilogy: Lullaby, Diary, Haunted
Chapter 4 Teen Terrors: Rant, Pygmy
Chapter 5 Porn Bodies and Romantic Myths: Snuff, Tell-All, Beautiful You
Chapter 6 Palahniuk s Divine Comedy: Damned, Doomed
Notes
Bibliography
Index
SERIES EDITOR S PREFACE
The Understanding Contemporary American Literature series was founded by the estimable Matthew J. Bruccoli (1931-2008), who envisioned these volumes as guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers, a legacy that will continue as new volumes are developed to fill in gaps among the nearly one hundred series volumes published to date and to embrace a host of new writers only now making their marks on our literature.
As Professor Bruccoli explained in his preface to the volumes he edited, because much influential contemporary literature makes special demands, the word understanding in the titles was chosen deliberately. Many willing readers lack an adequate understanding of how contemporary literature works; that is, of what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed. Aimed at fostering this understanding of good literature and good writers, the criticism and analysis in the series provide instruction in how to read certain contemporary writers-explicating their material, language, structures, themes, and perspectives-and facilitate a more profitable experience of the works under discussion.
In the twenty-first century Professor Bruccoli s prescience gives us an avenue to publish expert critiques of significant contemporary American writing. The series continues to map the literary landscape and to provide both instruction and enjoyment. Future volumes will seek to introduce new voices alongside canonized favorites, to chronicle the changing literature of our times, and to remain, as Professor Bruccoli conceived, contemporary in the best sense of the word.
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would never have been completed without the vital support of certain key individuals, and it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to acknowledge their contributions. First, I wish to express my gratitude to Linda Wagner-Martin. Her initial enthusiasm for this book inspired me, and her continued belief in it was sustaining. I am also grateful to Jim Denton and Linda Fogle at the University of South Carolina Press for their faith in this work and for their expert advice along the way.
At Cal Poly, English Department Chair Kathryn Rummell and Dean of Liberal Arts Douglas Epperson were kind enough to grant me some time off from teaching so that I could complete this book. Department staff Susan Bratcher, Dee Lopez, and Cassandra Sherburne helped me in numerous ways practically every day, and I want to express my sincere appreciation for everything they have done and continue to do. Cal Poly s librarians-Sharon Andresen (Reserves), Brett Bodemer (Liberal Arts), Judy Drake (Circulation), Jan Kline and Karen Beaton (Acquisitions), Karen Lauritsen (Communications), Heather Lucio (Current Periodicals), and Michael Price (Information Technology)-never seemed to tire of giving me research aid, checking out books and journals to me, tracking down mounds of materials through interlibrary loan, and providing whatever other kinds of help I needed. They are wonderful.
Anyone doing scholarly work on Palahniuk owes an immense debt to Dennis Widmyer, whose website The Cult ( chuckpalahniuk.net ) has, ever since 1999, been the main source for all the latest information regarding this author. Thank you, Dennis, for the extraordinary service you have provided. Francisco Collado-Rodr guez, Cynthia Kuhn, Lance Rubin, Jeffrey A. Sartain, and Read Mercer Schuchardt also deserve credit for having edited the first scholarly books devoted to Palahniuk. I have learned a great deal from their essay collections.
My sister, Kathryn O Brien, is an avid Palahniuk fan. Her enthusiasm has helped to motivate me in the writing of this book. My parents, Phyllis and Donald Keesey, gave me needed encouragement at just the right time. For this, as for so much else, I am profoundly grateful to them. And my wife, Helen Bailey, whose passionate support of me has been unwavering, can never be sufficiently acknowledged. What Palahniuk recently said about him and his longtime partner in an interview with Kevin Perry is true of me and mine as well: I m just glad that my partner is really good at letting me be obsessed with what I m obsessed about. I m really blessed.
CHAPTER 1
Understanding Chuck Palahniuk
Charles Michael Palahniuk was born in the small desert town of Pasco, Washington, on February 21, 1962. In Invisible Monsters , Palahniuk writes that the future ended in 1962 at the Seattle World s Fair. 1 This event saw the construction of the Monorail and the Space Needle, bold projections of a future that never came to pass, but that instead gave way in subsequent years to a world fixated on pollution, disease, war and hardship, according to Palahniuk. He used 1962 to suggest that tipping point in people s lives, when they become disillusioned with their dreams. 2 Only an author attuned to the dark side of things would trace the end of the future back to the year of his birth.
As the second of four children, Palahniuk grew up with his siblings in a mobile home when the family relocated to the nearby town of Burbank, Washington. As he put it, My own background runs to trailer houses situated on gravel roads accessed by dented pick-up trucks. 3 He described their trailer as sandwiched between a state prison and a nuclear reactor. 4 His father worked as a railroad brakeman, and Palahniuk recalls his dad taking him and the other kids to derailed train cars in order to scavenge for food among the wreckage. Other childhood memories include playing hide-and-seek in fogs of pesticide sprayed on crops, handling paper bills from a floor safe contaminated by waste water from overflowing toilets, and eating meals while wondering whether nuclear radiation had polluted the food chain.
During his first three years at school, Palahniuk thought it strange that classroom clocks were hung so high on the wall that you could not read the time. It was only when he was finally able to get his first pair of glasses that the world came into clearer focus. Perhaps this also accounts for why he did not learn to read or write until age eight or nine. I was filled with terror that I was going to be left behind the other kids, he said, 5 but after finally having some success, I was so relieved and filled with joy that I decided I d make my life s career out of this hard-won skill. 6 Still, he recalls the heartbreaking moment when he heard that everyone in school, including kids he thought were his friends, had been spreading the rumor that he was retarded. 7
When he was eleven or twelve, teach