1st Edition

Reading Chuck Palahniuk American Monsters and Literary Mayhem

Edited By Cynthia Kuhn, Lance Rubin Copyright 2009
    246 Pages
    by Routledge

    246 Pages
    by Routledge

    Reading Chuck Palahniuk examines how the author pushes through a variety of boundaries to shape fiction and to question American identity in powerful and important ways. Palahniuk's innovative stylistic accomplishments and notoriously disturbing subject matters invite close analysis, and the new essays in this collection offer fascinating insights about Palahniuk's texts, contexts, contributions, and controversies. Addressing novels from Fight Club through Snuff, as well as his nonfiction, this volume will be valuable to anyone with a serious interest in contemporary literature.

    I. Structures, Genres, and Modes  1. Sherry R. Truffin, ‘This is what passes for free will’: Chuck Palahniuk’s Postmodern Gothic  2. Christina Angel, ‘This Theatre of Mass Destruction’: Medieval Morality and Jacobean Convention in the Work of Chuck Palahniuk  3. Joshua Parker, ‘Where you’re supposed to be’: Apocalypse and Apostrophe in Chuck Palahniuk  4. Sidney L. Sondergard, Chuck Palahniuk and the Semiotics of Personal Doom: The Novelist as Escap(ing) Artist II. Politics and Philosophies   5. G. Christopher Williams, Nihilism and Buddhism in a Blender: The Religion of Chuck Palahniuk  6. Peter Mathews, The Politics of Voice in Palahniuk’s Lullaby  7. Alex E. Blazer, The Martyrdom of Saint Me?: Choke and the Problem of Postmodern Narcissistic Nihilism  8. Emma Howard, ‘Deliver me, Tyler’: Post-secular Belief Systems in Fight Club and Survivor  III. Monsters and Mayhem  9. Andrew Slade, On Mutilation: Chuck Palahniuk’s Sublime Bodies  10. Cynthia Kuhn, I Am Marla’s Gothic Wound: Fight Club and the Femme Fatale  11. Andrew Ng, Destruction and the Discourse of Deformity: Invisible Monsters and the Ethics of Monstrosity  12. Steffen Hantke, Blood on the Bookstore Floor: Chuck Palahniuk and the Case of the Fainting Reader  IV. Cults and Cultures 13. Jesse Kavadlo, With Us or Against Us:  Chuck Palahniuk’s 9/11  14. David Simmons and Nicola Allen, ‘Biting the hand that feeds you’: Reading Survivor, Lullaby, and Haunted as Critique of ‘The Culture Industry’ 15. Lance Rubin, "Palahniuk, Punk, and the Politics of Boredom 16. Devin Harner, Extra-Textual Chuck: Fan Mail, Beaded Necklaces, MySpace, and Experiments in Creative Nonfiction

    Biography

    Cynthia Kuhn is Associate Professor of English at Metropolitan State College. Lance Rubin is Associate Professor and Humanities Chair at Arapahoe Community College.