The Disturbing Victims of Chuck Palahniuk
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Disturbing Victims of Chuck Palahniuk Anders Westlie Master thesis at ILOS UNIVERSITETET I OSLO 16.11.2012 II The Disturbing Victims of Chuck Palahniuk III © Anders Westlie 2012 The Disturbing Victims of Chuck Palahniuk Anders Westlie http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: CopyCat Express, Oslo IV Abstract The writings of Chuck Palahniuk contain a large variety of strange and interesting characters. Many of them are victims of the choices they or others made, which is how their lives become interesting. I aim to see if there is any basis in reality for some of the situations and fears that happen. I also mean that Palahniuk thinks people are afraid of the wrong things, and afraid of too many things in general, and will approach this theory in my discussion. V VI Introduction This thesis has been through an abundance of versions and changed shape and content very many times over the years; from being all psychoanalysis to pure close reading, and ended with a study of victims, fears and reactions. In the end, the amount of close reading that has gone into it has bypassed the use of theory. This is mostly a reaction to past criticism to my over-use of critics, and focusing on that rather than the texts at hand. I find my time disposition in the production process of this paper to be shame, but life will sometimes get in the way of good intentions. As such, I hope that you, dear reader, find my efforts not in vain and take some interest in what my efforts have produced. VII I will say thanks To one group of people. Thank you to those who believed in me I only wish You could have made me believe in myself Before it was nearly too late. VIII Table of Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 2 Disease and Insanity ........................................................................................................... 7 2.1 Worse than Worst Case Scenarios ............................................................................... 8 2.2 STD Surprises ............................................................................................................ 11 2.3 Sick but not Showing ................................................................................................. 16 2.4 Cancer ........................................................................................................................ 18 2.5 An Insane Industry..................................................................................................... 20 2.6 Playing with the DSM ............................................................................................... 21 2.7 Enter Tyler Durden .................................................................................................... 23 2.8 Addicted to Sex ......................................................................................................... 24 2.9 Victimization ............................................................................................................. 25 3 Violence and Self-Abuse .................................................................................................. 27 3.1 Something to Fight for ............................................................................................... 27 3.2 Loneliness .................................................................................................................. 29 3.3 Workplace Violence .................................................................................................. 30 3.4 Real Fights ................................................................................................................. 32 3.5 Destroying Beauty ..................................................................................................... 33 3.6 The Ultimate Mistake ................................................................................................ 35 3.7 Who Hurts Who, Tyler? ............................................................................................ 37 3.8 Tender is Confronted ................................................................................................. 38 3.9 Threatening Cults ...................................................................................................... 39 3.10 Scared Asexual ....................................................................................................... 41 3.11 Doomsday Destruction ........................................................................................... 42 3.12 Just Too Perfect ...................................................................................................... 43 3.13 Irreversible Damage ............................................................................................... 44 4 Gender and Sexuality ....................................................................................................... 47 4.1 Nesting ....................................................................................................................... 47 4.2 Bob’s Plight ............................................................................................................... 48 4.3 Emasculation ............................................................................................................. 49 4.4 Split down the Middle by the Libido ......................................................................... 50 4.5 Sex Substitute for Sale ............................................................................................... 51 IX 4.6 Shane’s Journey ......................................................................................................... 52 4.7 The Three Transgenders ............................................................................................ 53 4.8 Abject Anal ................................................................................................................ 54 4.9 Sexualized Teenagers ................................................................................................ 55 4.10 Following the Lead ................................................................................................ 59 4.11 ..And Men? ............................................................................................................. 60 4.12 Amateur Pornography ............................................................................................ 61 5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 64 Sources ..................................................................................................................................... 67 . X 1 Introduction The notion that successful literature is written with the ability to invoke emotional reactions in the reader is neither new nor controversial. Following from this we know that a popular way in which to do this, is to unsettle the reader. On this subject, it is my thesis that Chuck Palahniuk, through his writings, attempts to unsettle his readers in order to show them what they fear, why they are afraid of the wrong things, and how fears, real and fake, create victims that have to decide on what paths to take from there. As such, I aim to show how he does this, what the basis of those fears are in society, and how these fears are often unfounded, perhaps rather redirected from other issues that people would be right to worry about. Chuck Palahniuk is certainly most famous for his debut novel Fight Club, which became a blockbuster movie with a cult following. Beyond this novel, however, he has by now produced quite an extensive body of work, where each novel is more unsettling than the one before – not just to us readers, but to the author himself. "Every time I write something, I think, this is the most offensive thing I will ever write," Palahniuk tells his audience. "But, no, I always surprise myself."1 The offensive parts he talks about are also necessarily those which the readers find unsettling – when you shake the foundation, it is a not a question of which is cause and which is effect, it is the same. When it comes to offensiveness and Palahniuk’s writings, however, he has not always been on the same page as his publishers. As the story goes, Invisible Monsters was his first novel intended for publishing, but was rejected “Because the marketing people found it too disturbing”2, to which his response was obvious; “I wrote Fight Club as big screw you to all these people," he says. "They were all saying: 'Could you write something a little lighter?', so my automatic reaction was to do something much darker." In the beginning, Palahniuk’s chosen genre of writing was transgressive fiction, which he describes as 1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/mar/13/fiction.chuckpalahniuk 2 http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/fighting-talk-how-chuck-palahnuik- became-the-marilyn-manson-of-the-literary-circuit-450867.html 1 …loosely defined as fiction in which characters misbehave and act badly, commit crimes or pranks as a way of either feeling alive or as political acts of civil disobedience. […] They came all the way to September 11, 2001, when irony didn’t die, but transgressional fiction died. Because suddenly any kind of transgressional fiction that was sitting on any desk in New York ready to be published was suddenly pulled off the market. Because any eco-terrorism, political terrorism, societal pranking,