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Department of English and American Studies Writing of Chuck Palahniuk Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Michal Minárik Writing of Chuck Palahniuk – development and popular aspects Master‘s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D. 2011 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author‘s signature 2 Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor, Stephen Hardy, PhD., for his guidance and patience. 3 Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................ 5 1. Basic information .................................................................................. 7 1.1 Chuck Palahniuk – a person .............................................................. 7 1.2 Palahniuk‘s writing career ............................................................... 11 1.3 Popular culture studies ................................................................... 14 1.4 John Fiske – Understanding Popular Culture (1989) .......................... 20 1.5 Relevance ...................................................................................... 22 1.6 Pleasures ....................................................................................... 23 1.6.1 Evasive pleasures ..................................................................... 24 1.6.2 Pleasures of the body ............................................................... 26 1.6.3 Productive pleasures ................................................................ 28 2. Writing style ....................................................................................... 31 2.1 Literary tradition ............................................................................ 31 2.2 Palahniuk‘s writing style .................................................................. 34 3. Fight Club (1996) ................................................................................ 48 3.1.1 Productive pleasures in Fight Club ............................................. 60 4. Development of Palahniuk‘s writing....................................................... 65 4.1 Middle period ................................................................................. 65 4.1.1 Lullaby (2002) ......................................................................... 65 4.1.2 Rant (2007) ............................................................................. 70 4.2 Third period – Tell-All (2010) .......................................................... 76 5. Conclusion .......................................................................................... 83 Works cited .............................................................................................. 89 4 Introduction ―The guy who wrote Fight Club‖. Sixteen years after publishing his first novel, thirteen books later, this is still the most common way people refer to Chuck Palahniuk. This is not because he would not write another successful novel (in fact, every one of his works has been sold in millions of copies and translated into dozens of languages) – this is because Fight Club has become a part of an imaginary canon of modern culture: David Fincher‘s adaptation of Palahniuk‘s first novel not only arose controversy, but it gradually became immensely popular with a young audience and seems to maintain this status even today. It remains one of the most quoted movies on the Internet, as it is perpetually re-created and cited in various ways. The story and its characters have become popular in the ways not many movies did1 and the way its fans treat the story is commonly referred to as cult following. A great portion of the popularity was understandably transferred also to the author of the original novel himself and his other novels, which lead to creation of similar cult following around his persona.2 Nowadays, Palahniuk has millions of devoted fans and a rock star status. Palahniuk‘s books are commonly read also by people who do not usually read books. Attracting such a wide body of readers, he has become a controversial figure as various kinds of readers constantly argue about true 1 Online stores are full of products with Fight Club motifs, Internet users present quotes from the movie as their mottos; whole websites are dedicated to amateur artworks inspired by Fight Club. To be discussed further in thesis. 2 Even his official fan-created website itself is titled ―The Cult: The Official Chuck Palahniuk Website.‖ 5 nature of his writing – ―for some, his work represents mere shock literature, deviant and aggressive with adolescent sensibility. For others, Palahniuk‘s fiction speaks great truths about the nature of their lives, and for still others, he‘s merely a ripping good read― (Sartain xvii). Since the cultural revolution western society has gone through during past several decades effectively blurred the historical dividing line between high and low culture, it is no longer possible to assess the literary and artistic value of the form and content of his writing, but using the scales applicable today one cannot deny the true nature of literary activity - it is popular. This diploma thesis has two objectives: First, to analyse Palahniuk‘s first novel, Fight Club, using the characteristics of popular culture as described by John Fiske in order to determine potential reasons why the novel has achieved the high level of popularity among readers, which lead to establishing Palahniuk‘s unique position within the literary scene of today. The second objective is to follow the development of Palahniuk‘s writing and compare some of the aspects of novels from his later writing periods with the first novel in order to clarify how his works changed throughout the years. The first chapter will provide basic information about Chuck Palahniuk and his writing career, followed by a brief history of popular culture studies and a subchapter focusing on John Fiske‘s book Understanding Popular Culture, which will function as a theoretical basis for analysis of Fight Club. The second chapter will focus on Palahniuk‘s writing style and techniques he uses to increase the readability of his works. The third chapter will focus solely on the 6 novel Fight Club and the analysis of its popular aspects as defined by John Fiske, while the fourth chapter will analyse the development of Palahniuk‘s writing, using the novels Lullaby, Rant and Tell-All as examples. In order to be able to follow the development of Palahniuk‘s career from the author‘s point of view, primarily his own words from numerous interviews and public appearances will be used as a basis for the analysis in this thesis. Moreover, since this thesis is primarily focused on the reasons for the success of his writings, the analysis will concentrate more on the technical and external aspects of his novels than on their exact ideological content. 1. Basic information 1.1 Chuck Palahniuk – a person This chapter should serve as an introduction to Chuck Palahniuk as a person in order to provide basic information about his life before he became a successful author, since his experiences had a defining influence on the nature of his writing (as will be demonstrated further in the thesis). Charles Michael Palahniuk was born on February 21, 1962 in Pasco, Washington into an economically underprivileged family. He spent his early childhood living out of a mobile home in Burbank, Washington and later, after his parents divorced, he and his siblings moved to their maternal grandparents‘ cattle ranch. 7 Palahniuk never got to know his father‘s parents as his grandfather shot his grandmother dead during an argument over the cost of a sewing machine while their son, Chuck‘s father, kept on watching from under a bed. This short episode might serve as just a small example of not quite usual nature of his family and his early life,3 which had a significant influence of his writing, as his personal experience keeps on being reflected in all his works.4 Either way, it was his parental grandparents who gave the origin to his unusual surname and its nonstandard pronunciation – coming to the United states from Ukraine, people were referring to them using just their first names, Paula and Nick, which eventually became a legitimate surname, keeping its original pronunciation (―paul-ah-nick‖, which is frequently mispronounced). After graduating with a BA in journalism at the University or Oregon, Palahniuk worked for a local newspaper, covering everything from school board meetings to murders, but he eventually grew tired of it and started working as a car mechanic, occasionally writing car-repair manuals. During these years he was trying to live the most adventurous life Portland, Oregon provides with available money, living in various cheap flats with friends and strangers, drinking, driving, reading and playing endless pranks. Many of his experiences and experiences of his friends from these years found their way into his novels, 3 He provides more details about his turbulent lifestyle in his non-fictional novels Non-Fiction (2004) and Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon (2003), as well as the ways they are reflected in his other novels. 4 Palahniuk incorporates a lot of his personal issues into his novels, often as a way of coming to terms with certain situations. For example novel Lullaby (2002) was a result of personal struggle with court trial with his father‘s murderer as Palahniuk
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