Chuck Palahniuk and the Comic Grotesque

Chuck Palahniuk and the Comic Grotesque
Author: David McCracken
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2020-10-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1476678170

With the success of Fight Club, his novel-turned-movie, Chuck Palahniuk has become noticed for accurately capturing the exploitation of power in America in the 21st century. With cynicism and skepticism, he satirizes the manipulative aspects of ideologies and beliefs pushing society's understanding of the norm. In this work, Palahniuk's characters are analyzed as people who rebel against the systems in control. Mikhail Bakhtin's theory is applied to explain Palahniuk's application of the comic grotesque; theories from Louis Althusser and Slavoj Žižek help reveal aspects of ideology in Palahniuk's writing.

Can't Get No

Can't Get No
Author: Rick Veitch
Publisher:
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2006
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN:

Reeling from the financial collapse of his business, Chad Roe descends into a night of debauchery only to wake up a literal marked man, covered in a full-body permanent marker tattoo. But when his lost weekend bleeds into a bright Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001, his life changes forever. Instead of picking up the pieces, Chad takes to the road, desperately searching for salvation in the shell-shocked heart of America.

Teaching Palahniuk: The Treasures of Transgression in the Age of Trump and Beyond

Teaching Palahniuk: The Treasures of Transgression in the Age of Trump and Beyond
Author: Christopher Burlingame
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2022-05-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1648894127

While much has been written about Chuck Palahniuk and his body of work, next to nothing has been written about when, where and how it is necessary to teach Palahniuk. This collection will reveal that teaching Palahniuk’s work and the discursive dynamic of the classroom interactions create new opportunities for scholarship by both the faculty member and his or her students. Despite early critical success with ‘Fight Club’, ‘Invisible Monsters’, and ‘Choke’, Palahniuk’s novels are increasingly dismissed for the very transgressive content that makes them essential pedagogical tools in the Age of Trump where “truth isn’t truth,” and tribalism is stoked with claims of “fake news”. This collection aims to broaden the scholarship by examining under-represented and unrepresented works from his oeuvre and situating them in the context of their pedagogical implications. In both form and content, the transgressive nature of Palahniuk’s work demands critical thought and reflection, capacities that are necessary for the preservation of a democratic society. Contributors take various approaches to address what students can learn about writing, literature, and society by reading and analyzing Palahniuk’s texts. The collection will discuss the value of teaching Palahniuk, innovations and various disciplinary contexts for teaching his works, and reflections on some of those pedagogical opportunities. Through its multi-faceted discussion of Palahniuk and pedagogy, this collection will legitimize efforts to bring his work onto syllabi and into the classroom, where it can enhance student engagement, create new avenues for inter-disciplinary scholarship, and re-invigorate an expansion of the canon. It will also provide diverse frameworks for incorporating and interpreting Palahniuk’s writing across disciplines. Finally, the collection will offer post-mortems from faculty members who have found the “guts” to teach Palahniuk and will offer insight into what students have gained and stand to gain from a more intensive Palahniuk pedagogy.

Haunted

Haunted
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2005-05-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385515839

Haunted is a novel made up of twenty-three horrifying, hilarious, and stomach-churning stories. They’re told by people who have answered an ad for a writer’s retreat and unwittingly joined a “Survivor”-like scenario where the host withholds heat, power, and food. As the storytellers grow more desperate, their tales become more extreme, and they ruthlessly plot to make themselves the hero of the reality show that will surely be made from their plight. This is one of the most disturbing and outrageous books you’ll ever read, one that could only come from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk.

A Disgusting Supermarket of Death

A Disgusting Supermarket of Death
Author: James Harberson
Publisher: Markosia Enterprises Ltd
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2021-02-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1913802272

A Disgusting Supermarket of Death collects hard-boiled shorts about satanic Christmas movies, performance art euthanasia, child sacrifice skincare, and other demented goodness from Jim Harberson, co-author of Markosia’s acclaimed graphic novel, Stay Alive.

Invisible Monsters: A Novel

Invisible Monsters: A Novel
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2011-03-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0393341429

"A harrowing, perverse, laugh-aloud funny rocket ride of catastrophes…Gutsy, terse and cunning, Invisible Monsters may emerge as Palahniuk’s strongest book." —Greg Berkman, Seattle Times She’s a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. And that salvation hides in the last places you’ll ever want to look.

Fight Club 2 (Graphic Novel)

Fight Club 2 (Graphic Novel)
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2016-06-28
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1616559454

Fight Club 2 is available exclusively as a Graphic Novel! Some imaginary friends never go away . . . Ten years after starting Project Mayhem, he lives a mundane life. A kid, a wife. Pills to keep his destiny at bay. But it won't last long, the wife has seen to that. He's back where he started, but this go-round he's got more at stake than his own life.The time has arrived . . .Rize or Die. New York Times bestselling novelist Chuck Palahniuk and acclaimed artist Cameron Stewart have collaborated for one of the most highly anticipated comic book and literary events-the return of Tyler Durden. The first rule of Fight Club 2 might be not to talk about it, but Fight Club 2 is generating international headlines and will introduce a new generation of readers to Project Mayhem. Praise for the comics that comprise Fight Club 2: “At turns deeply poignant and very funny, Palahniuk’s freakish fables capture a twisted zeitgeist and add an oddly inspirational and subversive voice to the contemporary canon…. In the post-9/11 present, a hyperactive, Internet-obsessed, war- and recession-weary America apparently needs Tyler again.”—THE ATLANTIC “The book is fantastic, my highest recommendation.... Excellent work by Cameron Stewart and David Mack, and by our awesome friends at Dark Horse Comics.”—Brian Michael Bendis “If Tyler Durden needed a resurgence, there’s no time like the present for his return… Fight Club 2 is a comic that taps back into everything great about the source material, and one that makes Tyler Durden’s warm nihilistic embrace a welcome draw back into a familiar world of cynicism, violence, and anarchy....“Tyler Lives,” and I couldn’t be happier by the prospect of more bedlam.”—NEWSARAMA “Palahniuk is delivering a worthy sequel to his most beloved story.”—THE NERDIST “Entertaining.”—COMIC BOOK RESOURCES “Excellent.”—THE BEAT “An amazing piece of work. You do not want to miss out on this.”—COMICVINE “Perfect.”—FORCES OF GEEK “We have a worthy sequel on our hands…. A must read.”—COMICOSITY “Cameron Stewart truly outdoes himself on every level in this book.”—BLOODY DISGUSTING “Clever and beautiful.”—COMICS ALLIANCE

Legacy: An Off-Color Novella for You to Color

Legacy: An Off-Color Novella for You to Color
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2017-11-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1506706150

In his first long-form fiction since Beautiful You in 2014, the author of Fight Club and Choke delivers another biting social satire in this riches-to-rags novella! This hardcover edition features beautiful colorable illustrations by Steve Morris (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), who worked on Palahnuik's Bait: Off-Color Stories for You to Color, and Mike Norton (Revival, Battlepug), with a cover by another Bait collaborator, Duncan Fegredo (Hellboy). Legacy is sure to engage readers with its boundary pushing story-telling while challenging their creative side through its visionary and twisted colorable imagery. An amoral investment banker named Vincent receives an inheritance promising immortality. Unfortunately for Vincent to obtain imortality he has to contend with a flame-retardant stripper, a ruthless stalker, and a bloodthirsty horde of other aspiring immortals dead set in their desire to separate Vincent from his destiny. Praise for Bait: Off-Color Stories for You to Color: "The conceit is a blast. Ingenious...Palahniuk likes to involve his readers, and maybe even have them be co-conspirators. I loved this book. It's smart in a new way that deserves to be recognized. Congratulations once again to Palahniuk for showing us a new way to do things...and to make us involved."--FORCES OF GEEK "Chuck Palahniuk is pushing boundaries again."--COMICBOOK.COM

Haunted

Haunted
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2005
Genre: Artists
ISBN: 9780224076951

HAUNTED is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of them to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter - sometimes all at once. They are told by the people who have all answered the ad headlined 'Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But 'here' turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world - and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell - and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight. HAUNTED is at one level a satire of reality television. It draws from a great literary tradition - The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, the English storytellers in the Villa Diodati who produced, among other works, Frankenstein - to tell an utterly contemporary tale of people desperate that their story be told at any cost. Appallingly entertaining, HAUNTED is Chuck Palahniuk at his finest - which means his most extreme and his most provocative.

Doomed

Doomed
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2013-10-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385533152

Madison Spencer, the liveliest and snarkiest dead girl in the universe, continues the afterlife adventure begun in Chuck Palahniuk’s bestseller Damned. Just as that novel brought us a brilliant Hell that only he could imagine, Doomed is a dark and twisted apocalyptic vision from this provocative storyteller. The bestselling Damned chronicled Madison’s journey across the unspeakable (and really gross) landscape of the afterlife to confront the Devil himself. But her story isn’t over yet. In a series of electronic dispatches from the Great Beyond, Doomed describes the ultimate showdown between Good and Evil. After a Halloween ritual gone awry, Madison finds herself trapped in Purgatory—or, as mortals like you and I know it, Earth. She can see and hear every detail of the world she left behind, yet she’s invisible to everyone who’s still alive. Not only do people look right through her, they walk right through her as well. The upside is that, no longer subject to physical limitations, she can pass through doors and walls. Her first stop is her parents’ luxurious apartment, where she encounters the ghost of her long-deceased grandmother. For Madison, the encounter triggers memories of the awful summer she spent upstate with Nana Minnie and her grandfather, Papadaddy. As she revisits the painful truth of what transpired over those months (including a disturbing and finally fatal meeting in a rest stop’s fetid men’s room, in which . . . well, never mind), her saga of eternal damnation takes on a new and sinister meaning. Satan has had Madison in his sights from the very beginning: through her and her narcissistic celebrity parents, he plans to engineer an era of eternal damnation. For everyone. Once again, our unconventional but plucky heroine must face her fears and gather her wits for the battle of a lifetime. Dante Alighieri, watch your back; Chuck Palahniuk is gaining on you.