ABSTRACT
Chuck Palahniuk’s novels have been regarded with both high praise and moral outrage; his work remains controversial, nihilistic in its sensibilities, spectacularly violent, and openly hostile to contemporary culture. The genius of his novels, however, does not necessarily lie in their contemporaneity, but rather in his ability to connect with a jaded, post-Generation X ennui while invoking a rich sense of literary tradition. So engrossed are his audiences in his literary tricks of diversion and obfuscation that it is easy to forget his novels are equally successful in terms of their link in a literary chain of psychological development. Indeed, Palahniuk’s ability to exploit literary tropes while providing relevant social commentary is the cornerstone of his art. While much of the current Palahniuk criticism relies upon existential and gender theories,1 overlooked are his repeated allegorical themes related distinctively to the morality play tradition, as well as his incorporation of theatrical tropes inherited from early modern playwrights. The unnamed narrator in Fight Club, for example, may have as much or more in common with an Everyman fi gure than he does with the Angry White Male of the late twentieth century; Carl Streator in Lullaby consciously recalls the Faust tradition; and Misty Marie Wilmot of Diary hearkens back to Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi . Palahniuk works with more than simple plot or character traditions from these periods, however; his use of allegory, which clearly advances from Fight Club to Diary, incorporates not only the conventions of psychomachia (“war in the soul”) plays, but are distinctly located in a powerful sense of morality. Further, Palahniuk’s obsession with broken physical structures draws upon body metaphors found in medieval and early modern thought. The supposition that literary connections exist between works of literature over vast periods of time is an axiomatic one; however, the links provide a sense not only of literary connection, but an interrogation regarding the nature of where and how, and even more importantly why, these texts parallel one another.
