ABSTRACT
While promoting his fifth novel Lullaby in 2002, Chuck Palahniuk was asked if the attacks of September 11 changed the way he wrote, a particularly relevant question given that his Fight Club (1996) opens with a domestic terrorist group about to destroy the world's tallest building, while Survivor (1999) opens with the narrator telling his life story into the black box of a hijacked jumbo jet he plans to crash. Palahniuk answered by claiming that since 9/11, “You can't really do what used to be called ‘transgressive’ fiction… People just don't have the tolerance. They won't laugh at things—even like Thelma & Louise sort of things—they won't laugh at acts of rebellion. … [It] all gets lumped together as terrorism” (qtd. in Ellis). More disconcerting for Palahniuk is that publishers and authors themselves seem willing to suppress any writing that has the slightest chance of being interpreted as endorsing or minimizing “terrorism.” Subversive novels are being avoided, he claims, suggesting “a backhanded tendency [after 9/11] to censor fiction, and I have to wonder where it's coming from, if it's just happening or is somebody generating this?” (qtd. in Russo).
