Putting the "Ah" in "Palahniuk"

Whenever I am reading one of Chuck Palahniuk's books and am asked who he is, I simply give them the most straightforward answer that comes to mind: "It's the guy who wrote Fight Club." For those of you who have read at least one of his novels you are probably well aware of his literary style and the methods he employs to hook readers. For those of you who aren't (but have seen the aforementioned novel turned film) just imagine verbs, nouns, and adjectives melded together to form the images of cracked ribs, bruised and bleeding lips, and black eyes. Pygmy features graphic homosexual rape, Rant features a protagonist who contracts rabies again and again via animal bites because he enjoys it. In explaining my title it would be wise to bank on the "Ah" referring to the shock and awe descriptions so often employed in his books. This is not the case.

The "Ah" I have found in "Palahniuk" instead refers to science, to the drawn out sound you make when you realize something you never knew before. To be more broad, jargon and technical terminology and the knowledge of how the world works. Fight Club explains how soap is made, as well as how projection booths work. Rant elaborates on how the rabies virus incubates and what its side-effects are, while Diary delves into the facial muscles, graphology, and the ingredients to oil-based paints. Palahniuk writes in such a way that you find yourself completely involved in the story while at the same time picking up the jargon, realizing that when someone contracts their levator labii superioris muscle they're sneering, that something has happened which disgusts them thoroughly. Wading through scenes that make us crease our foreheads and wince and maybe even faint we find ourselves growing oddly more knowledgeable, we begin to find the fact behind the fiction.


As a closing paragraph I would like to include that I believe Palahniuk's works will stand the test of time. In spite of his novels constantly featuring socially awkward protagonists, the way they seem to feature catchy, explanatory phrases ("I am Jack's Raging Bile Duct" Fight Club, "The weather today is an increasing trend towards denial" Diary), the less-than-subtle lean towards shock-and-awe literature, he writes like no one else has, and is continuing to grow as an author. Perhaps he is even the author to be placed on that pedestal labelled "Postmodern," an author for our times. An author to take the madness and confusion and violence and indecisiveness and nihilism and knead it together, a bread that alone cannot sustain, but instead explains.