Chuck Palahniuk, Parodist

Chuck Palahniuk, Parodist PDF Author: David McCracken
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 147662738X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Chuck Palahniuk, America's premier transgressive novelist, enjoys a tremendous readership. Yet he has not necessarily been embraced by critics or academics. His prose is considered vulgar by some, but his body of work addresses a core motivation of 21st-century life: individual self-empowerment. Palahniuk writes about what it means to be on the outside looking in, revising familiar narratives for a contemporary audience to get at the heart of the human condition--everyone wants a chance to win his or her fair share, no matter the cost. In Haunted, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, Damned and Invisible Monsters Remix, he confronts marginalization and disenfranchisement through parodies of various works--The Decameron, The Inferno, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, The Elephant Man--as well as Hollywood history, 1970s karate films and the porn industry. This comprehensive study of six novels refutes criticism that Palahniuk's goals are to shock and sensationalize.

Chuck Palahniuk, Parodist

Chuck Palahniuk, Parodist PDF Author: David McCracken
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 147662738X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
Chuck Palahniuk, America's premier transgressive novelist, enjoys a tremendous readership. Yet he has not necessarily been embraced by critics or academics. His prose is considered vulgar by some, but his body of work addresses a core motivation of 21st-century life: individual self-empowerment. Palahniuk writes about what it means to be on the outside looking in, revising familiar narratives for a contemporary audience to get at the heart of the human condition--everyone wants a chance to win his or her fair share, no matter the cost. In Haunted, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, Damned and Invisible Monsters Remix, he confronts marginalization and disenfranchisement through parodies of various works--The Decameron, The Inferno, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, The Elephant Man--as well as Hollywood history, 1970s karate films and the porn industry. This comprehensive study of six novels refutes criticism that Palahniuk's goals are to shock and sensationalize.

Chuck Palahniuk and the Comic Grotesque

Chuck Palahniuk and the Comic Grotesque PDF Author: David McCracken
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476678170
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
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.

Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context [4 volumes]

Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context [4 volumes] PDF Author: Linda De Roche
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440853592
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1563

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Book Description
This four-volume reference work surveys American literature from the early 20th century to the present day, featuring a diverse range of American works and authors and an expansive selection of primary source materials. Bringing useful and engaging material into the classroom, this four-volume set covers more than a century of American literary history—from 1900 to the present. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context profiles authors and their works and provides overviews of literary movements and genres through which readers will understand the historical, cultural, and political contexts that have shaped American writing. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context provides wide coverage of authors, works, genres, and movements that are emblematic of the diversity of modern America. Not only are major literary movements represented, such as the Beats, but this work also highlights the emergence and development of modern Native American literature, African American literature, and other representative groups that showcase the diversity of American letters. A rich selection of primary documents and background material provides indispensable information for student research.

The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture

The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture PDF Author: Lydia R. Cooper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000504956
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
Recently, the U.S. has seen a rise in misogynistic and race-based violence perpetrated by men expressing a sense of grievance, from "incels" to alt-right activists. Grounding sociological, historical, political, and economic analyses of masculinity through the lens of cultural narratives in many forms and expressions, The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture suggests that how we examine the stories that shape us in turn shapes our understanding of our current reality and gives us language for imagining better futures. Masculinity is more than a description of traits associated with particular performances of gender. It is more than a study of gender and social power. It is an examination of the ways in which gender affects our capacity to engage ethically with each other in complex human societies. This volume offers essays from a range of established, global experts in American masculinity as well as new and upcoming scholars in order to explore not just what masculinity once meant, has come to mean, and may mean in the future in the U.S.; it also articulates what is at stake with our conceptions of masculinity.

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 PDF Author: Christopher Burlingame
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648894127
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
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.

Sound Recording Technology and American Literature

Sound Recording Technology and American Literature PDF Author: Jessica E. Teague
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108881394
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Phonographs, tapes, stereo LPs, digital remix - how did these remarkable technologies impact American writing? This book explores how twentieth-century writers shaped the ways we listen in our multimedia present. Uncovering a rich new archive of materials, this book offers a resonant reading of how writers across several genres, such as John Dos Passos, Langston Hughes, William S. Burroughs, and others, navigated the intermedial spaces between texts and recordings. Numerous scholars have taken up remix - a term co-opted from DJs and sound engineers - as the defining aesthetic of twenty-first century art and literature. Others have examined modernism's debt to the phonograph. But in the gap between these moments, one finds that the reciprocal relationship between the literary arts and sonic technologies continued to evolve over the twentieth century. A mix of American literary history, sound studies, and media archaeology, this interdisciplinary study will appeal to scholars, students, and audiophiles.

Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination

Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination PDF Author: Irene Berti
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350075418
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The collected essays in this volume focus on the presentation, representation and interpretation of ancient violence – from war to slavery, rape and murder – in the modern visual and performing arts, with special attention to videogames and dance as well as the more usual media of film, literature and theatre. Violence, fury and the dread that they provoke are factors that appear frequently in the ancient sources. The dark side of antiquity, so distant from the ideal of purity and harmony that the classical heritage until recently usually called forth, has repeatedly struck the imagination of artists, writers and scholars across ages and cultures. A global assembly of contributors, from Europe to Brazil and from the US to New Zealand, consider historical and mythical violence in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus and the 2010 TV series of the same name, in Ridley Scott's Gladiator, in the work of Lars von Trier, and in Soviet ballet and the choreography of Martha Graham and Anita Berber. Representations of Roman warfare appear in videogames such as Ryse: Son of Rome and Total War, as well as recent comics, and examples from both these media are analysed in the volume. Finally, interviews with two artists offer insight into the ways in which practitioners understand and engage with the complex reception of these themes.

Gamer Nation

Gamer Nation PDF Author: John Wills
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421428695
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Explores how games actively influence the ways people interpret and relate to American life. In 1975, design engineer Dave Nutting completed work on a new arcade machine. A version of Taito's Western Gun, a recent Japanese arcade machine, Nutting's Gun Fight depicted a classic showdown between gunfighters. Rich in Western folklore, the game seemed perfect for the American market; players easily adapted to the new technology, becoming pistol-wielding pixel cowboys. One of the first successful early arcade titles, Gun Fight helped introduce an entire nation to video-gaming and sold more than 8,000 units. In Gamer Nation, John Wills examines how video games co-opt national landscapes, livelihoods, and legends. Arguing that video games toy with Americans' mass cultural and historical understanding, Wills show how games reprogram the American experience as a simulated reality. Blockbuster games such as Civilization, Call of Duty, and Red Dead Redemption repackage the past, refashioning history into novel and immersive digital states of America. Controversial titles such as Custer's Revenge and 08.46 recode past tragedies. Meanwhile, online worlds such as Second Life cater to a desire to inhabit alternate versions of America, while Paperboy and The Sims transform the mundane tasks of everyday suburbia into fun and addictive challenges. Working with a range of popular and influential games, from Pong, Civilization, and The Oregon Trail to Grand Theft Auto, Silent Hill, and Fortnite, Wills critically explores these gamic depictions of America. Touching on organized crime, nuclear fallout, environmental degradation, and the War on Terror, Wills uncovers a world where players casually massacre Native Americans and Cold War soldiers alike, a world where neo-colonialism, naive patriotism, disassociated violence, and racial conflict abound, and a world where the boundaries of fantasy and reality are increasingly blurred. Ultimately, Gamer Nation reveals not only how video games are a key aspect of contemporary American culture, but also how games affect how people relate to America itself.

Chuck Palahniuk, Parodist

Chuck Palahniuk, Parodist PDF Author: David McCracken
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786479299
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
Chuck Palahniuk, America's premier transgressive novelist, enjoys a tremendous readership. Yet he has not necessarily been embraced by critics or academics. His prose is considered vulgar by some, but his body of work addresses a core motivation of 21st-century life: individual self-empowerment. Palahniuk writes about what it means to be on the outside looking in, revising familiar narratives for a contemporary audience to get at the heart of the human condition--everyone wants a chance to win his or her fair share, no matter the cost. In Haunted, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, Damned and Invisible Monsters Remix, he confronts marginalization and disenfranchisement through parodies of various works--The Decameron, The Inferno, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, The Elephant Man--as well as Hollywood history, 1970s karate films and the porn industry. This comprehensive study of six novels refutes criticism that Palahniuk's goals are to shock and sensationalize.

Invisible Monsters: A Novel

Invisible Monsters: A Novel PDF Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393341429
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
"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.