List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Cynthia Kuhn and Lance Rubin, Introduction Part I. Genres, Structures, and Modes 1. Sidney L. Sondergard, Chuck Palahniuk and the Semiotics of Personal Doom: The Novelist as Escape Artist 2. Andrew Ng, Destruction and the Discourse of Deformity: Invisible Monsters and the Ethics of Atrocity 3. Cynthia Kuhn, I Am Marla's Monstrous Wound: Fight Club and The Gothic 4.Christina Angel, 'This Theatre of Mass Destruction': Medieval Morality and Jacobean Convention in Palahniuk's Novels 5. Andrew Slade, On Mutilation: The Sublime Body of Chuck Palahniuk's Fiction 6. Sherry R. Truffin, 'This is what passes for free will': Chuck Palahniuk's Postmodern Gothic 7. Joshua Parker, 'Where you're supposed to be': Apostrophe and Apocalypse in Chuck Palahniuk Part II. Politics, Cultures, and Philosophies 8. Jesse Kavadlo, With Us or Against Us: Chuck Palahniuk's 9/11 9. David Simmons and Nicola Allen, Reading Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor and Haunted as a Critique of 'The Culture Industry' 10. Lance Rubin, The Politics of Boredom: Punk, the Situationist International and Chuck Palahniuk's Rant 11. Alex E. Blazer, The Phony 'Martyrdom of Saint Me': Choke, The Catcher in the Rye, and the Problem of Postmodern Narcissistic Nihilism 12. Peter Mathews, The Politics of Voice in Palahniuk's Lullaby 13. G. Christopher Williams, Nihilism and Buddhism in a Blender: The Religion of Chuck Palahniuk 14. Devin Harner, True Stories and Beaded Necklaces: Fandom and Chuck Palahniuk's Writing as Ritual 15. Steffen Hantke, Blood on the Bookstore Floor: Chuck Palahniuk and the Case of the Fainting Reader Notes on Contributors Kenneth G. MacKendrick and Nicole Goulet, Selected Bibliography Index