INVISIBLE MONSTERS by Chuck Palahniuk is his second book. The first
book he wrote was entitled INSOMNIA and never made it into print.
He wrote Invisible Monsters second and it was turned down having
been identified as too disturbing. FIGHT CLUB was the third novel.
As these things go, Fight Club was published first and Invisible
Monsters followed in 1999 along with SURVIVOR. It is likely
impossible to determine which parts of Invisible Monsters pre-date
the Fight Club novel, which would have been written without the
knowledge of the eventual publication of the former. This accounts
for some of the intertextuality and linguistic affectations. It is
a tangled web but an interesting one. I always recommend that
people read Invisible Monsters before Fight Club. It really is a
disturbing book and if you're already read FC you'll enjoy some of
the cross-over material because you already know that everything is
a copy of a copy of a copy.
The basic format is similar to Fight Club and Survivor. We begin
with a first person narrative that has its start at the end. In
Fight Club, Tyler and the narrator are on the tallest building in
the world. In Survivor, Tender Branson is on the roof of the world,
Flight 2039. And here in Invisible Monsters we have an unnamed
narrator with Brandy Alexander and Evie Cottrell at the big shotgun
wedding reception. All three begin with a narrator and a gun
although it is always being held by different people.
I can't say for sure, but I'm assuming that Invisible Monsters was
written between 1990 and 1993. These would have been the years that
Palahniuk was meeting with Tom Spanbauer whose 1991 THE MAN WHO
FELL IN LOVE WITH THE MOON is also a gender-bender. If you're read
Douglas Coupland you'll also catch whiff of Generation X and
Shampboo Planet.
In some respects I see this novel along with Survivor as Palahniuk
as his most Palahniukian. Both deal with fashion, success, beauty,
self-destruction, jealousy, heartbreak and rivalry. Religion and
gender are two of the topics CP addresses with great provocation in
his writing.
Invisible Monsters reads like you're flipping through a fashion
magazine. The phrase "Jump to" announces a temporal shift but gives
you the fluidity of scene-to-scene motion, a nice trick used by the
new journalists.
The themes found in Invisible Monsters have become trademarks:
crisis, recognition and misrecognition, and confrontation. And
there is always a hidden gun. I think there are several hidden guns
in this novel, so much so that I began to create an index of names
at the end of the novel to keep track of who's who and what's want
and which body parts people still have and have not. Parts of the
novel are fairly graphic, with long stretches of narrative
detailing brand name fashion accessories and clothing designers.
This runs parallel to the equally details write ups on different
forms of reconstructive surgery.
I checked. MISS RONA exists. It is long since out of print but
still available. I've ordered a copy and can't wait to read it.
My recommendations below are very closely related to the writing of
Invisible Monsters. I should also add: Amy Hempel, "The Harvest"
and Mark Richard, "Strays."
Enjoy!