| fiction author Chuck Palahniuk |
| Mr. Palahniuk is the keynote speaker for this conference. |
| Chuck Palahniuk is an Oregon-based fiction writer and is the author of Fight Club, Survivor, Invisible Monsters and a forthcoming novel, Choke, to be released in the spring of 2001. |
| Since the release of his controversial first novel, Fight Club, in 1996, Palahniuk's works have received a firestorm of both praise and criticism for the social commentary, philosophy and violence they contain. The 1999 film adaptation of Fight Club (starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter) has also sparked controversy among audiences, critics and the film industry. |
| Postcards from the Future is the first academic conference to focus on Palahniuk's works. The goal of this project is to create an open, dynamic environment where students, fans and researchers can discuss this material and its relevance to the society and literature of twenty-first century America. |
| The organizers of this conference believe that Palahniuk is one of the most important American writers currently working today. The worlds of his novels are immediate, accurate reflections of American culture and the direction that culture is going. In Palahniuk we have the rare opportunity to study literary and artistic works that cannot be separated from the relevance of their content. Any study of Palahniuk's material is by default a study of American sociology, psychology, philosophy, mythology and the underpinnings of a tragic, human culture. Any study of Palahniuk's material is a study of ourselves. |
| While the literary merits of this material will always remain open to debate, the organizers of this conference believe that Palahniuk has something worth saying. We owe it to ourselves to listen, understand and learn. The Edinboro University Honors Program invites you to read these books, watch this film, and seek to understand them. |
| Some reviews of Fight Club (1996: available through Henry Holt and Company / Owl Books) |
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"A powerful, dark, original novel...a memorable debut by an important new writer |
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"An astonishing debut...Fight Club is a dark, unsettling and nerve-chafing satire." |
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"A volatile, brilliantly creepy satire." |
| Some reviews of Survivor (1999: available through Random House / Anchor Books) |
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"Brilliantly satiric and savagely funny...A wild amphetamine ride through the vagaries of fame and the nature of belief in America at the close of the 20th Century." |
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"Convoluted, manically comic, partaking deeply of the America that streams toward us in the dead of the night from the cable channels--that place of outrageous expectation, slavish idolatry, fanatic consumerism, and mind-stopping banality." |
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The perfect comment on our apocalypse-fixated times." |
| Review of Invisible Monsters (1999: available through W.W. Norton) |
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"Palahniuk displays a Swiftian gift for satire, as well as a knack for crafting mesmerizing sentences that loom with stark, prickly prose and repetitive rhythms." |
| Extended biographical and bibliographical information on Chuck Palahniuk and his works can be found at ChuckPalahniuk.net: A Writer's Cult. |
| Additional links to Palahniuk and Fight Club related web sites, as well as introductory research, can be found here. |
