New Book! Sacred and Immoral: On the Writings of Chuck Palahniuk
Our old friend and longtime contributor to The Cult, Jeffrey Sartain, is dropping in with some very exciting news for you all. There's a new book! Well no... not by Chuck Palahniuk. Rather, it's a new book about Chuck Palahniuk. You see, Jeff is the undisputed king of all things related to the academia of Palahniuk. Therefore, I doubt you're ever going to find a more thorough examination of Chuck's works then Sacred & Immoral.
With that, I'll hand the mic over to Jeff.
Greetings Cultists!
I’m happy to announce the publication of Sacred and Immoral: On the Writings of Chuck Palahniuk. The book is an academic anthology, intended for scholars, students, and fans, and features eleven original essays about Chuck’s post-Fight Club novels, as well as an interview with Chuck, an up-to-date Chuck bibliography, and a unique foreword by Monica Drake. This book has been a labor of love, as I think anyone who reads it can tell. Each and every author represented here is a die-hard fan of Palahniuk’s work; our goal is to demonstrate the powerful meanings that readers are able to draw from Palahniuk’s literature, and to inspire further scholarship and conversation about his work.
The volume itself represents a kind of extended conversation around Palahniuk’s work, since the scholars and scholarship come from a variety of countries, backgrounds, and disciplines. Monica Drake, author of Clown Girl, wrote the foreword for the volume, reflecting on her experiences in Tom Spanbauer’s “Dangerous Writing” workshops with Chuck Palahniuk, and what makes his fiction so vital and important in contemporary culture. The volume follows with eleven original analyses of Palahniuk’s fiction, each taking on some different aspect of
literature, culture, or philosophy inherent in the novels (Chapter 1, Kenneth MacKendrick’s “Chuck Palahniuk and the New Journalism Revolution” is available on Amazon.com, as well as the complete table of contents).
Additionally, the book concludes with two unique items. First is literary scholar Matt Kavanagh’s interview with Chuck Palahniuk, “Of Failed Romance, Writer’s Malpractice, and Prose for the Nose.” Kavanagh avoids the media’s almost fetishistic fixation with Chuck’s grisly family history (anyone read the recent interview in Playboy?), instead turning the interview toward literary matters of influence, composition, and context for what is, perhaps, the most literary interview Palahniuk has ever given.
Second is my four-part bibliography of Chuck Palahniuk’s work and Palahniuk-related scholarship. These bibliographies represent the culmination of a five-year project to catalogue Palahniuk’s prolific output, as well as immediate analyses, interviews, and reviews of his work. This project was a massive undertaking, and wouldn’t have been possible without the assistance of several diligent and gracious Cultists. My thanks, again, to those who helped track down some of the rare and far flung sources!
It’s been great to write and research Palahniuk’s literature for so long, and now it’s fantastic that we’re able to offer all that work to everyone. We hope that our book contributes, in some small way, to the continuing conversation. Thanks for everything, and happy reading Cultists!
Buy Sacred and Immoral: On the Writings of Chuck Palahniuk from Amazon.com
Comments
This is awesome!!
As a Palahniuk scholar myself, this looks to be quite good. There's also a nice academic book edited by Lance Rubin coming out soon on Routledge if I'm not mistaken. Go academia!
Sounds like a lot of effort went into this. Very cool.
Hey everyone! Thanks for the kind words. Indeed, a lot of effort from 13 very hardworking scholars went into this volume.
The goal of this volume was to release a piece of scholarship on Chuck Palahniuk's work after "Fight Club." Since the film came out, there has been a lot of scholarship and commentary about the book and the film, but almost no scholarly work dedicated to Chuck's ever-growing catalog of great books. Sacred and Immoral is our effort to start filling in this gap in academic literature, so that scholars and teachers have tools to build projects and classes on Chuck's later work.
Unfortunately (as one Amazon troll so eloquently noted), the volume is a bit pricey. Unfortunately this is one of the downsides to academic publishing -- the audience for scholarly work is much smaller, so the price for each volume has to be proportionally higher to offset the printing costs for a relatively small run of books. Believe me, no one publishes scholarly volumes to get rich; the high price of scholarly volumes reflects the high overhead involved in producing hardcover books in small runs.
As such, the primary audiences for volumes like mine are scholars and libraries. If you don't want to buy the book yourself, but do want to read it, encourage your local or university library to purchase a copy for their collection. The access the library provides helps fulfill the volume's primary purpose, which is to expand the conversation about Chuck into new territory.
On behalf of everyone who contributed to Sacred and Immoral, I want to say thanks to the folks who've bought the book, as well as those who've already asked their libraries to order copies.
Best
Jeff Sartain
I have it on my Amazon wishlist, as soon as my credit card stops melting I will get it.
Again, this sounds awesome. Jeff, now that my foot's in the door so to speak, let me know if there are any other Chuck-related projects in the mix. I've got a thesis that I'm working on that I'd like to submit a chapter or two for publication (final edits will be done in about four months). If you have any hot leads, I'd love to hear about them.
Peace
Gabe
yeah, i reported that troll to amazon. i dont think they'll do anything about it, though. i mean, the guy didnt even read the book, didnt even order it. just wanted to give his cents and trash the years of work with a single star. i hope more people can get over there and offer a not helpful to him and hit the abuse button on his ass.
anyway, thanks for the news. i will work with my library this coming weekend to procure a copy of this text.
-kabol
..
Greetings. I'm one of the "die hard" contributors to the Sartain anthology and host a "Chuck Palahniuk Reading Group" through Chapters-Indigo. There are over 300 links in the archive collected from Google Alerts over the past two years. Feel free to browse or sign up.
http://community.indigo.ca/posts/Reading-Chuck-Palahniuk/group-335/curre...
Updates are posted on a regular basis.
cheers,
ken
Hi everyone!
One of the volume's contributors, Ron Riekki, is hosting interviews with Sacred and Immoral's authors on his website. Jump over there to check out what the contributors to Sacred and Immoral have to say about the book, Chuck's writing, and good literature in general. Monica Drake and myself have posted interviews, and there are more to come from our other contributors.
http://rariekki.webs.com/chuckpalahniuk.htm
While you're there, check out the links about Ron's own work -- his first novel, U.P., is fantastic.
-jeff
Incredible !!
This is one that I'm definitely picking up !
thanks for the heads up!
Rob
Is that book out? Dr. Rubin was my teacher and turned me on to Chuck. That man changed my literary life.