Chuck Palahniuk, Parodist

<p> 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 chanc