Invisible Monsters
- Jun 26, 2017
- 2 min read
★★★☆☆
It’s difficult to imagine anything in the mid-nineties being considered too disturbing to publish, but, so the story goes, that's what happened with Chuck Palahniuk’s first book, Invisible Monsters. In an attempt to disturb publishers even more, he wrote Fight Club, which ended up being his first book to get published, while this one (in a revised version) didn’t hit shelves until three years later.
I didn’t know any of this before going into Invisible Monsters, but I’m glad I looked into the backstory afterward. The similarities between the two novels—in tone, style, structure, and, yes, even in content—was clear, and was clearly frustrating to me. I couldn’t shake the thought that Palahniuk was plagiarizing his own work, and, in a way, that’s exactly what happened, but in reverse: Invisible Monsters was a dry run at—a first draft of—Fight Club. Knowing this would have helped me let go and enjoy things much sooner than I did, but Invisible Monsters has another flaw. Palahniuk’s influences are too obvious, his reference points too blatant, from J.G. Ballard’s Crash, to anything by Bret Easton Ellis. Maybe the book was too disturbing to publish, or maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t quite original enough.
All of which isn’t to say Invisible Monsters isn’t a decent read. It’s twisted and fucked up in all the right Palahniuk ways, and even though it drags a bit here and there with its incessant commentary on beauty, fashion, and the ennui of recreational drugs, it’s a fun ride, gets better as it goes along, and has a nice WTF twist at the end. It’s no Fight Club, and it’s safe to say we won’t be talking about this one they way we will that one 20 years from now, but here you get to see an author finding his voice, developing his early in media res style, and capturing, for the first time, the kind of self-destructive, marginalized characters that are at the center of so many of his books. In short, here’s your chance to see where it all began.
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