American author Chuck Palahniuk is most famous for his debut novel in 1996. This went on to become the 1999 film Fight Club, which now has major cult classic status.
Lullaby launched in 2002 and is a horror satire with a literary framing device, meaning it shifts from a linear story to more complicated affairs. All leading up to a plot twist.
Written after a very difficult period in the author’s life, it was a popular book and one that cemented his status as a modern satirical sort.
Control and Psychic Infection in Palahniuk’s Lullaby
“Maybe you don’t go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don’t do. The things you don’t finish.”
This is a bit like A Song of Stone (1997) by Iain Banks kind of territory here. As in, famous modern writer releasing something far from his best work.
Lullaby was the first Chuck Palahniuk book we read. Of course, we watched Fight Club a bunch circa 2001 as it was uber cool at the time.
The concept seems a bit tedious now. And its anti-capitalist stance has morphed into a capitalist’s dream as everyone buys the Fight Club merchandise and all that.
Still, it was a good idea and had a famous plot twist at the end.
Palahniuk is big on plot twists and comes up with good ideas for books, although we don’t particularly rate him as a writer. That’s not a huge deal, as a poor writer of prose can still create epic novels based off their ideas. In our opinion, anyway.
As for Lullaby, the plot kicks off following news reporter Carl Streator.
He’s investigating Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) for a feature. He speaks with various paramedics, after which he notices a pattern of children being read the same poem from one library book shortly before they died.
In other words, it’s a culling poem (a grimoire).
As the narrative unfolds (and spoilers be ahead), it emerges this book is responsible for a lot of carnage. An ancient African voodoo thingy that was responsible for euthanising OAPs. Except now it’s on the loose in urban societies and wiping out kids.
There are plenty of Fight Clubisms along the way, such as general social commentary on consumerism, identity, and heredity changes from one generation to the next.
“Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can’t understand. We hate to give up those reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation’s clothes and hair suddenly retro.”
It emerges Streator inadvertently killed his family with this poem 20 years previous.
Teaming up with a women whose daughter also died due to the work, a hunt to destroy the spellbook commences in thriller fashion.
So, yes, we don’t read many thriller type books. But Lullaby has all the thriller type stuff you would expect! It’s a very dark subject matter and we feel it’s the type of book 19 and 20 year olds will just bloody love. Kind of like, again, Iain M. Banks and his works like Wasp Factory (1984).
Very dystopian feeling, but often unpleasant for the sake of gritty edginess and that.
It’s a very divisive work and you can probably already tell from this review whether you’d want to read it or not. We quite enjoyed it, but you have to understand the awful backstory to Lullaby to know why this work came to be.
The Disturbing Background to Lullaby
The inspiration for Chuck Palahniuk’s work is pretty dark.
In 1999, his father Frederick was dating a woman called Donna Fontaine. But her abusive ex-husband (Dale Shackleford), after release from prison, hunted her down and attacked Fontaine and Frederick Palahniuk.
Unfortunately, the couple died in the incident and Shackleford was arrested and jailed.
Chuck Palahniuk was then asked by authorities to be involved in the process of deciding whether Shackleford should receive the death penalty.
His response to this grief, and stress, was to begin work on Lullaby as a cathartic release. One month after he finished the work, Shackleford was sentenced to death (October 25th 2001).
There we go, then, Lullaby was a novel born out of a horrendous situation. This can lead to great cultural works, but we do feel Palahniuk’s work falls far short of greatness. But it is an interesting read all the same.
A Few Final Thoughts on Fight Club
THE FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB IS…
Alongside The Matrix, this film made 1999 what it was. Starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, it was cooler than cool for us teenagers and 20 somethings of the era. To this day, many people from the 1999 sect of society can’t let go of Fight Club.
Our interest in it has waned a tad, but we never were totally thrilled by it. Weirdly enough, in 1999 we were more enamoured with offbeat dark comedy horror Ravenous. Antonia Bird’s film was slated by the press at the time, but is now considered a cult classic and has had a thorough reappraisal (one it fully deserves).
Whereas we think Fight Club has gone in the opposite direction. Still, entertaining fair! And we liked the bit about the soap…
On a final note, there was a Kickstarter campaign to turn Lullaby into a film. That was in May 2017, with Palahniuk set to write the script.
However, as of yet there’s no still sign of this production.
