Now I understand how a novelist develops a cult following: offer brilliant but accessible indictments of contemporary life loaded with insightful catch-phrases and pop-culture references, all delivered in a literary cadence so intoxicating that the reader cannot help but slurp up every page. Whose Kool-Aid have I been drinking? That of the literary messiah, Chuck Palahniuk's. Judging by the zealous feedback on Internet message boards, Palahniuk is gathering quite a flock. Of course, having Brad Pitt cast in the first movie adapted from one of your books (Fight Club) doesn't hurt sales. Only a year ago Palahniuk churned out Choke, a hilarious, rhythmic chronicle of a sex addict who stages restaurant choking episodes to pay his bills. Despite (or perhaps because of) its invitingly degenerate message and the author's black humor and jump-cut delivery, Choke found mainstream acceptance.
But don't think for one moment that Palahniuk has sacrificed his message with the quick, follow-up release of Lullaby. Through the self-deprecating eyes of a hack reporter who stumbles upon the lethal powers of an African culling song, Palahniuk delivers an absurd, stunningly precise broadside against our too-much- to-say society.
Investigating several cases of sudden infant death syndrome, hack reporter Carl Streator discovers a common trait: a copy of the book Poems and Rhymes Around the World, always open to the same lullaby. It doesn't take long before Carl unlocks the power of this homicidal bedtime song, a deliciously evil metaphor for the invasive, predatory impact of information overload.
Determined to destroy every known copy of Poems and Rhymes, Streator embarks on an odyssey into the American countryside — and its intellectual conscience.
Along the way, he encounters a menagerie of hyperbolic characters.
The only weakness — please forgive my blasphemy — of Lullaby is its dependence on the proverbial road trip for its action. This is a concept Palahniuk has relied on in his previous books, so I wonder how he might write a more stationery tale. Then again, we're not supposed to question God.—Peter Schorsch
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2002.
