ABSTRACT |
Chuck Palahniuk’s fourth novel, Choke (2001), firmly secured—and
augmented considerably—its author’s reputation as one of America’s
foremost literary enfants terribles. In addition to his trademark
plot intricacy, narrative twists, mordant satire and grotesque wit,
Choke contains an unusually high level of sexual explicitness
dexterously and povocatively interwoven with Christian imagery. The
novel’s exploration of the particularly turbulent identity crisis of its
white male narrator indicates a continuing interest, on the part of this
writer, in a comprehensive revision of dominant forms of masculinity in
contemporary U.S. culture. Furthermore, the inclusion of a relatively
straightforward confrontation with the narrator’s mother suggests a
certain will towards a more ambitious, decidedly uncompromising critique
of the gender system.
This
paper attempts to probe these various conflicts through a combination of
David Savran’s (1998) study of reflexive sadomasochism as a crucial
paradigm for the representation of contemporary white American
masculinity, and a Lacanian reading of the novel’s examination and
proposed disruptions of the Symbolic Order.
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