Fight Club’s Chuck Palahniuk: ‘Today, cults are the big thing. Secretive cults’
The novelist on transgressive literature, the ‘exhausting’ appeal of Elon Musk – and why Netflix would never accept his shocking TV pitch
by Duncan White
“There are probably a billion cults going on right now that we have no clue about.” Chuck Palahniuk is meditating on the American moment. At 62, and the author of 25 books of fiction, he has made a career diving into the murky waters of the national ID and dredging back to the surface its most transgressive desires.
From his 1996 debut, Fight Club, through to his latest, Shock Induction, Palahniuk’s propulsive novels have explored the dark recesses of the culture, his finger on a deeper pulse. And in this particularly disorienting moment, he sees some alarming precedents.
“I don’t think any historical moment is unique. I think about a similar period at the end of the Sixties, when hippie ideals and forms of protest no longer worked, people started to take more and more radical action, like the Hearst kidnapping, the Aldo Moro murder, and the Sharon Tate murders. Suddenly rich people had to have bodyguards. You had all sort of similar acts of radical action, because organised action was no longer working.
“And that’s what I thought of the other day when the Luigi Mangione shooting happened. And the two New Year’s Day attacks, in New Orleans and Las Vegas.”