“And What If You Can’t Forget It? … What If It Stays in Your Head, Repeating Itself … ?”: Reading Chuck Palahniuk’s Horror Trilogy (<i>Lullaby</i>, <i>Diary</i>, and <i>Haunted</i>) for Obsessions and Compulsions

Abstract

This essay argues that one of the distinguishing characteristics of Chuck Palahniuk’s self-described “Horror Trilogy” of novels, Lullaby, Diary, and Haunted, is their representation of obsessions, compulsions, and obsessive–compulsive disorders. This essay analyses these representations from a variety of different perspectives, including medical and psychiatric approaches, clinical and self-help narratives, and biocultural readings emanating from cultural history and critical disability studies. It is demonstrated that the novels reflect a range of the debates that arise from these competing approaches, and the points of similarity and difference in the readings produced are identified. Palahniuk’s representations, it is suggested, must be seen in the contexts of a number of his recurrent thematic preoccupations, and of his engagement with existential comedy. Ultimately, this essay suggests that Palahniuk’s representations of obsessions, compulsions, and OCD must be seen as multi-faceted and protean, as befitting the awareness of the complicated current debates about their conceptualisation that the novels display.

Keywords

• Palahniuk
• obsessions
• compulsions
• obsessive–compulsive disorders
• horror
• existential comedy