More than a rerelease and yet less than a rewrite, this "remix" of Chuck Palahniuk's 1999 novel Invisible Monsters would seem, in theory, to be the kind of artistic onanism that gives us unnecessary "director's cuts" of movies. But reading Remix is a welcome opportunity both to examine how Palahniuk's trademark mix of pathos and blasphemy developed during his hungry years and penetrate the cloud of cult-fame and outrageousness that exists under his work's transgressive veneer.
Palahniuk states in the preface that Invisible Monsters was inspired by old Vogue magazines ("continued on page X") lying around the laundromat he frequented; here he's shuffled the chapters in a "jump to chapter X" scavenger hunt that he says was his original intent. The bones of the original story remain the same: a fashion model suffers a face-destroying accident and takes to the road with an artificially stunning fellow traveler in a quest for stolen prescription drugs and self-worth. As usual in a Palahniuk novel, no one is who they appear to be under their high fashion and support garments, and a sick society debases all who subscribe to its dictates.
Deconstructing the chapter order is a little gimmicky and doesn't much change the way the story reads. What does change Invisible Monsters in its remixed version is several long passages embedded into the "jump to" format that recount moments of Palahniuk's real life. Subtly moving, this singular writer reminds us that real life is often just as tragic, absurd and fabulously perverse as a Palahniuk novel. --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic