Mendelsund’s Theories Represented in Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters Remix Anonymous College

Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters Remix reflects multiple theories presented in Peter Mendelsund’s What We See When We Read. Throughout Palahniuk’s episodic novel, the reader is taken, nonlinearly, through the life of protagonist, Shannon McFarland. McFarland, a former fashion model, purposely injures her face in attempt to start a new life for herself. Her friend, Brandy Alexander, an exuberant transgender whom Shannon realizes was her brother, teaches Shannon that a person’s past should not be crucial to their future. In the novel, Palahniuk tells the reader what to see and what to imagine, a theory which is reinforced in Mendelsund’s What We See When We Read. Because Invisible Monsters Remix is organized asynchronously and the reader is told what to see when reading, the story is made into a mere, fast-paced spectacle, but is only meaningful in the end as the climax begins to fall and the story’s pace diminishes.

According to Peter Mendelsund, “every narrative is meant to be transposed” or “imaginatively translated” (Mendelsund 207). Although, in Invisible Monsters Remix, instead of letting you imagine the story independently, Palahniuk instructs you on how exactly you should. At the beginning of almost every chapter, for...