Fight Club

By: Chuck Palahniuk

Narrated by: Jim Colby

Every weekend, in basements and car parks across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything.

Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter and dark, anarchic genius. And it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on the world...

©1996 Chuck Palahniuk (P)2008 Recorded Books, LLC

LOCAL FIGHT CLUB

This book is great. I enjoyed the story, and it was great to hear more the movie allowed. This ending is better then the movie. It is different but simular to the other Palahniuk books. Still a great read.

...the first rule of fight club...

...is you don't talk about Fight Club. Well, the book was very helpful in understanding the details of the mental illness that is present in the story. The movie left a lot to be desired in this realm. This is a well written story that helps one better understand the mind of a dissociative client.

No-No, Ya-Ya

A skillfully turbulent novel that wields a wallop in relatively short order (less than 5 1/2 hours). Chuck P wrote this as a male counter to the plethora of novels on best seller shelves in the early 1990s in which women get together for a social gathering such as The Joy Luck Club, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and How to Make an American Quilt.

The first person narrator is struggling with insomnia and finds relief in impersonating a patient or survivor of a terminal illness and attending several support groups. He then meets Tyler Durden, a cinema projectionist, waiter and anarchist, who the narrator describes as "funny and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world." He moves in with Tyler after an explosive device destroys his apartment.

Together, they start a Fight Club where white collar guys get together on the weekend to pummel one another then show up at work on Mondays with the black and blues with a few teeth loose. The basic idea is:

"I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived... and I see squandering... an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy [crap] we don't need. We're the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact, and we're very very pi$ $ed off.”

But underlying this rage against the Man, is a concept familiar in 12-step circles:

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. ...” "The lower you fall, the higher you fly." And, "only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit."

Things quickly evolve (or devolve) into a more exclusive club of the most loyal Fight Club members in Tyler Durden's anarchic "Project Mayhem." I won't spoil the rest if you are like me when buying this book, and have not read the book or seen the movie.


A remarkable rambunctious romp.

Excellent

Great book. Great narrator. The themes and issues raised are even more relevant today than when it was written. Read this one then see the movie.

good for context

I think I prefer the movie; the buildings blowing up is a better ending than the psyche ward. Other than that, the only difference between what was written and what was screened is the myriad recipes and a murder mystery dinner. They're worth almost as much as the context behind the film.