Book/movie report: Fight Club by Chuck Pahlaniuk
All together now: The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
Having now broken it, yes, this book and movie are the source of that ironic meme. I saw the movie several times before ever reading the book. I never saw the surprise coming in the movie. I know I never would have picked it up in the book, even though it's far more obvious in the book. I'm just not that clever.
The book starts with the first-person unnamed narrator attending support meetings for people with horrible diseases. He doesn't have any of these diseases: this is the only way he has to make a connection with people. It's at one of these support meetings that he meets Marla Singer, whom he hates on sight, because she, too, is a faker and is ruining his experience of faking. As you can tell, this is a darkly comic book.
Shortly afterwards, he meets Tyler Durden, a charismatic guy whose goal is to destroy civilization. Good thing he meets Tyler, because a few days later, while he's out of town on his job (doing the save lives vs. spend cash calculation that saves a car company from doing costly recalls), his apartment explodes, destroying all his possessions. Hmmm. He turns to Tyler for a place to stay. Tyler agrees, on one condition: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can."
Thus is born fight club, a once-a-week gathering for rudderless males to beat the crap out of each other. The narrator loves fight club, loves beating and being beaten, the aliveness and intensity of it all. He loves hanging out with Tyler, too, which is why he's so upset when Marla and Tyler hook up.
Tyler introduces him to a lifestyle of antisocial acts. The descriptions of these are pretty disgusting, but they have to be to convey the shockingness of it all. Fight club escalates into Project Mayhem, a cult that follows Tyler's every whim and spreads like wildfire. Being a co-founder of fight club, the narrator enjoys certain perks from the minions, who are everywhere.
This book is terrific. It plunges you into this guy's life so you see and feel and taste everything he does. There isn't a spare or unnecessary word anywhere, and, despite the bizarreness of the situation, it all rings true. This is the way people act. This is how things happen.
Pahlaniuk really hits the nail on the head about men in this book. Civilization is hard. We've only been doing it for a few thousand years, after hundreds of thousands of years of wilder tribal living. We're not good at civilization yet. It doesn't fit right. It's too confining. We're dogs that aren't allowed to bite or growl. Hence, sports that model warfare or hunting or sex. Hence, video games that let us fight and kill with impunity. Hence, most wars.
The thing is, adventure and thriller and mystery novels are interesting to readers for the very reason that they allow us to escape from the confining rules of civilization temporarily and we can imagine being able to run and jump and yell and hit and shoot for a good reason. Such books contain civilization's quandary as a subtext, carefully hidden under the plot. That's why we like them.
But Fight Club brings that quandary front and center. Here are men trying to deal with civilization. Some turn to support groups. Some beat and are beaten on. Some destroy. It's not an answer. It's not a solution. It's a distraction until the real solution – a few hundred thousand more years of getting used to civilization – has time to work.
This book reminds me a lot of other books that have a protagonist rattling around uneasily in civilization's cage. The Underground Man in Notes from Underground. Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath. Yossarian in Catch-22. Alex in Clockwork Orange.
Something else that comes through in this book is what a mind can achieve. The human mind is the most powerful force on earth. It can come up with ideas so compelling that hundreds, thousands, millions, or billions of people will dedicate their very lives to making those ideas reality. Our minds can dictate reality. It's good to remember.
Having read the book, I am impressed by how the movie sticks to the book's voice. With books that are essentially internal monologues, the question is always how to film it. Do you eliminate that voice, and just show the action and dialogue? To do so robs you of some of the best lines and sharpest insights that the author intended. Do you live entirely in the narrator's head, with the rest of the world just drifting past the lens? No, because then you aren't getting the narrator's world. The film version hits the balance just right. You see the action, you feel this world, but you also get the narrator's constant description of what it all means to him, that essential spin.
And I like the movie's ending better. "You met me at a very strange time in my life." Boom.
Highly recommended, but it is violent and disgusting in parts
All together now: The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
Having now broken it, yes, this book and movie are the source of that ironic meme. I saw the movie several times before ever reading the book. I never saw the surprise coming in the movie. I know I never would have picked it up in the book, even though it's far more obvious in the book. I'm just not that clever.
The book starts with the first-person unnamed narrator attending support meetings for people with horrible diseases. He doesn't have any of these diseases: this is the only way he has to make a connection with people. It's at one of these support meetings that he meets Marla Singer, whom he hates on sight, because she, too, is a faker and is ruining his experience of faking. As you can tell, this is a darkly comic book.
Shortly afterwards, he meets Tyler Durden, a charismatic guy whose goal is to destroy civilization. Good thing he meets Tyler, because a few days later, while he's out of town on his job (doing the save lives vs. spend cash calculation that saves a car company from doing costly recalls), his apartment explodes, destroying all his possessions. Hmmm. He turns to Tyler for a place to stay. Tyler agrees, on one condition: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can."
Thus is born fight club, a once-a-week gathering for rudderless males to beat the crap out of each other. The narrator loves fight club, loves beating and being beaten, the aliveness and intensity of it all. He loves hanging out with Tyler, too, which is why he's so upset when Marla and Tyler hook up.
Tyler introduces him to a lifestyle of antisocial acts. The descriptions of these are pretty disgusting, but they have to be to convey the shockingness of it all. Fight club escalates into Project Mayhem, a cult that follows Tyler's every whim and spreads like wildfire. Being a co-founder of fight club, the narrator enjoys certain perks from the minions, who are everywhere.
This book is terrific. It plunges you into this guy's life so you see and feel and taste everything he does. There isn't a spare or unnecessary word anywhere, and, despite the bizarreness of the situation, it all rings true. This is the way people act. This is how things happen.
Pahlaniuk really hits the nail on the head about men in this book. Civilization is hard. We've only been doing it for a few thousand years, after hundreds of thousands of years of wilder tribal living. We're not good at civilization yet. It doesn't fit right. It's too confining. We're dogs that aren't allowed to bite or growl. Hence, sports that model warfare or hunting or sex. Hence, video games that let us fight and kill with impunity. Hence, most wars.
The thing is, adventure and thriller and mystery novels are interesting to readers for the very reason that they allow us to escape from the confining rules of civilization temporarily and we can imagine being able to run and jump and yell and hit and shoot for a good reason. Such books contain civilization's quandary as a subtext, carefully hidden under the plot. That's why we like them.
But Fight Club brings that quandary front and center. Here are men trying to deal with civilization. Some turn to support groups. Some beat and are beaten on. Some destroy. It's not an answer. It's not a solution. It's a distraction until the real solution – a few hundred thousand more years of getting used to civilization – has time to work.
This book reminds me a lot of other books that have a protagonist rattling around uneasily in civilization's cage. The Underground Man in Notes from Underground. Tom Joad in Grapes of Wrath. Yossarian in Catch-22. Alex in Clockwork Orange.
Something else that comes through in this book is what a mind can achieve. The human mind is the most powerful force on earth. It can come up with ideas so compelling that hundreds, thousands, millions, or billions of people will dedicate their very lives to making those ideas reality. Our minds can dictate reality. It's good to remember.
Having read the book, I am impressed by how the movie sticks to the book's voice. With books that are essentially internal monologues, the question is always how to film it. Do you eliminate that voice, and just show the action and dialogue? To do so robs you of some of the best lines and sharpest insights that the author intended. Do you live entirely in the narrator's head, with the rest of the world just drifting past the lens? No, because then you aren't getting the narrator's world. The film version hits the balance just right. You see the action, you feel this world, but you also get the narrator's constant description of what it all means to him, that essential spin.
And I like the movie's ending better. "You met me at a very strange time in my life." Boom.
Highly recommended, but it is violent and disgusting in parts
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