Links:

    -FILMOGRAPHY: Chuck Palahniuk
    -The Cult: ChuckPalahniuk.net
    -PROFILE: I dare you: Chuck Palahniuk is best known for his cult novel Fight Club, but his new short story, Guts, is even more extreme - not violent so much as visceral. It is also an extraordinary piece of work. (Dan Glaister, March 13, 2004, The Guardian)
    -PROFILE: Bruise control: He gets knocked down, but he gets up again. Author Chuck Palahniuk talks to Stuart Jeffries about writing Fight Club, and his even darker novels (May 12, 2000, The Guardian)

The spark for Chuck Palahniuk's novel, Fight Club, came when the author got beaten up on holiday. "The other people who were camping near us wanted to drink and party all night long, and I tried to get them to shut up one night, and they literally beat the crap out of me. I went back to work just so bashed, and horrible looking. People didn't ask me what had happened. I think they were afraid of the answer. I realised that if you looked bad enough, people would not want to know what you did in your spare time. They don't want to know the bad things about you. And the key was to look so bad that no one would ever, ever ask. And that was the idea behind Fight Club."

Inspired by the camping trip, Palahniuk got into more fights. "I discovered that I'd never been in fights, and went, wow, that was sort of fun. That was a great release, and yeah, it hurts a little bit, but I lived through it. And it made me really curious about what I was capable of. And after that, if the opportunity arose, I didn't hesitate to get in a fight. So through the writing of the book, there was a period where I was in fights pretty regularly. My friends never wanted to go out with me, because I was always looking."

    -PROFILE: Blokes on the ropes: Blood, guts and fighting are Chuck Palahniuk's fascinations. The writer of Fight Club thinks that men need to reclaim masculinity - with their fists. (Dave Hill, November 8, 2000, The Guardian)

"Fight Club came out of something that all my peers talked about," he says. "It is that their fathers had never taught them what they needed to know about becoming men. And what I'm learning more and more is that these fathers had not been taught by their own fathers."

    -INTERVIEW: Interview With Fight Club Author Chuck Palahniuk (A DVD Talk Interview)

What is the one thing you truly want people to get out of Fight Club and your other books?

That we need to be more comfortable and more accepting of chaos, and things that we see as disastrous. Because it is only through those things we can be redeemed and change. We should welcome disaster, we should welcome things that we generally run away from. There is a redemption available in those things that is available nowhere else.

    -INTERVIEW: The Bogeyman: Portlander Chuck Palahniuk sings a dark lullaby. (Willamette Week, 9/18/2002 )
    -REVIEW: of Chioke by Chuck Palahniuk (Janet Maslin, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Choke (Tim Adams, The Observer)
    -REVIEW: of Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk (Steven Poole, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of Lullaby (Janet Maslin, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Lullaby (Virginia Heffernan, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Diary by Chuck Palahniuk (Ali Smith, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of Diary (Janet Maslin, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Diary (Laura Miller, Salon)

FILM:
    -INFO: Fight Club (1999) (Imdb.com)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: David Fincher (Imdb.com)
    -REVIEW ARCHIVES: Fight Club (1999) (mrqe.com)
    -REVIEW: of Fight Club (James Bowman)
    -REVIEW: of Fight Club (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times)
    -REVIEW: of Fight Club (James Berardinelli)
    -REVIEW: of Fight Club (ALAN VANNEMAN, Bright Lights Film Journal)
    -REVIEW: of Fight Club (Jethro Rothe-Kushel, The Film Journal)