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Fight Club ()



Most folks are probably familiar with the basic plot of Fight Club by now, from the film if not the book: angry young white men, alienated from their meaningless jobs and empty material pursuits find release and meaning by beating each other up and being beaten in an underground bare-fisted boxing club. Initially one holds out hope that this is some kind of satire, a hope that is boosted early on in a passage that suggests the possibility of genuine social insight:
[I] knew my dad for about six years, but I don't remember anything. My dad, he starts a new family in a new town about every six years. This isn't so much like a family as it's like he sets up a franchise.

What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women.
There lies the basis for a decent book, with participation in the fight clubs representing a sorry parody of manhood. But the hope dies aborning as it becomes apparent that Mr. Palahniuk's message is instead a kind of anarcho-nihilist claptrap that he seems to take seriously. As the initial fight clubs evolve (or devolve) into something called Project Mayhem the narrator tells us that: "we wanted to blast the world free of history." And a bit later: "This was the goal of Project Mayhem...the complete and right away destruction of civilization." This is obviously asinine, but might be forgiven in a mere fiction. However, various interviews with the author indicate his personal philosophy is exactly this inane, for instance, -INTERVIEW: The Bogeyman: Portlander Chuck Palahniuk sings a dark lullaby. (Willamette Week, 9/18/2002 ) :
Oyster in Lullaby and Tyler Durden in Fight Club are basically terrorists trying to destroy our culture. Is this something you advocate?

If it means a better world eventually, I would say, "Of course!" Creating something new depends on destroying something existing.

Are you saying Osama bin Laden has the right idea?

No, I can't say he's doing the right thing. He's not going about it in a way I condone.
What more need you say about someone who has merely stylistic differences with Osama bin Laden than that he too is evil, just "going about it" in a different way.


(Reviewed:)

Grade: (F)


Websites:

See also:

Movies
Chuck Palahniuk Links:

    -FILMOGRAPHY: Chuck Palahniuk
    -The Cult: ChuckPalahniuk.net
    -
   
-PROFILE: ‘Fight Club’ creator Chuck Palahniuk refuses to allow censorship stop him from pushing storytelling boundaries (FOX News, September 17, 2023)
    -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)
    -INTERVIEW: ‘Who doesn’t think they’re an outsider?’: David Fincher on hitmen, ‘incels’ and Spider-Man’s ‘dumb’ origin story (Steve Rose, 10/27/23, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: Where Are The Men? Part II: Men are going to demanding churches, or to Fight Club (Rod Dreher, Jul 18, 2022, American Conservative)
    -ESSAY: What incels get wrong about Fight Club: Lost boys can't see past the film's masculine eros (Matt Feeney, September 7, 2024, UnHerd)
    -ESSAY: The First Rule of Making ‘Fight Club’: Talk About ‘Fight Club’: In an excerpt from the new book ‘Best. Movie. Year. Ever.,” David Fincher, Edward Norton, and the minds behind ‘Fight Club’ talk about the bare-knuckled, bloody battle to bring Chuck Palahniuk’s book to the big screen (Brian Raftery Mar 26, 2019, Ringer)
    -ESSAY: David Fincher: ‘I’m not responsible’ for the far-right embrace of ‘Fight Club’ (Christopher Rosen. October 31, 2023, Golderby)
    -
   
-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)

Book-related and General Links:

    -
   
-ESSAY: Why We Need Fight Clubs: Revisiting David Fincher's Fight Club. (Christine Emba, Sep 10, 2024, Wisdom of Crowds)