Review: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Publishers Weekly Summary

Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inflicting a violent anarchy upon the land, Palahniuk's apocalyptic first novel is clearly not for the faint of heart.

The unnamed (and extremely unreliable) narrator, who makes his living investigating accidents for a car company in order to assess their liability, is combating insomnia and a general sense of anomie by attending a steady series of support-group meetings for the grievously ill, at one of which (testicular cancer) he meets a young woman named Marla. She and the narrator get into a love triangle of sorts with Tyler Durden, a mysterious and gleefully destructive young man with whom the narrator starts a fight club, a secret society that offers young professionals the chance to beat one another to a bloody pulp. 

Mayhem ensues, beginning with the narrator's condo exploding and culminating with a terrorist attack on the world's tallest building. Writing in an ironic deadpan and including something to offend everyone, Palahniuk is a risky writer who takes chances galore, especially with a particularly bizarre plot twist he throws in late in the book. 

Caustic, outrageous, bleakly funny, violent and always unsettling, Palahniuk's utterly original creation will make even the most jaded reader sit up and take notice.

First Impressions

Today I tackle one of the modern classics of our time.

First off, let me get my (controversial) opinion out of the way--if you've seen the movie, you've read the book. While this is a rare feat in the history of movie adaptations, it also happens to be true. Apart from a different ending, the guts of the story remain intact with only minor liberties taken in terms of dialogue and story.

What struck me with Fight Club was my inability to find the unnamed narrator and his close companion, Tyler Durden, to be sympathetic. It is Marla that deserves the bulk of our sympathy--and even that is a stretch--mostly on account of how she is treated by the two main characters.

One of the unspoken laws of writing a novel is that you create a relatable and sympathetic protagonist for the reader to identify with. Palahniuk takes these laws and shits all over them. In fact, in many ways that is the endearing quality of Palahniuk--he's uncompromising and willing to make the reader squirm when it comes to implicit social conventions, be it subject matter, philosophical outlook or writing style.

I'm not sure if it's because I saw the film before I read the book, but the twist towards the end of the novel seemed too heavily foreshadowed early on, as Palahniuk reiterated the connection between the two main characters incessantly.

From both a reader's and writer's perspective, this is a very short read. I'd be surprised if the book was any more than 60,000 words, which, could serve as a strength or a weakness, depending on the author and the strength of the text itself. In this case it works in Palahniuk's favour.

Final Thoughts:

Fight Club is exactly what one should expect from Palahniuk: chaotic, disjointed prose that is oftentimes a pain in the ass. But all is forgiven, because the man knows how to write a grisly novel that forces the reader to question the superficial and transient nature of humanity, and demands that we shackle off the self imposed chains of the working dead.

I highly recommend this.

PS: I am steadily moving closer to that first blogging landmark, the big 100. Get me there, and I will hold a contest. Amazon and cash come to mind. Yes, that is a bribe.

Toodles!