Fight Club: A Novel

How could this be a book?

Is that even possible?

The movie alone was so unbelievable that if it were done wrong, it would've been a horrible mess. But it was done just right, and the results were amazing.

One of my friends had read the book and told me on many occasions, "You've got to read the book." I told him that I've already seen the movie, and again, he says to me, "You've got to read the book. It's great, and it's actually different than the movie in a lot of parts."

That worried me, because I absolutely LOVED the movie. It's one of my favorites. I remember trying to read a book that another one of my favorite movies, "The Fan," was based on, and it was not an enjoyable experience. The book was COMPLETELY different from the movie, and not in a good way. I ended up never finishing it.

So, I was hesitant at first, but about a year or two ago I decided to give it a shot. And am I ever glad that I did. "Fight Club" is an outstanding novel. The writing is so refreshing and shows us the mind of a promising new author, Chuck Palahniuk. This was his very first novel, and I found that so amazing. Because this was one incredible debut. I have read plenty of novels all from different kinds of authors, but I have NEVER read a debut as incredible or impressive as this.

To give you a brief idea of what the book is about without giving away too much is it revolves around the narrator, an insomniac who can't get a grip on his life. With insomnia everything is a distraction. He can't focus on his job, he can't focus on people, and most of all, he can't focus on his life. Soon enough, he meets a slippery soap salesman, Tyler Durden, who is about to show our narrator a new outlook on life. And this is where they invent "Fight Club." It doesn't take long before everything starts to get out of control....WAY out of control, to one shocking climax and finale. (Don't think you have the answers because you've seen the movie. TRUST me on this one.)

This is a humorous novel with some darkness to it. It is both funny and thrilling at the same time. The book is filled with some of the most memorable lines; some that were used in the movie, others that were not. This is dark satire at its finest.

Know this; reading the book and watching the movie are two different experiences. Yes there are similarities, and there are differences. The only thing is that unlike "The Fan," the differences in the novel "Fight Club" really work and doesn't take away anything from anyone who was a fan of the film. It still stays true to the idea and story. Chances are you will enjoy the differences. That alone gives you a reason for reading, since you know it's going to be a different ride.

After reading "Fight Club," I knew that Chuck Palahniuk had a unique voice and talent. And I have found myself to be right from reading some of his other novels. (So far I have read this, "Choke," and "Lullaby.") This is a very easy book to read. Not for people who get grossed out easily, though. If you have seen the movie, read the book. If not, still read the book. I can't really say which is better, the movie or the book. To me, they were both different experiences, and I found them both just as enjoyable. But one thing for sure, all the credit should be given to Palahniuk. After all, "Fight Club" came from his mind. A terrific read and one of my favorites.


An exhilirating read   January 23, 2002
 76 out of 81 found this review helpful

Usually great books are either turned into mediocre films or else great films are made from mediocre books (and we won't even get into the sordid details of the novelizations). Fight Club is one of the rare instances where a great film was made from a great book. It is perhaps unfair to mention the film version while discussing the book as they are actually two very different animals. (And animal is the right word -- perhaps uniquely amongst contemporary novelists, Chuck Palahniuk writes novels that seem to live in the reader's hands, often threatening at any minute to lunge for the throat.) While most of the film's incidents are in the book and much of the razor-sharp dialouge is reproduced directly from the page, the book actually has a far greater satiric edge than the film. Whereas the film used the story as a celebration of nihilism, the book is far too self-aware to allow itself to truly celebrate anything. As such, it becomes less a call to action and more a devastatingly real portrait of a society that has become so commercialized and codified that even the once primal act of revolution becomes just another submission to pop culture.

Fight Club is the story of an unnamed narrator, an insomniac yuppie who spends his days helping insurance companies get out of having to pay their claims. He wanders through a meaningless life until he discovers the emotional release of attending therapy groups for people suffering from various deadly (and rather embarressing) diseases -- all of which the narrator pretends to have. When the arrival of another "faker" (the wonderfully dark Marla Singer, whose role is far less central in the book than in the film), the narrator finds even the shallow comfort of testicular cancer self-help groups has been taken away from him. Luckily for him, he happens to meet Tyler Durden around this time. And it is Tyler who introduces him to the concept of fighting. What starts as a few rounds in a bar parking lot soon transforms into the nationwide movement known as Fight Club. Every night, yuppies gather together and proceed to beat each other up and get in touch with the pure destructive instinct that society has forced them to suppress. From this violent but relatively benign concept, Tyler sets out to build up an even more extreme movement and our narrator finds his own life suddenly spiraling out of control. To go into any greater details would be unfair to those who have seen neither the film nor the book. All that need be said is that the story never goes where you expect it too and the final twists -- while seeming a bit outlandish at first -- ultimately make a great deal of somewhat sickening sense. As complex as the plot eventually becomes, Palahnuik handles it all with a sparse, deceptively calm style that makes this book the literal epitome of a "page turner" -- once you start reading, you are hooked and it is truly impossible to exit the hauntingly and humorously dark world he's created until you reach the end. Palahnuik proves himself to be an admirably subtle humorist and perhaps the funniest parts of the book comes from the reader's sudden realization that Fight Club has eventually become not so much a group of guerilla freedom fighters in the culture wars but instead simply a twisted mirror image of the weepy self-help groups that it seems to stand against. While the film's final twist remains the same in the book, the end results are far more different. While I personally favor the film's ending, both book and film build up to a strong conclusion that will stick with the reader long after completion. Both the film and the book are truly original works of American Art and to see or read one without the other is to miss out on two exhilirating, similar but ultimately quite different experiences.


FIGHT CLUB ROCKS - 4 STAR SPECTACLE   May 4, 2000
 53 out of 60 found this review helpful

Chuck Palahniuk's debut novel, "Fight Club," is one of the greatest, provocative, and enlightening books written for our generation. It's a must-read, with a brilliant story, a writing style wonderfully crafted to depict the real world for as disgusting as it is, and a mischievous character who goes by the name of Tyler Durden, who's out to change the grotesque problems of modern-day society, for good.

--And great brain food. There are some issues and statements given in this book that really make you think especially about how we're defining "progress" for humanity. How do we define success and progress, but by how big of a house we have, or how much we have in the bank, or how pretty our wives look? In this book, the anti-society society "Fight Club" determines success by how little you have.

"Only until we lose everything, are we free to do anything."

Tyler Durden, Fight Club--the movie

Modern-day consumer-driven cultures have begun to press down on people to the breaking point, and now Tyler Durden has started his own therapy group that is growing rapidly in number by each session. It's a therapy group, unlike most of the others, and instead of giving you guided spiritual meditation and opening your chakras, it promotes violence, pain, and self-destruction. It's a group where aggressive males are sporting organized fight sessions to empower themselves by hitting rock bottom. Its called "Fight Club," and it's rapidly spreading in bars all over the United States.

But I've probably said too much already. "First rule of fight club is you cannot talk about fight club, and the second rule of fight club is you cannot talk about fight club."

It's one of the fastest books I've ever read, and it left me completely hooked, all the way until the end. The only thing I didn't like was all the room for expansion. Palahniuk really could have exploded on some of his ideas and perspectives a whole lot more, but it was still a great book and very reader worthy.

Another dissapointment was the cost for this book. After 20th Century Fox made the snazzy cover art for the book, they also jacked up the price to 13 bucks a copy, which is very ironic, especially when Fight Club's motto was to screw perfection and neatness. But that's show-bizz.

My recommendation: Watch the movie first, get blown away, then read the book and get more in-depth with the story.

"Fight Club" is an inspiring and completely awesome story. Watch the movie. Read the book. Both are great, and after you've been as enlightened as much as possible, start your own Fight Club. :)


Huh huh, Beavis, fascism is cool. Yeah Butt Head, huh huh.   July 26, 2002
 49 out of 89 found this review helpful

Chances are you already know the story. Ole Jack is down in the dumps because his job and life suck and he has to go to support groups for catharsis. Then he meets a fine fellow named Tyler Durden, and they become best friends by beating each other up. Then they start a fight club so other men can come and be cool just like them. If that was the extent of it, I may have actually sort of liked the book. It's kind of a clever idea. Unfortunately, that is where Palahniuk's witticism, humour, cleverness and originality end. For good. There have been genuinely insightful books that study the human inclination to violence. Octave Mirbeau's The Torture Garden is such a book. Fight Club is not such a book.

We have a few singularly distasteful scenes involving the manufacture of soap, the cinema, and the fighting in the fight club itself. These may seem gratuitous, but they actually served an important purpose - the purpose of establishing, once and for all, how vile the characters of this book truly are. Not that that is advertant - Palahniuk seems to think you should like them. His Tyler is generally presented as being likeable. After all, he revolted against his role, became "nonconformist," and started ranting about materialism and philosophy. He also likes to talk about freeing oneself from society (by fighting in fight clubs). He does that last bit a lot, because Palahniuk thinks it is deep. By the time he starts attracting legions of followers who beat each other up for him, the message is clear - we are supposed to think very highly of him, because he isn't the way society wants him to be and is "unique." Even when he has these followers go kill people and commit sundry acts of terrorism.

Inexplicably, the irony is lost on most people. Do fans of this book realize that Tyler's "philosophy" does not free anyone, or make anyone stronger, in the entire book? It turns men into blackshirts and stormtroopers - faceless cultists who are even denied names. It destroys their dignity more than society ever did. But Palahniuk has an intellectual rationalization to explain this away! According to him, this is _the way all men are_ deep down inside, and thus, Tyler is really cool and admirable! Well...gosh. Hey, Chuck, if it's good for men to be faceless drones with no will of their own, why rebel in the first place against this horribly oppressive society of yours?

Now, you could say that the book doesn't advocate Tyler's manipulative, narcissistic, destructive worldview. I deny this claim. There is no one in the book who doesn't relish it, even though Jack does stop its spread in the end (in the truly awful ending - more on that in a bit). There is nothing in the book to counteract it. There are no opposing ideas presented. You can come up with a complex thought process that concludes that this is really only an argument _against_ violence, but this conclusion will be based upon nothing that is in, you know, the actual _book_. Because let's make no bones about it - we are meant to like Tyler. I've seen keychains that quote him. All the fans of this book quote Tyler. He's meant to be quoted. He's presented as witty and charming and intelligent and strong and unique, and his megalomaniacal escapades are as well. We are meant to admire him. We even have a particularly contrived and false scene in which Jack forces a man - at gunpoint - to "go and follow his dreams," to reinforce the message - that Tyler is good, society is bad. And the particularly ludicrous ending does nothing to dispel this. You see, thinking that it wasn't enough to write such a fine book already, Palahniuk decided to jump on the "hey, that reality was merely an illusion! THIS is the real reality! it's different!" bandwagon. The result is as gimmicky as you'd think, and more importantly - it serves to "reinforce" this poisonous hogwash about how all males are really just like Tyler (a conclusion based on the author's thorough study of psychology, no doubt). Everything in this book comes back to the coolness of Tyler - a bully who read the Cliff Notes to Nietzsche and uses them to manipulate people who want someone to tell them that their utter failure in life is not their fault so badly that they're willing to die for it. For that's what Tyler is - Palahniuk's poetization of the talentless, worthless, yet very malicious failure. Read the scene in the cinema and you should see just how shallow and worthless Tyler's "rebellion" really is. (Ah, picking on families with children because they represent your hated society, Tyler, what a brave rebel you are.) Again, I must reiterate that this, according to Palahniuk, is something we're supposed to admire.

I've seen a lot of intelligent, thoughtful and kind human beings talk about this book as if it were some kind of stunning intellectual achievement. This baffles me beyond belief. I would have thought that women would be the first to see through the wall of testosterone that clouds the mediocre vileness of this book, but apparently the opposite is the case. Have our standards gone so low that anyone can come along, bang out an utter hack that says "society is bad!" in the crassest way possible, and be recognized as some kind of profound thinker?


One of my favorite contemporary novels   February 24, 2000
 48 out of 76 found this review helpful

I'll admit that I'd never heard of Fight Club before the movie, but I'm incredibly glad I found out it was a book first. This is an amazing piece of fiction. I agree with one of the previous reviewers in saying that I wish I had read the book before seeing the movie, but what the hell, they're both awesome. If you don't know anything about the story, there's this guy (no name is ever given) who goes to support groups so he can sleep at night (he has insomnia). He meets a man named Tyler Durden, then his house blows up. So he moves in with Tyler, and before long the two are totally embroiled in the underground organization they create called Fight Club. Fight Club evolves into something more dangerous, and the narrator starts to question, but he can't find Tyler. It's a really quick read, but it's awesome. The movie is great too, but if you haven't seen it yet, read the book first. The movie follows the book pretty closely, although the endings are a bit different.