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Fight Club
First edition cover
Author	Chuck Palahniuk
Cover artist	Jacket design by Michael Ian Kaye Photograph by Melissa Hayden Soap by Proverbial Inc.
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Satirical novel
Publisher	W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date	August 1996
Media type	print (hardcover, paperback, & library binding) & audio cassette
Pages	208 pp (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 0-393-03976-5 (first edition, hardcover)

Fight Club is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The book follows the experiences of an anonymous protagonist struggling with his way of life and changes in American pop culture masculinity. To overcome this, he establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.^[1]

In 1999, director David Fincher adapted the novel into a film of the same name.

Contents 1 History 2 Plot summary 3 Characters 3.1 Narrator 3.2 Tyler Durden 3.3 Marla Singer 3.4 Robert "Bob" Paulson 4 Motifs 5 Themes 6 Awards 7 U.S. editions 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 External links

[edit] History

Chuck Palahniuk first tried publishing a novel Invisible Monsters but publishers rejected it as it was considered too disturbing, so he concentrated on writing Fight Club. Initially it was published as a short story (chapter 6 in the novel) in the compilation Pursuit of Happiness, but he then expanded it to novel length.^[2]

The novel was re-issued in 1999 and 2004, the latter re-issue has an author's introduction, about the conception and popularity of novel and movie. In 1999 the book was banned by the People's Republic of China government for giving instructions on how to make various explosive devices including napalm, C4, and dynamite.^{[citation needed]}

The original, hardcover edition of Fight Club was well reviewed and won some literary awards. It then went to Hollywood, generating cinematic-adaptation interest, and, in 1999, screenwriter Jim Uhls and director David Fincher did so. The film "failed",^[3] but nevertheless a cult following emerged with the DVD edition and as a result an original, hardcover edition of the novel is now a collector's item.^[4]

The club is based on fist fights that Palahniuk once fought while camping.^[5] In interviews, the writer has said he does not know, yet still is approached by aficionados wanting to know—Where is the local fight club?—insisting there is no such real organization, like in the novel. However, he has heard of real, existing fight clubs, some said existing before the novel. The novel's current introduction refers to actual, fight-club-style mischief, by a "waiter from one of London's two finest restaurants" who said he ejaculated into Margaret Thatcher's food. Likewise the support groups; as a volunteer, he took terminally ill people to them. Moreover, Project Mayhem is lightly based on the Cacophony Society, of which he is a member, and other events derive from stories told to him.^[6]

Beyond his public and private lives, Fight Club's cultural impact is evidenced by U.S. teenagers' and techies' establishment of fight clubs.^[7] Pranks, such as food-tampering, have been repeated by fans of the book, documented in his essay "Monkey Think, Monkey Do",^[8] in the book Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories and in the introduction to the 2004 re-issue of Fight Club. Other fans have been inspired to pro-social activity, telling him it inspired them to return to college.^[2]

Besides Fight Club, few of Palahniuk's writings have been adapted, although his novel Choke was made into a movie in 2008. In 2004 Fight Club was to be transformed into musical theater, developed by Palahniuk, Fincher, and Trent Reznor.^[9] A non-musical version for the stage was penned by Dylan Yates in 2006 and was performed once at Seattle's Absurd Reality Theatre.[1]^{[citation needed]}

In 2008, Fincher & Pitt released the film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Hidden within a scene where Button (Pitt) has dinner with his estranged father is a sly reference to Fight Club. He asks him, "Do you still visit the house on Paper Street?"

[edit] Plot summary

The novel tells the story of an anonymous protagonist who hates his job and his lifestyle; he works as a Product Recall Specialist for an anonymous car company, responsible for organizing product recalls of defective models only if the corresponding cost-benefit analysis indicates that the recall-cost is less than the cost of out-of-court settlements paid to the relatives of the killed (paralleling the Ford Pinto's safety problems and recall). His dissatisfaction, combined with his frequent business trips through several time zones, is mentally taxing enough that he develops severe insomnia.

At his doctor's recommendation (who thinks insomnia is not a serious ailment), the narrator attends a support group for men suffering from testicular cancer, to "see what real suffering is like". He finds that crying and listening to the emotional problems of suffering people is an emotional release and is able to sleep again, but becomes dependent on attending these meetings. Although not dying like the others, he is never caught being a "tourist" until meeting Marla Singer, a woman who attends the support groups as well. She reflects the narrator's "tourism", reminding him that he is a faker and doesn't belong there. He begins to hate Marla for keeping him from crying, and, therefore, from sleeping. After a confrontation, they agree to attend separate support group meetings to avoid each other.

Shortly after this incident, his life changes radically on meeting Tyler Durden, a charismatic psychopath who works low-paying night jobs in order to perform deviant behaviour on the job. After his confrontation with Marla, an explosion destroys the narrator's condominium apartment; he asks Tyler if he can stay at his house. Tyler agrees, but asks for something in return: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can".^[10] Their fight, in a bar's parking lot, attract local, socially disenchanted men; "Fight Club", a new form of psychological support group is born, mental therapy via bare-knuckle fighting, set to rules:

1. You don't talk about fight club.
2. You don't talk about fight club.^[11]
3. When someone says stop, or goes limp, even if he's just faking it, the fight is over.^[12]
4. Only two guys to a fight.
5. One fight at a time.
6. They fight without shirts or shoes.
7. The fights go on as long as they have to.
8. If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.

– Fight Club, pages 48–50^[13]

Later in the book, the mechanic tells the narrator two new rules of the fight club. The first new rule is that nobody is the center of the fight club except for the two men fighting. The second new rule is that the fight club will always be free.

Meanwhile, Tyler rescues Marla from a suicide attempt, and the two initiate an affair that confounds the narrator. Throughout this affair, Marla is mostly unaware of the existence of fight club and completely unaware of Tyler and the narrator's interaction with one another.^[14]

As the fight club's membership grows (and, unbeknownst to the narrator, spreads to other cities across the country), Tyler begins to use it to spread anti-consumerist ideas and recruits its members to participate in increasingly elaborate attacks on corporate America. This was originally the narrator's idea, but Tyler takes control from him. Tyler eventually gathers the most devoted fight club members (referred to as "space monkeys") and forms "Project Mayhem," a cult-like organization that trains itself as an army to bring down modern civilization. This organization, like the fight club, is controlled by a set of rules:

1. You don't ask questions.
2. You don't ask questions.
3. No excuses.
4. No lies.
5. You have to trust Tyler.

– Fight Club, pages 119, 122, 125^[15]

The narrator starts off as a loyal participant in Project Mayhem, seeing it as the next step for the fight club. However, he becomes uncomfortable with the increasing destructiveness of their activities after it results in the death of Bob.

As the narrator endeavors to stop Tyler and his followers, he learns that he is Tyler;^[16] Tyler is not a separate person, but a separate personality. As the narrator struggled with his hatred for his job and his consumerist lifestyle, his mind began to form a new personality that was able to escape from the problems of his normal life. The final straw came when he met Marla; Tyler was truly born as a distinct personality when the narrator's unconscious desire for Marla clashed with his conscious hatred for her. Having come to the surface, Tyler's personality has been slowly taking over the narrator's mind, which he planned to take over completely by making the narrator's real personality more like his. The narrator's bouts of insomnia had actually been Tyler's personality surfacing; Tyler would be active whenever the narrator was "sleeping." This allowed Tyler to manipulate the narrator into helping him create the fight club; Tyler learned recipes for creating explosives when he was in control and used this knowledge to blow up his own condo.

The narrator also learns that Tyler plans to blow up the Parker-Morris building (the fictional "tallest building in the world") in the downtown area of the city using homemade bombs created by Project Mayhem. The actual reason for the explosion is to destroy the nearby national museum. During the explosion, Tyler plans to die as a martyr for Project Mayhem, taking the narrator's life as well. Realizing this, the narrator sets out to stop Tyler, although Tyler is always thinking ahead of him. In his attempts to stop Tyler, he makes peace with Marla (who has always known the narrator as Tyler) and explains to her that he is not Tyler Durden. The narrator is eventually forced to confront Tyler on the roof of the building. The narrator is held captive at gunpoint by Tyler, forced to watch the destruction wrought on the museum by Project Mayhem. Marla comes to the roof with one of the support groups. Tyler vanishes, as “Tyler was his hallucination, not hers.”^[17]

With Tyler gone, the narrator waits for the bomb to explode and kill him. However, the bomb malfunctions because Tyler mixed paraffin into the explosives, which the narrator says early in the book "has never, ever worked for me." Still alive and holding the gun that Tyler used to carry on him, the narrator decides to make the first decision that is truly his own: he puts the gun in his mouth and shoots himself. Some time later, he awakens in a hospital, believing that he is dead and has gone to heaven. The book ends with members of Project Mayhem who work at the institution telling the narrator that their plans still continue, and that they are expecting Tyler to come back.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Narrator

An employee of an unnamed car company specializing in recalls. He is extremely depressed and suffers from insomnia, which is later revealed to be connected to his dissociative identity disorder. The narrator of Fight Club sets a precedent for the protagonists of later novels by Palahniuk, especially in the case of male protagonists, as they often shared his anti-heroic and transgressive behavior. The narrator in Fight Club is unnamed throughout the novel. Most avid fans or readers call the protagonist by the name of "Joe" because of the constant use of the name Joe such as "I am Joe's boiling point". Contrary to popular belief, Tyler Durden is not the narrator's name, as he is the narrator's alter ego. Although some people believe Joe is the name of the character, the quotes "I am Joe's (blank)" refer back to the narrator reading a book of an organ writing in the first person, which read "I am Joe's medulla oblongata". However, the film adaptation replaces "Joe" with "Jack", and on the DVD commentary featuring the author and screenwriter, Palahniuk refers to the narrator as "Jack". A more distinct hint of the narrator's name can be seen in the movie during the office scene with his boss, as the narrator refers to himself as "Jack" ("I am Jack's total lack of surprise").

[edit] Tyler Durden

A nihilistic neo-Luddite, radical environmentalist and anarcho-primitivist with a strong hatred for consumer culture. "Because of his nature,"^[18] Tyler works night jobs where he causes problems for the companies; he also makes soap to supplement his income and create the ingredients for his bomb making which will be put to work later with his fight club. He is the co-founder of fight club (it was his idea to have the fight that led to it). He later launches Project Mayhem, from which he and the members make various attacks on consumerism. Tyler is blonde, as by the narrator's comment "in his everything-blonde way". He frequently describes (and acts on) his opposition to mass society, materialism, property, capitalism, and almost all technology and social order, indeed he vows to annihilate civilization itself. He describes his ideal world as a neo-paleolithic paradise, in post-apocalyptic urban ruins. The unhinged but magnetic Tyler could also be considered an antihero (especially since he and the narrator are technically the same person), although he becomes the antagonist of the novel later in the story. Few characters like Tyler have appeared in later novels by Palahniuk, though the character of Oyster from Lullaby shares many similarities.

[edit] Marla Singer

A woman whom the narrator meets during a support group. The narrator no longer receives the same release from the groups when he realizes Marla is faking her problems just like he is. After he leaves the groups, he meets her again when she meets Tyler and becomes his lover. She shares many of Tyler's thoughts on consumer culture. In later novels by Palahniuk in which the protagonist is male, a female character similar to Marla has also appeared. Marla and these other female characters have helped Palahniuk to add romantic themes into his novels.

[edit] Robert "Bob" Paulson

A man that the narrator meets at a support group for testicular cancer. A former bodybuilder, Bob lost his testicles to cancer caused by the steroids he used to bulk up his muscles and had to undergo testosterone injections; this resulted in his body increasing its estrogen, causing him to grow large "Bitch Tits" and develop a softer voice. Because of this, Bob is the only known member that is allowed to wear a shirt (breaking the sixth rule of Fight Club). The narrator befriends Bob and, after leaving the groups, meets him again in fight club. Bob's death later in the story while carrying out an assignment for Project Mayhem causes the narrator to turn against Tyler, because the members of Project Mayhem treat it as a trivial matter instead of a tragedy. When the narrator explains that the dead man had a name and was a real person, a member of Project Mayhem interprets this as an order to give all those who died names. The unnamed member begins chanting "his name is Robert Paulson", and this phrase becomes a mantra that the narrator encounters later on in the story multiple times. The movie differs from the book in that it only states that people in other fight clubs were chanting "His name is Robert Paulson" for the same reason as mentioned above. When the narrator goes to a fight club to shut it down for this reason, Tyler orders them to make him a "homework assignment".

[edit] Motifs

At two points in the novel, the narrator claims he wants to "wipe [his] ass with the Mona Lisa"; a mechanic who joins fight club also repeats this to him in one scene.^[19] This motif shows his desire for chaos, later explicitly expressed in his urge to "destroy something beautiful". Additionally, he mentions at one point that "Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart."^[20] University of Calgary literary scholar Paul Kennett claims that this want for chaos is a result of an Oedipus complex, as the narrator, Tyler, and the mechanic all show disdain for their fathers.^[21] This is most explicitly stated in the scene that the mechanic appears in:

The mechanic says, “If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God?
...
How Tyler saw it was that getting God’s attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God’s hate is better than His indifference.
If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
We are God’s middle children, according to Tyler Durden, with no special place in history and no special attention.
Unless we get God’s attention, we have no hope of damnation or redemption.
Which is worse, hell or nothing?
Only if we’re caught and punished can we be saved.
“Burn the Louvre,” the mechanic says, “and wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa. This way at least, God would know our names.”

– Fight Club, page 141^[22]

Kennett further argues that Tyler wants to use this chaos to change history so that "God's middle children" will have some historical significance, whether or not this significance is "damnation or redemption".^[23] This will figuratively return their absent fathers, as judgment by future generations will replace judgment by their fathers.

After reading stories written from the perspective of the organs of a man named Joe, the narrator begins using similar quotations to describe his feelings, often replacing organs with feelings and things involved in his life.

The color cornflower blue first appears as the color of the narrator's boss's tie and later is requested as an icon color by the same boss.^[20] Later, it is mentioned that his boss has eyes of the same color. These mentions of the color are the first of many uses of cornflower blue in Palahniuk's books, almost all feature the color at some point in their text.

Isolationism, specifically directed towards material items and possessions, is a common theme throughout the novel. Tyler acts as the major catalyst behind the destruction of our vanities, which he claims is the path to finding our inner-selves. "I'm breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions," Tyler whispered, "because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit."

[edit] Themes

Throughout the novel, Palahniuk uses the narrator and Tyler to comment on how people in modern society try to find meaning in their lives through commercial culture. Several lines in the novel make reference to this lifestyle as meaningless. Usually Palahniuk delivers this through overt methods, but there are also some allegorical references as well.

Additionally, much of the novel comments on how many men in modern society have found dissatisfaction with the state of masculinity as it currently exists. The characters of the novel lament the fact that many of them were raised by their mothers because their fathers either abandoned their family or divorced their mothers. As a result, they see themselves as being "a generation of men raised by women,"^[24] being without a male role model in their lives to help shape their masculinity. This ties in with the anti-consumer culture theme, as the men in the novel see their "IKEA nesting instinct" as resulting from the feminization of men in a matriarchal culture.

Maryville University of St. Louis professor Jesse Kavadlo, in an issue of the literary journal Stirrings Still, claimed that the narrator's opposition to emasculation is a form of projection, and that the problem that he fights is himself.^[25] He also claims that Palahniuk uses existentialism in the novel to conceal subtexts of feminism and romance in order to convey these concepts in a novel that is mainly aimed at a male audience.^[26]

Palahniuk himself gives a much simpler assertion about the theme of the novel, stating "all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people."^[27]

Paul Kennett claims that, because the narrator's fights with Tyler are fights with himself, and because he fights himself in front of his boss at the hotel, the narrator is using the fights as a way of asserting himself as his own boss. He argues that these fights are a representation of the struggle of the proletarian at the hands of a higher capitalist power, and by asserting himself as capable of having the same power he thus becomes his own master. Later, when fight club is formed, the participants are all dressed and groomed similarly, thus allowing them to symbolically fight themselves at the club and gain the same power.^[28]

Afterwards, Kennett says, Tyler becomes nostalgic for the patriarchical power controlling him, and creates Project Mayhem to achieve this. Through this proto-fascist power structure, the narrator seeks to learn "what, or rather, who, he might have been under a firm patriarchy."^[29] Through his position as leader of Project Mayhem, Tyler uses his power to become a "God/Father" to the "space monkeys", who are the other members of Project Mayhem (although by the end of the novel his words hold more power than he does, as is evident in the space monkeys' threat to castrate the narrator when he contradicts Tyler's rule). According to Kennett, this creates a paradox in that Tyler pushes the idea that men who wish to be free from a controlling father-figure are only self-actualized once they have children and become a father themselves.^[30] This new structure is, however, ended by the narrator's elimination of Tyler, allowing him to decide for himself how to determine his freedom.

[edit] Awards

The novel won the following awards:

• the 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award^[31]
• the 1997 Oregon Book Award for Best Novel^[32]

[edit] U.S. editions

• New York: W. W. Norton & Company, August 1996. Hardcover first edition. ISBN 0-393-03976-5
• New York: Owl Books, 1997. First trade paperback. ISBN 0-8050-5437-5
• New York: Owl Books, 1999. Trade paperback reissue (film tie-in cover). ISBN 0-8050-6297-1
• Minneapolis, MN: HighBridge Company, 1999. Unabridged audiobook on 4 cassettes, read by J. Todd Adams. ISBN 1-56511-330-6
• Minneapolis, MN: Tandem Books, 1999. School & library binding. ISBN 0-613-91882-7
• New York: Owl Books, 2004. Trade paperback reissue, with a new introduction by the author (bloody lip cover). ISBN 0-8050-7647-6
• New York: Owl Books, 2004. Trade paperback reissue, with a new introduction by the author (film tie-in cover). ISBN 0-8050-7655-7
• New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. Trade paperback (fist cover). ISBN 0-393-32734-5
• New York: Recorded Books LLC, 2008. Unabridged audiobook on 5 CDs, Read by James Colby. ISBN 978-1-4361-4960-0

[edit] See also

• Revolution
• White Collar Boxing
• 1996 in literature
• Anarcho-primitivism
• Masculinity
• Neo-Luddism
• Transgressional fiction
• Dissociative identity disorder
• Hyperreality
• Green Anarchism
• Radical environmentalism

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Fight Club

• Chuck Palahniuk.Net section for Fight Club

v • d • e Works by Chuck Palahniuk Novels: Fight Club (1996) · Survivor (1999) · Invisible Monsters (1999) · Choke (2001) · Lullaby (2002) · Diary (2003) · Haunted (2005) · Rant (2007) · Snuff (2008) · Pygmy (2009) Non-fiction: Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon (2003) · Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories (2004) Films Fight Club (1999) · Choke (2008)