Fight Club

All you want to know about Fight Club

For the film based on the novel, see Fight Club (film). For other uses, see Fight Club (disambiguation).
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, chronicling an anonymous protagonist who is struggling with a growing discomfort with consumerism as a way of life, and with changes in the state of masculinity in American culture. To overcome this, he establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy. [1]

In 1999, director David Fincher adapted the novel into the film of the same name. The movie became a pop culture phenomenon, yet, in the wake of the movie's popularity, the novel — the first published by the writer — then was criticized for its content, and mainly for explicitly depicting violence.

Contents

History

When Chuck Palahniuk first tried publishing a novel — Invisible Monsters — publishers rejected it as too disturbing, so he concentrated upon writing Fight Club, meant to disturb publishers even more, for rejecting him; he wrote while a diesel mechanic for Freightliner. Initially published as a short story (chapter 6 in the novel) in the compilation Pursuit of Happiness, he expanded it to novel length. Unexpectedly, the publisher wanted to publish it. [2]

The novel Fight Club is an uncompromising critique of human loss of identity via mass consumerism, which established Palahniuk as a popular novelist; it also established his style, that would reappear in other writings. 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.

The original, hardcover edition of Fight Club was well reviewed and won some literary awards, yet its commercial shelf life was short; nevertheless, it went to Hollywood, generating cinematic-adaptation interest, and, in 1999, screenwriter Jim Uhls and director David Fincher did so. The film failed, but nevertheless a cult following emerged with the DVD edition. Resultantly, an original, hardcover edition of the novel is now a collector's item. [3]

The club is based on fist fights that Palahniuk fought, one while camping. [4] 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 extant 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. Like-wise 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 him.[5]

Beyond his public and private lives, Fight Club's cultural impact is evidenced in U.S. teenagers and techies establishing fight clubs. [6] Pranks, such as food-tampering, have been repeated by fans of the book, documented in his essay "Monkey Think, Monkey Do", [7] 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 the writer's other writings have been adapted. In 2004 Fight Club was to be transformed into musical theater, developed by Palahniuk, Fincher, and Trent Reznor. [8] Reportedly, actor Brad Pitt, “Tyler Durden” in the film, expressed interest. In 2004, a video game was published by Vivendi Universal Games, and received poor reviews from video game critics.

Also in 2008, the book You Do Not Talk About Fight Club: I Am Jack's Completely Unauthorized Essay Collection was published.

Plot summary

An anonymous protagonist hates his job and his life; 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). Simultaneously, he is becoming disenchanted with the "nesting instinct" [9] of the consumerism that has absorbed his life — forcing the definition of his identity via the furniture, clothes, and things that he owns. These dissatisfactions, combined with his frequent business trips through several time zones, mentally disturb him to the degree of inducing chronic insomnia.

At his doctor's recommendation (he thinks insomnia is not a serious ailment), the narrator attends a support group for men suffering testicular cancer, to "see what real suffering is like". On learning that crying and listening to the emotional problems of suffering people allows him to sleep, he becomes dependent on attending them, and so befriends Bob. Although not sick like the others, he is never caught being a "tourist", until meeting Marla Singer, a woman who attends support groups like he. She reflects the narrator's "tourism", reminding him that he doesn't belong there. He begins hating 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 before this incident, his life radically changes on meeting Tyler Durden, a charismatic psychopath working low-pay jobs at night 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 fist fight, in a saloon's parking lot, attracts 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 DO NOT 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.

Characters in Fight Club

Narrator 
An employee for an unnamed car company specializing in recalls. He becomes an insomniac, which leads to the creation of his alternate personality. The narrator of Fight Club set 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." (It is actually, in the novel, Joe, but Jack in the movie) Contrary to popular belief, Tyler Durden is not the narrator, he is the narrator's alternate identity.
Tyler Durden 
A neo-Luddite, nihilist, 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 blond, as by the narrator's comment "in his everything-blond way." 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 such as Sean Soltys, though the character of Oyster from Lullaby shares many similarities.
Marla Singer 
A woman that 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 is a nymphomaniac, and 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.
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 breasts (gynecomastia) 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 points out that only in death do members of Project Mayhem have a name. 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 which only states that people in other fight clubs were chanting "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."

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 narrator often repeats the line "I know this because Tyler knows this." This is used to foreshadow the novel's major plot twist in which Tyler is revealed to be the same person as the narrator.

Another foreshadowing is in the subtle metaphor of one of Tyler's night jobs. He works as a projectionist in an old run-down movie theater and vividly describes how it is necessary for him to change the reels halfway through the film (a "changeover") with no one in the cinema realizing this has happened. This foreshadows how when the narrator falls asleep, he makes a "changeover" to Tyler's persona, with no one realizing the two are distinct from each other.

The color cornflower blue first appears as the color of an icon on the narrator's boss's computer.[20] Later, it is mentioned that his boss has eyes of the same color.[24] These mentions of the color are the first of many uses of cornflower blue in Palahniuk's books, which all feature the color at some point in the text.

The theme of masculinity is also a motif throughout the book. Different symbols lead to this recurring theme, such as violence, and testes. Fighting is perceived as a masculine characteristic.

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.”

Subtext

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; for instance, the narrator, upon looking at the contents of his refrigerator, notices he has "a house full of condiments and no food."[25] This also denotes that modern society and consumerism has no substance, but is merely based upon making things appear to have substance; i.e condiments are not a main food source, they merely add flavor to existing food. Indulging in consumerism (shopping, like from the IKEA book) doesn't add any real substance to life, it only adds an appearance (like a condiment).

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,"[26] 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.[27] 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.[28]

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."[29]

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.[30]

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."[31] 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.[32] This new structure is, however, ended by the narrator's elimination of Tyler, allowing him to decide for himself how to determine his freedom.

Awards

The novel won the following awards:

U.S. editions

See also

Notes

  1. ^ In the novel, the club's name is lowercased; it is only spelled with initial caps as a title. In this article, "fight club" denotes the fighting club, "Fight Club" denotes the novel.
  2. ^ a b Tomlinson, Sarah. "Is it fistfighting, or just multi-tasking?". Salon.com. October 13, 1999.
  3. ^ Offman, Craig. "Movie makes "Fight Club" book a contender". Salon.com. September 3, 1999.
  4. ^ Jemielity, Sam. "Chuck Palahniuk:The Playboy.Comversation". Playboy.com. Retrieved June 30, 2005.
  5. ^ Palahniuk (Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories), pp. 228–229.
  6. ^ "Fight club draws techies for bloody underground beatdowns". Associated Press. May 29, 2006.
  7. ^ Palahniuk (Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories), pp. 212–215.
  8. ^ Chang, Jade. "tinseltown: fight club and fahrenheit". BBC.co.uk. July 2, 2004.
  9. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), p. 43.
  10. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), p. 46.
  11. ^ The first rules of both fight club and Project Mayhem are repeated for emphasis. Fans of the novel and the film have latched on to the first two rules of fight club as a meme and have made it into a catchphrase (although slightly changed to "you do not talk about fight club", based on the variation in the film).
  12. ^ Shortly after the third rule is introduced, it is dropped from the club and the other rules move up one numbered position. It is mentioned by the narrator the first time he states the rules, but it is not mentioned by Tyler when he states them. Tyler also adds the eighth rule, which becomes the seventh rule in his version of the rule set. This may have been the result of a continuity error, though it is also possible that Tyler changed the rules to allow the narrator to break the third rule later in the novel. Another interpretion could be that the first set of rules are easier on combatants than the amended rules (ways out if unconscious and not having to fight compared to no ways out and having to fight), proving the more aggressive Tyler is taking a stronger hold of the narrator. Palahniuk (1999), pp. 49–50.
  13. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), pp. 48–50.
  14. ^ Because Tyler and Marla are never seen at the same time, the narrator wonders if Tyler and Marla are the same person. This foreshadows the later revelation of Tyler and the narrator being the same person. Palahniuk may have also meant for this detail to be a red herring. Palahniuk (1999), p. 65.
  15. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), pp. 119, 122 & 125.
  16. ^ The narrator's inability to explain Tyler's existence earlier on in the story is a classic example of an unreliable narrator.
  17. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), p. 195.
  18. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), p. 25.
  19. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), pp. 124, 141 & 200.
  20. ^ a b Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), p. 49.
  21. ^ Kennett, pp. 50–51.
  22. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), p. 141.
  23. ^ Kennett, pp. 51–52.
  24. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), p. 98.
  25. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), p. 45.
  26. ^ Palahniuk (Fight Club, 1999), p. 50.
  27. ^ Kavadlo, p. 5.
  28. ^ Kavadlo, p. 7.
  29. ^ Palahniuk (Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories), p. xv.
  30. ^ Kennett, pp. 53–54.
  31. ^ Kennett, p. 55.
  32. ^ Kennett, p. 56.
  33. ^ Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awards. http://www.pnba.org/awards.htm. Retrieved June 20, 2005.
  34. ^ Oregon Book Awards. Literary Arts, Inc. Retrieved June 20, 2005.

References

In addition, the following editions of the novel were used as references for this article:

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
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