Well, now I reckon y'all have seen the movie, so there's probably not a whole lot that you need to know about this book.You know Tyler Durden.He's the Id, the unchained spirit that wants what he wants and he wants it now. He's the voice in your head that tells you that everything is worthless, that chaos, death and the end of civilization would be better than anything our so-called "society" could ever create. He's the one standing over your left shoulder, whispering "Burn it all down. It'll be fun." He acts in secret, he has an army of minions, and he has a plan.Oh yes, you know Tyler Durden.The narrator of this dark and strange cautionary tale knows Tyler all too well, and tells us of how he and Tyler tried to change the world. It all started very simply - with basement fight clubs where men could let out their rage and frustration on each other. There were very few rules to fight club, but that was okay. Rules were, in fact, the problem. The regimented society in which we live imposes constant rules on us - social rules, cultural rules, corporate rules - that tell us who to be and what to think. The rules of our society have sapped us of our strength and purpose, making us soft. Pliable. Weak.But Tyler's plan doesn't end there - the fight clubs morph into Project Mayhem, a well-oiled anarchist movement, determined to bring down the very fundamentals of our society. With an army at his beck and call, Tyler is sure that his plan will succeed.It's a book with a couple of very powerful messages, one overt and incorrect, the other subtle and accurate. The overt message is Tyler's message - we are a generation with no cause, no purpose. Our lives are governed by what we buy and what we wear, and none of us will die having done anything with our lives. In order to be Real Men, we need to strip away the veneer of civilization - our Ikea furniture, our make-work jobs and our cornflower blue neckties - and rediscover the inner core of ourselves. The brutal, unafraid, unapologetic beast that is Man.This, to no one's surprise, appealed to a lot of people when the film came out because it's a very believable world view. Those of Gen X and beyond are reminded over and over again that the generations before us were the ones who actually did things. The Baby Boomers got herded into the slaughterhouse that was Vietnam, toppled a President, faced down the chaos of the Sixties and fought to change the world. Their parents, of course, were the Greatest Generation - a label that I have come to despise - who fought Hitler and freed Europe. Their parents struggled through the Depression, and their parents fought in the trenches of World War One.What have we done? Until the beginning of the 21st Century, how had we suffered? What had we sacrificed? Not a whole lot, and I think a lot of us secretly believe that we're not only not pulling our weight in the world, but that since we have not suffered, we're not really adult. Our miseries have not been those born of chaos, war and destruction. Ours have been tiny, personal tragedies that are, in their way, insignificant.I can see where Tyler Durden is coming from on this point - I do sometimes look around me and ask, "Where are our great challenges, our Normandy or our moon landing?" And I fear that without these milestones, my generation will never really be taken seriously. Unfortunately, this is about where most folks stopped thinking and decided, "Shit, man, he's right! I wanna start a fight club!" And short-lived fight clubs sprang up all over the country, lasting about as long as it took for people to realize that while Brad Pitt on the movie screen can get beaten within an inch of his life and still look cool, a normal human cannot. They missed the subtle message because it wasn't one that they really wanted to hear.The book is not about the triumph of nihilism over a consumer-driven culture. It's not about being a Real Man. It's not about being a unique snowflake or a space monkey. It's about overcoming both the desire to destroy society and the desire to be completely subsumed by it. It's about the need for purpose, and the need for connection with other people, and what can happen when one is deprived of those things. Tyler doesn't show up because the narrator is rootless or bored - Tyler shows up because the narrator has forsaken people for things. He has replaced personal achievement with material gain, and that's not a very fulfilling way to live.It is a cautionary tale for our generation - you are not your tragedies. You are not the club you belong to. You are not your scars. You are neither worthless nor undeserving.You are what you make yourself to be, no matter what Tyler Durden wants.
1st rule about Fight Club is read the novel first! Well thats my rule, i watched the movie, when it came out years ago (most the population) and only now discovered the real Fight club.The narrator is a traveling automobile company employee who suffers from insomnia. On advice from his doctor attends support groups and pretends to be a victim. He gains some emotional release here and feels part of a people and becomes addicted to attending these support groups as an imposter. He's not the only one who's a trickster and important character pops up at the meetings Marla and they both find they have an emptiness to fill and befriend each other.On a flight he befriended a key character of the story, Durden a soap salesman, they arrange to meet at a bar and the rest is history as they say. They set up a fight club the rules are.1.You don't talk about fight club.2.You don't talk about fight club.3.When someone says stop, or goes limp, the fight is over.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.They are "a generation of men raised by women," being without a male example in their lives to help shape their masculinity. The fight club is not really about physical combat, money, skill or winning but instead a way for participants to experience feeling in a society where they are otherwise numb. The fighting forms a resistance to the impulse to be "cocooned" in society. The fighting between the men stripped away the "fear of pain" and "the reliance on material signifiers of their self-worth", leaving them to experience something valuable.As the fight club's membership grows Tyler begins to use it to spread his anti-consumerist ideas and recruits fight club's members to participate in increasingly elaborate pranks 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 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.The narrator becomes unhappy with Tyler's extremities and a battle for power and control ignites literally. The narrator and Tyler can no longer accommodate the same space one has to give in on power and control! I can not comment anymore on the story as i don't want to spoil the story any further. This was a thought provoking read and written in a wacky style.Think of the Psycho movie and that Jack Nicholson character from One Flew over the cuckoos nest playing Mr Bates and you might have something close to the protagonist in this story. "But I'm Tyler Durden. I invented fight club. Fight club is mine. I wrote those rules. None of you would be here if it wasn't for me. And I say it stops here!""I love everything about Tyler Durden, his courage and his smarts. His nerve. Tyler is funny and charming and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world. Tyler is capable and free, and I am not. I'm not Tyler Durden.""This was the goal of Project Mayhem, Tyler said, the complete and right-away destruction of civilization. What comes next in Project Mayhem, nobody except Tyler knows. The second rule is you don't ask questions.""It's Project Mayhem that's going to save the world. A cultural ice age. A prematurely induced dark age. Project Mayhem will force humanity to go dormant or into remission long enough for the Earth to recover." www.more2read.com/?review=fight-club-by-chuck-palahniuk
What do You think about Fight Club (2005)?
Things you Own End up Owing Youتذكر هذا ..الناس الذين تحاول أن تطئهم هم الناس التى تعمتد عليها…نحن القوم الذين يغسلون غسيلك ويطهون طعامك ويقدمون لك العشاء…نحن نعد فراشك ونحرسك اثناء نومك…نقود سيارة الاسعاف…نوجه المكالمات الهاتفية…نحن الطهاة وسائقوا التاكسي ونعرف كل شئ عنك…نحن أطفال التاريخ الأوسطون الذين ربانا جهاز التلفزيون وقال لنا اننا يوماً سنصير مليونيرات ونجوم سينما ونجوم موسيقى الروك, لكن هذا لن يحدث ونحن الان نستوعب هذه الحقيقة…..فلا تعبث منالديك طابور من الشباب والشابات ..وكلهم يريدون التضحية بحياتهم لهدف ما..الاعلانات جعلت هؤلاء القوم يطاردون السيارات والثياب التى لا يحتاجون اليها…هناك أجيال ظلت تعمل فى وظائف تكرهها فقط لتستطيع شراء أشياء لا تحتاج إليها..لالاف السنين أفسد البشر كل شئ علي هذا الكوكب والان يتوقع منى التاريخ أن أنظف ما تركه الجميع من فوضي, يجب أن أغسل وأجفف علب الحساء..على أن أدفع فاتورة التلوث النووي وخزانات الجازولين والنفايات التى تم القاؤها قبل ان أولد بجيل كاملانا ركام..أنا قاذروات وركام مجنون بالنسبة لك وكل هذا العالم اللعين .. أنت لا تبالي بأين أحيا أو كيف أشعر أو ماذا آكل أو كيف أطعم أطفالي..أو كيف أدفع للطبيب إذا مرضت..وأنا مجنون وملول وضعيف..لكني مازلت مسئوليتكمالفيلم ده من احسن الافلام الى شفتها فى حياتيوباعتبره احسن من الرواية من وجهة نظري فدايفيد فنشر مع برادبيت وادوارد نورتن خلوا الفيلم عبقري, الرواية اسلوبها صعب شوية الى مشافش الفيلم من الممكن صعب يربط الاحداث ببعض ويحس بالملل من الرواية, لكن فى النهاية رواية مختلفة وثورية ورائعة .
—Amr
I haven't seen the movie. I read the book.I don't understand all the hype.This is two stories: one about a dysfunctional relationship between flat characters and another an intriguing history of a movement that starts out as a drunken fight between acquaintances and ends up as a highly-regimented, carefully controlled cult of anarchy.I liked the second story. Hated the first.I've heard that this novel was an expansion of an earlier short story. Frankly, I can tell. Chapter 1 is promising, but chapters 2-5 are tedious, a real slog. Chapter 6 is where the real story begins. There violence, anti-commercialism, philosophy, and psychology all meld into a mind-bending maelstrom. Good stuff, if you can stomach the gore. Of course, having finished the novel, one realizes that the two stories are intertwined and interdependent. I get this. But do the "relationship" sections have to be so bloody boring? Really? It's analogous to filling half of a pleasure-cruise ship with lead. At best, it's going to slow things down a lot. And it might just sink the ship. I feel like Fight Club barely lurched into the harbor, though it could have been a hydrofoil.Oh, and repeating the same thing several times doesn't make you a compelling author or avant-garde or anything but dull and repetitive.Maybe it's time I saw the movie.
—Forrest
To start with, the film is so far superior to this book it becomes a valuable example in the argument of "instances when film adaptations are better than the original books".There. Ive said it.Moving on. No, his writing is not "good" nor is it "brilliant" or "Gritty" (one of my favorites, usually translates to bad). It is indeed bad writing. Bad from the perspective of literature. Bad when viewed through scope of history and the pantheon of wonderful, eloquent geniuses of the written word. Men who have put a piece of thier soul down on paper and made it dance and contort in order to say something profound about humanity and what it means to be human.Perhaps Palahniuk's ideas are there and that is a separate issue from the writing itself. The writing (and I have to agree with some others who have reviewed this book)reeks of the same gangrenous rot that much modern "literature" reeks of. A debasement of the language down to the point where the 7 percent of American males who read a book in the last year can feel comfortable reading it and not have thier attention spans exhausted within two pages.Oh I compliment Mr. Palahniuks accomplishment. Quite impressive really. He has created a work so debased and and simple, that a whole generation of disaffected, junior-high and high-school boys now can now channel thier collective aggression and penchant for physical harm upon each other into an organized ethos.The truth is sad, because I really do feel the Chuck is really saying something profound about society, but like all bad art, we must question whether the message is communicated accurately and effectively. At its pithy middle, Fight Club is about the search for meaning within a society of artifice. A search that peters out for most as our fear of failing to accomplish our ideals flings us into a life of rote, mechanical (excuse the word)pussy-ship. Fight Club attempts to turn these fears on thier head by begging the question: are our ideals really our own? Are they bull-sh*t?Unfortunately I feel this question is lost amidst the musical screams and thuds of a festival of meat-pounding violence.John Gardner once said:~To write with taste in the highest sense, is to write with the assumption that one out of a hundred people who read one's work may be dying, or having some loved one dying. To write so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write as Shakespeare wrote, so that people understand, sympathize, and see the universality of pain and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on.
—Joshua
