fight

Fight Club^[1] (1996) is the first published novel by American author Chuck Palahniuk. The plot is based around an unnamed protagonist who struggles with his growing discomfort with consumerism and changes in the state of masculinity in American culture. In an attempt to overcome this, he creates an underground boxing club as a radical form of psychotherapy. The novel was made into a movie of the same name in 1999 by director David Fincher, which resulted in the story becoming a pop culture phenomenon. In the wake of the film's popularity, the novel has become a target of criticism, mainly for its explicit depictions of violence.

History

When Palahniuk made his first attempt at publishing a novel (Invisible Monsters) publishers rejected it for being too disturbing. This led him to work on Fight Club, which he wrote as an attempt to disturb the publisher even more for rejecting him. Palahniuk wrote this story in between working while on the job for Freightliner. After initially publishing it as a short story (which became chapter 6 of the novel) in the compilation Pursuit of Happiness, Palahniuk expanded it into a full novel, which, contrary to what he expected, the publisher was willing to publish.^[2] While the original, hardcover edition of the book received positive reviews and some awards, it had a short shelf life. Nevertheless, the book had made its way to Hollywood, where interest in adapting it to film was growing. It was eventually adapted in 1999 by screenwriter Jim Uhls and director David Fincher. The film was a box office disappointment (although it was #1 at the U.S. box office in its first weekend) and critical reaction was mixed, but a cult following soon emerged as the DVD of the film was popular upon release (with some critics changing their opinions on it as a result of the DVD). As a result of the film, the original hardcover edition became a collector's item.^[3] Two paperback rereleases of the novel, one in 1999 and the other in 2004 (the latter of which begins with an introduction by the author about the conception and popularity of both the novel and the movie), were later made. This success helped launch Palahniuk's career as a popular novelist, as well as establish a writing style that would appear in all later books by the author.

Despite popular belief, Palahniuk was not inspired to write the novel by any actual fight club. The club itself was based on a series of fights that Palahniuk got into over previous years (most notably one that he got into during a camping trip).^[4] Even though he has mentioned this in many interviews, Palahniuk is still often approached by fans wanting to know where their local fight club takes place. Palahniuk insists that there is no real, singular organization like the one in his book. He does admit however that some fans have mentioned to him that some fight clubs (albeit much smaller than the one in the novel) exist or previously existed (some having existed long before the novel was written).

Many other events in the novel were also based on events that Palahniuk himself had experienced. The support groups that the narrator attends are based on support groups that the author brought terminally ill people to as part of a volunteer job he did for a local hospice. Project Mayhem is loosely based on the Cacophony Society, of which Palahniuk is a member. Various events and characters are based on friends of the author. Other events came as a result of stories told to him by various people he had talked to.^[5] This method of combining various stories from various people into novels has become a common way of writing novels for Palahniuk ever since.

Outside of Palahniuk's professional and personal life, the novel's impact has been felt elsewhere. Several individuals in various locations of the United States (and possibly in other countries), ranging from teenagers to people in technical careers, have set up their own fight clubs based on the one mentioned in the novel.^[6] Some of Tyler's on-the-job pranks (such as food tampering) have been repeated by fans of the book (although these same pranks existed well before the novel was published). Palahniuk eventually documented this phenomenon in his essay "Monkey Think, Monkey Do",^[7] which was published in his book Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories, as well as in the introduction to the 2004 paperback edition of Fight Club. Other fans of the book have been inspired to non-anti-social activity as well; Palahniuk has claimed that fans tell him that they have been inspired to go back to college after reading the book.^[2]

Other than the film, a few other adaptations have been attempted. In 2004 Fight Club was in development as a musical, developed by Palahniuk, Fincher, and Trent Reznor.^[8] Brad Pitt, who played the role of Tyler Durden in the film, expressed interest in being involved. A video game loosely based on the film was published by Vivendi Universal Games in 2004, receiving poor reviews from gaming critics.

Plot summary

The book centers on a nameless narrator who hates his job and the way his life currently is. The narrator works for an unnamed car company, organizing product recalls on defective models if, and only if, the cost of the recall is less than the total cost of out-of-court settlements paid to relatives of the deceased (which parallels the 1970s story of the Ford Pinto's safety problems and recall). At the same time, he is becoming disenchanted with a "nesting instinct"^[9] of consumerism that has absorbed his life, causing him to define himself as a person based on the furniture, clothes, and other material objects that he owns. These aspects of his life, combined with frequent trips across multiple time zones for his job disturb him to the point that he suffers from chronic insomnia.

At the recommendation of his physician (who does not consider his insomnia to be a serious ailment), the narrator goes to a support group for men with testicular cancer to "see what real suffering is like". After finding that crying at these support groups and listening to emotional outpourings from suffering individuals allows him to sleep at night, he becomes addicted to attending them. At the same time, he befriends a cancer victim named Bob. Although he does not really suffer from any of the ailments that the other attendants have, he is never caught being a "tourist" until he meets Marla Singer, a woman who also attends support groups without needing them for their original purpose. Her presence reflects the narrator's "tourism", and only reminds him that he doesn't belong at the support groups. This causes him to be unable to cry and therefore unable to sleep which consequently causes him to hate Marla. After a short confrontation between the two, they begin going to separate support groups in order to avoid bumping into each other again.

Shortly before this incident, his life changes radically after meeting Tyler Durden, a beach artist who works low-paying jobs at night in order to perform deviant behavior on the job. After his confrontation with Marla, the narrator's condo is destroyed by an explosion and he asks Tyler if he can stay at his place. Tyler agrees, but asks for one favor: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can."^[10] The resulting fight in a bar's parking lot attracts more disenchanted males, and a new form of support group, the first "fight club", is born. The fight club becomes a new type of therapy through bare-knuckle fighting, controlled by a set of eight rules:

1. You don't talk about fight club.
2. You don't talk about fight club.^[11]
3. If someone says stop, 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.^[13]

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.^[15]

The narrator starts off as a loyal participant in Project Mayhem, seeing it as the next step for 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 (in a variant of anagnorisis) 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 in causing his mind to snap came when he met Marla; Tyler was truly born as a distinct personality when the narrator's unconscious desire to be with 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 previous cases 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 fight club; Tyler learned recipes for creating explosives when he was in control, and used this knowledge to blow up his condo.

The narrator also learns that Tyler plans to blow up the Parker-Morris building in the downtown area of the city using homemade bombs created by Project Mayhem. The major reason for the explosion is to destroy the nearby national museum. During the explosion, Tyler plans to die as a martyr for Project Mayhem, consequently taking the narrator's life with his. Realizing this, the narrator sets out to stop Tyler, despite the fact that Tyler is always thinking ahead of him. In his attempts to stop this, he makes peace with Marla (who now considers the narrator to be her boyfriend) and explains to her that he is not Tyler Durden. The narrator is eventually forced by Tyler to confront him on the roof of the building. There, the narrator is held captive at gunpoint by Tyler, forced to watch the destruction of Project Mayhem. Then, Marla comes to the roof with one of the support groups which the Narrator went to before fight club. This causes the hallucination of Tyler to stop, because “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 used the paraffin recipe, which never worked for the narrator, and thus Tyler as well. 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 mental institution, though he believes that he is dead and has gone to heaven. From there, he gets regular visits from Marla, who still cares for him. The book ends with members of Project Mayhem who work at the institution telling the narrator that their plans to change civilization as we know it are continuing to go through, and that they are expecting Tyler to make a return.

Characters in Fight Club

The narrator 

The novel's protagonist whose name is never mentioned, possibly in order to make him an everyman character (though near the end of the novel he shows Marla his driver's license with his real name). In the beginning of the story, he is suffering from insomnia, and starts going to support groups for terminally ill people where he fakes that he is dying of their diseases. By crying at these support groups he is able to sleep at night. He eventually quits going to them after he becomes part of fight club. He co-founds fight club along with Tyler Durden as a method of dealing with his insomnia and annoyance with consumer culture. His self-loathing, mental instability, and violent behavior make him a good example of an antihero. Some fans of the film refer to the narrator as "Jack", which is in reference to a scene in which he reads stories written from the perspective of a man's organs (e.g. "Jack's medulla oblongata"); the protagonists' lines in the official movie script also use the name "Jack" to denote them. Furthermore, a number of props from the film (such as a paycheck for the narrator) have the name "Jack Moore" on them, indicating that members of the film's crew also thought the narrator's name was Jack. The name "Jack" was "Joe" in the novel, which was changed in the film to avoid conflicts with Reader's Digest over the use of the name (the articles read by the narrator were featured in the magazine). 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.

Tyler Durden 

An anarcho-primitivistic 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 does beach art to find "perfection". 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. 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.

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. 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 possibly 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. 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.

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 want for chaos, later explicitly expressed in his want 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 Oedipal 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:^[22]

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

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 judgement by future generations will replace judgement 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.

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.

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 real food."^[25]

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. Some readers and critics have noticed how the state of men in the novel is similar to the state of women in modern society, and that Palahniuk may have also been writing about the problems of female life.^[27] Much of this was influenced by Susan Faludi's book Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man.^[28]

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.^[29] 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.^[30]

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."^[31]

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.^[32]

Afterwards, Kennett says, Tyler becomes nostalgic for 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."^[33] Through his position as leader of Project Mayhem, Tyler uses his power to become a "God/Father" to the space monkeys (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.^[34] This new structure is, however, ended by the narrator's elimination of Tyler, allowing him to decide for himself how to determine his freedom.

There are a number of parallels between Nietzschian philosophy and Fight Club, though these are expressed more transparently in the film of the same name. These include themes such as the death of God, trying to find meaning in life through destroying old values and creating new ones, master morality vs. slave morality, the overman, and, of course, the will to power.

Literary significance & criticism

While Fight Club has been praised for its insights into contemporary American culture, it has also received criticism from various academics and cultural commentators. Much of this surrounds the possibility that the novel promotes misogyny and self-destructive behaviour. Some passages in the novel seem to suggest that men have something to gain by ridding themselves of feminine characteristics and engaging in more masculine activities. Furthermore, these critics believe these activities, mainly fighting, are self-destructive. Even more problematic to some critics is Fight Club's role in pop culture, as such a role makes it easy to infer that the ideas presented in the novel are influencing the general populace. However, there is much polarization on this issue. Supporters of the novel have responded by noting that the narrator finally rejects Tyler and fight club, and seems to also place great importance on developing a more authentic relationship with Marla.

Many critics have also claimed there are homoerotic elements in Fight Club. Amongst these were David Denby of The New Yorker and Laura Miller of Salon.com, both of whom used their claims to disparage Palahniuk.^[35] Additionally, Robert Alan Brookey and Robert Westerfelhaus published Hiding Homoeroticism in Plain View: The Fight Club DVD as Digital Closet to make similar claims.^[36] All these claims were made before Palahniuk publicly announced that he is homosexual.

Fight Club in pop culture

Main article: Fight Club in popular culture

Because of the film's popularity, Fight Club is sometimes referenced in pop culture, having been referred to in television shows, films, music, video games, and other forms of media. Though many references came as a result of the film, the majority of them make reference to elements found in both the novel and the film.

Awards

The novel won the following awards:

• the 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award^[37]
• the 1997 Oregon Book Award for Best Novel^[38]

Editions

• ISBN 0-393-03976-5 (hardcover, 1996)
• ISBN 0-8050-5437-5 (paperback, 1997)
• ISBN 0-8050-6297-1 (paperback, 1999)
• ISBN 1-56511-330-6 (audio cassette, 1999)
• ISBN 0-613-91882-7 (library binding, 1999)
• ISBN 0-8050-7647-6 (paperback, 2004)
• ISBN 0-8050-7655-7 (paperback, 2004)
• ISBN 0-393-32734-5 (paperback, 2005)

See also

• 1996 in literature
• Generation X
• Neo-luddism
• Soaper
• Transgressional fiction
• mindfuck

Notes

References

• Avni, Sheerly. "Ten Hollywood Movies That Get Women Right". AlterNet. August 12, 2005.
• Brookey, Robert Alan & Westerfelhaus, Robert. "Hiding Homoeroticism in Plain View: The Fight Club DVD as Digital Closet". Critical Studies in Media Communication. March 2002.
• Chang, Jade. "tinseltown: fight club and fahrenheit". BBC.co.uk. July 2, 2004.
• "Fight club draws techies for bloody underground beatdowns". Associated Press. May 29, 2006.
• Jemielity, Sam. "Chuck Palahniuk:The Playboy.Comversation". Playboy.com. Retrieved September 28, 2006.
• Kavadlo, Jesse. "The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist". Stirrings Still: The International Journal of Existential Literature. Volume 2, Number 2. Fall/Winter 2005. PDF link
• Kennett, Paul. "Fight Club and the Dangers of Oedipal Obsession". Stirrings Still: The International Journal of Existential Literature. Volume 2, Number 2. Fall/Winter 2005. PDF link
• Offman, Craig. "Movie makes "Fight Club" book a contender". Salon.com. September 3, 1999.
• Oregon Book Awards. Literary Arts, Inc. Retrieved June 20, 2005.
• Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awards. http://www.pnba.org/awards.htm. Retrieved June 20, 2005.
• Palahniuk, Chuck. Stranger Than Fiction : True Stories. New York: Doubleday, 2004. ISBN 0-385-50448-9
• Straus, Tamara. "The Unexpected Romantic: An Interview with Chuck Palahniuk". AlterNet. June 19, 2001.
• Tomlinson, Sarah. "Is it fistfighting, or just multi-tasking?". Salon.com. October 13, 1999.

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

• Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: Owl Books, 1999. ISBN 0-8050-6297-1
• Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: Owl Books, 2004. ISBN 0-8050-7647-6

External links

• Chuck Palahniuk.Net section for Fight Club
• Audio recording of Chuck Palahniuk reading Chapter 6 of Fight Club