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Sasha's Reviews > Fight Club
Fight Club
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"I want you to hit me as hard as you can," says Tyler Durden, and Fight Club is more about taking punches than throwing them. Throughout the book, the focus is on damage sustained, not inflicted. Jack (or whatever our protagonist's name is) gets progressively more disfigured.
The cult of Fight Club, exponentially increased by the iconic movie adaptation, is such a big deal that it's hard to pare it down to what the book really is - or it would be, if the book wasn't exactly what everyone thinks it is. It's about a disconnect between our lives and the substance of life. Jack dreams repeatedly of "hunting elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center." Getting punched in the face is a quick way to get in touch with your primal self. Fight club becomes Project Mayhem, an anarchist organization dedicated to destroying society. It's actually - bear with me here - a little similar to Little House in the Big Woods. They're both about sortof a back-to-basics, self-sustaining, anti-authoritarian, anti-history aesthetic.
Unlike Little House, Fight Club isn't exactly recommending this. It's about exploring the fact that it's all very tempting. I mean, we all have fantasies like this here and there, right? Move out to the woods and raise goats. Taken to its extreme, it's pretty extreme. Tyler Durden wants to destroy all the museums so there is only now. Palahniuk is wiling to let you come out wherever you want. He suggests that we all have a side of ourselves that wants, like Tyler, to tear it all down, and it's a question of whether we choose to abdicate to that side.
It's a very good book. Its lone woman, Marla Singer, is even more of a mess than she is in the movie - Palahniuk has pretty much failed to work love into the story - but aside from that, it's surprisingly successful at juggling its complicated plot. There's that relationship between Jack and Tyler, which has almost certainly been spoiled for you (but just in case, I'm not going to be the guy); I saw the movie like twenty times before reading the book, so I can't totally guess whether it's telegraphed or not but it seems like he's doing a good job.
And I struggled for a minute with the urge to end this review with a super lame reference and then gave up. Let's do all the corny references! Choose your own shitty ending!
Fight Club taps into a universal panic about the abstraction of modern life...
- And that's why, twenty years on, everyone's still breaking Rule #1.
- It's a slim book, but Fight Club still packs a punch.
- I am Jack's Five-Star Rating.
- And that's why, twenty years on, everyone's still breaking Rule #2.
The cult of Fight Club, exponentially increased by the iconic movie adaptation, is such a big deal that it's hard to pare it down to what the book really is - or it would be, if the book wasn't exactly what everyone thinks it is. It's about a disconnect between our lives and the substance of life. Jack dreams repeatedly of "hunting elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center." Getting punched in the face is a quick way to get in touch with your primal self. Fight club becomes Project Mayhem, an anarchist organization dedicated to destroying society. It's actually - bear with me here - a little similar to Little House in the Big Woods. They're both about sortof a back-to-basics, self-sustaining, anti-authoritarian, anti-history aesthetic.
Unlike Little House, Fight Club isn't exactly recommending this. It's about exploring the fact that it's all very tempting. I mean, we all have fantasies like this here and there, right? Move out to the woods and raise goats. Taken to its extreme, it's pretty extreme. Tyler Durden wants to destroy all the museums so there is only now. Palahniuk is wiling to let you come out wherever you want. He suggests that we all have a side of ourselves that wants, like Tyler, to tear it all down, and it's a question of whether we choose to abdicate to that side.
It's a very good book. Its lone woman, Marla Singer, is even more of a mess than she is in the movie - Palahniuk has pretty much failed to work love into the story - but aside from that, it's surprisingly successful at juggling its complicated plot. There's that relationship between Jack and Tyler, which has almost certainly been spoiled for you (but just in case, I'm not going to be the guy); I saw the movie like twenty times before reading the book, so I can't totally guess whether it's telegraphed or not but it seems like he's doing a good job.
And I struggled for a minute with the urge to end this review with a super lame reference and then gave up. Let's do all the corny references! Choose your own shitty ending!
Fight Club taps into a universal panic about the abstraction of modern life...
- And that's why, twenty years on, everyone's still breaking Rule #1.
- It's a slim book, but Fight Club still packs a punch.
- I am Jack's Five-Star Rating.
- And that's why, twenty years on, everyone's still breaking Rule #2.
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Reading Progress
September 5, 2016
–
Started Reading
September 5, 2016
– Shelved
September 6, 2016
– Shelved as:
2016
September 6, 2016
–
Finished Reading
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Sep 07, 2016 08:14AM
I liked this one too, a lot, and also loved the weirdness of the film. I resisted reading/viewing a long time because it felt so brutal and pointless and then loved them both
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I loved the book and gave it 5 stars as well, but I wonder if I would still have enjoyed it as much if I hadn't seen the movie first. The book is quite spare and disjointed, and the reading of it is greatly assisted by having preexisting mental imagery of the characters and scenes to guide you along. It's really difficult to judge how much of the enjoyment is in the writing itself, and how much in the reliving of the movie. But, I tend to give the book the benefit of the doubt. It's such a fun read and chock-full of so many wonderfully bitter, cynical, and just plain cool and memorable quotes.
