Fight Club (1996) - Chuck Palahniuk
In short: A bitter, cynical and visceral novel following one man's rejection of post-consumer society and his search for a satisfying alternative. The novel is cunningly written with a dark sense of humour, but sometimes tries too hard to be edgy and dangerous.
The tone occasionally slips into adolescent angst but themes of masculinity, humanity and a postmodern search for enlightenment drag the damaged protagonists into the realm of wisdom.
Quality: 7
Plot: 8
Style: 7
Entertainment: 7
Depth: 7
= 7.2
A little more analysis? Go on then...
In a jaded society where we strive to
master our physicality, where instinct, emotion and primal aggression
are dismissed as bad habits of the past with no place in our future,
Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club is a visceral
reminder of how vitally fundamental these things are.
The characters of Fight Club
make it clear that, without our animal rage, we are hollow shells of
being. If there is a human ideal towards which we aim, then our
species is indeed further from achieving it than the very beasts we
sneer at with condescending disdain.
Dramatic from the opening scene, the
novel's unnamed narrator records his thoughts and experiences with
unhinged candour. The reader is quickly sucked in to his chaotic
life.
Events are described often with
multiple thought processes going on at once. A narrative which could
be confusing is in fact effectively unsettling in its portrayal of
the narrator's unstable scatter-brained mental state. Palahniuk also
shows talent at finding memorable analogy which keeps you attentive
and appreciatively uncomfortable, for example the “cave paintings
of dirt in the toilet bowl”.
However, the real strength of the book
is found in its unflinchingly raw depiction of rebellion in nineties
American society.
The “post-consumer” narrator
doesn't want to be perfect or complete because for him these concepts
are tainted with hypocrisy. The conventional perception of what it is
to be whole is a corruption. These ideals have been created in error.
Therefore, he rallies against the fickle opiate-haze society,
beginning with the realisation that losing all hope is freedom.
The greatest moment of his life is
intentionally receiving a chemical burn on the back of his hand. The
search for basic, primal being focussed in the present. You have to
hit bottom before you can truly live. As his revolutionary
counterpart Tyler Durden whispers, “I'm breaking my attachment to
physical power and possessions because only through destroying myself
can I discover the greater power of my spirit.”
As a social extension of this idea, the
protagonists form the brutal yet respectfully systematic fight clubs.
Here, men can forget their barren, insincere everyday lives and
become heroes momentarily immersed in the perfect essence of physical
being. Led by Tyler, these groups evolve into the subversive faction
known as Project Mayhem.
Project Mayhem is a mischievous and
violent campaign against the established order of society. It aims,
through a “prematurely induced dark age”, to “force humanity to
go dormant or into remission long enough for the Earth to recover”.
Tyler describes perhaps its more immediate goal as being a means of
teaching each man in the project that he has the power to control
history. This touches on a major theme of the novel, which is of a
lost, embittered generation seeking some kind of historical
recognition.
At times, this struggle comes across as
adolescent disillusion. To quote Tyler:
We are the
middle children of history,
raised by television to
believe that someday we'll
be millionaires and movie
stars and rock stars,
but we won't. And
we're just learning this
fact, so don't fuck
with us.
However, another Project Mayhem
character raises the tone of the discussion to a more grown-up level:
We don't have
a great war in
our generation, or a
great depression, but we
do, we have a
great war of the
spirit. We have a
great revolution against
the culture. The great
depression is our lives.
Behind the revolutionary jumpiness of
Fight Club lurks a softer, spiritual side. The narrator is
cynical and furious but, deep down, a sweetheart. His ferocious
anti-social fervour is remarkable, but it hides to some extent his
deeper desires. Entangled in the storyline is Marla Singer, and with
her influence we start to recognise the narrator's simple, vulnerable
and quiet desire for love.
He sees the disgusting horrors of which
civilisation is capable, but he also sees through them and,
eventually, shows a philosophical awareness of humble, honest
contentment. The contentment of a person who knows that he does not
know and accepts it:
We are not
special.
We are not
crap or trash, either.
We just are.
We just are,
and what happens just
happens.
The narrator's most sincere wish is for
this corrupt dishonest civilisation – of which he knows he has
helped create and in turn been created by – to disappear and leave
him and Marla, who he thinks he likes, at peace.
In
this way, Fight Club,
which is sometimes labelled as nihilistic, could be read as
promoting a spiritually content and morally consistent way of life.
On the surface, its energy is poured into raging against and plotting
the destruction of the system which stands in its way. On a deeper
level, it is a story about tender, damaged people looking for peace
and companionship.
For all their memorable catchphrases
and cunning social mischief, these men are basically saying, “Look
at us! We're important too! Now let's go live happily ever after.”
