Fight Club

This is satirical, cynical, Darkly intense. A mind f**k.

What person in their right mind goes to support groups for cancer patients in order to get perspective on their own life and cure their insomnia? That's what kind of story this is. This is how it begins. An Obsession with death.

Then the fight club is born. Blue collar to white collar. There are 6 rules in the fight club. First rule: you don't talk about the fight club. Second rule: you don't talk about the fight club. Third rule: two men per fight. Fourth rule: one fight at a time. Fifth rule: no shoes, no shirts in the fight club. The sixth rule: the fight goes on as long as they have to.

This is their way of turning down the volume in the real world. These guys are on a mission to self destruct although they would describe it as "enlightenment". A subculture of violence trying to correct all the wrongs in the world with the most primitive emotion and passion that exists: hate.

What a trip Palahniuk takes the reader on. What one may interpret as a mind blowing, head shaking, wtf is going on: let the fights begin! Another may interpret it as a state of mental illness and the effects of it not being treated. A fascinating analysis of the human psyche.

Enough said. 4.5⭐️

It's hard to put into words the unique, startling and comical essence of this unusual story. Chuck has created a genre of its own due to its failure to comply with any, similar to Tyler, the central character. Curve balls, plot twists, anarchy and dogma, Fight Club stands on its own. While the movie is a vague memory I can't imagine it doing justice to the book. Where debut novels are concerned, this should get the Pulitzer if for no other reason than it being beyond compare.

".. Project Mayhem will break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world.."a contradiction in terms just as the central character and plot are. At its core, it's magnificent, engaging and evocative, which is why it deserves praise. I'm shaking my head in wonder as I flash back on the twists, turns, oddball humor and dystopian elements wondering if I'd actually read it.

Yes.

Not only did I read, it but I sat quietly, shaking my head as I contemplated what I'd just encountered. Mind boggling is the only description that does it justice.

I did not dislike this book because I did not understand this book. I disliked this book because I have fundamental ideological disagreements with this book.

I'm sure we all know this quote:

n  n    You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying, organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.n  n

...I think this is just a really dumb way of looking at the world. The complaints about consumerism are one thing, even though they all sound like this SNL skit. But here’s the thing: this book is woefully and irredeemably nihilistic and I am emphatically not a nihilist.

I’m aware this sounds like an obvious statement, but the narrator of this book needs to get a fucking hobby. No, really. Fight Club is that one weird nihilistic asshole who thinks the apocalypse is coming because consumerism, or political correctness, or something, he’s not quite sure what, and also he makes fun of everyone for having joy in their life.

Here's why this bothers me: I’m sure you’re all aware that’s a terrible way of looking at life, but I think we do, genuinely, as a society, romanticize an idea of giving up and no longer caring. I don’t hold with that. Yes, we all have dumb corporate jobs and no meaning in our lives. If you don’t have meaning in your life, go out and fucking find some. Love, or family, or a damn puppy, as the narrator so sarcastically intones:

My tiny life. My little shit job. My Swedish furniture. I never, no, never told anyone this, but before I met Tyler, I was planning to buy a dog and name it “Entourage.”
This is how bad your life can get.

Like… he’s getting a dog and naming it a dumb name, like you do with a dog because it’s a goddamn dog and it makes you happy. Why is that so stupid?

I think the reason this bothers me is I know why buying a dog to be happy is stupid, and I choose to ignore it. Looking at the world through a nihilistic eye will never make the world better.

There’s another dynamic at play here - the new commonality of this language. nihilist language is the only rhetoric we hear about millenials right now? I mean, I’m sure this was a revolutionary idea twenty years ago, that none of us are special and consumerism is killing America so therefore, posessions are bad, and our current generation is awful for blah blah blah reasons. That is currently the belief of about 80% of older Americans about our generation. This book made widespread the use of term “special snowflakes” as a derogatory term (look it up - it’s true.) The idea that it is weak to care about things, weak to care about other people, or even weak to love your dog - it’s widespread. It’s not a weird deviation from social norms. Constant nihilism is a social norm; this book is thus not particularly transgressive.

I liked what user Ruzmari said here:

The 1990s finds us again at a crossroads where literature is concerned, with the rise of Oprah's book club and the whole genre of "chick lit" on the one hand (in many cases just "silly novels by lady novelists" revivified), and a sort of phallic-anxiety heavy-on-the-masculine literature on the other. This second group, I like to call "guy crap."

The thesis being “life is meaningless” does not make this any deeper or any less cliche and done-before.

(Oh, and since I’ve brought up the whole snowflake thing - weirdly enough, this book has absolutely nothing to do with political correctness, but it does talk about how the generation before my own was raised to believe they’d be everything. It’s so funny to me that this led to the entire criticism of “millenial snowflake” culture. People who were adults in ‘96? Isn’t that ten years off?)

And listen, to the inevitable person who is going to say I just didn't get it: I really love unreliable and biased narrators. I am also not convinced this narrator, though certainly unreliable, is meant to be disagreed with. I mean, seriously, after all of that people-are-trash, our-generation-is-terrible bs for 200 pages, this is the payoff we get:

“We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.”

...this is still nihilistic? Actually, on that topic, here is a compilation of fake-deep, not-that-funny, ideologically-shitty quotes from this book:

“Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing.”
“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.”

Yeah, whatever.

I mean, I think the best things I got out of this book was a greater appreciation for the possibility of movie superiority over books and for how fucking annoying 2000s nihilism was. And from the movie, I got 1) new pop culture references that I actually understand now, 2) an interesting critique of toxic masculinity, rather than whatever this was, and 3) good acting performances. I'll just end with this quote:

I have been told that I do not "get" you. That I do not understand the basics of a male love story, a male writer who understands the male psyche and who can convey what it really feels like to be, a male. Perhaps this is the core of my issue, being a hapless female who fails at trends. Either way, I have friends that adore you and for that reason only I will not completely denounce you on the internets. Keep appealing to your trendy fan base and keep raking in the dough. Maybe someday I will swallow my pride and appeal to the masses just like you. And James Patterson.-Source

Bye, Chuck.

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Este es uno de los casos en que vi la película antes que el libro. Vi la película allá por 2009, ya no recuerdo exactamente, y quedé hipnotizado. Me enteré después que estaba basada en un libro. Desearía no haber visto la película antes de leer el libro, pero bueno, no tengo una máquina del tiempo. El narrador sin nombre está enajenado en una sociedad consumista y decadente, odia su trabajo, su vida, todo. Un encuentro con Tyler Durden, un personaje misterioso, lo pone en un rumbo directo a la colisión. Junto a otros hombres descartados y relegados a trabajos odiosos y miserables, forman un club clandestino de peleas a puño limpio... no puedo contar mucho más sin caer en spoilers.
Creo que el libro y la película han perdurado en el tiempo (son de 1996 y 1999 respectivamente) porque los integrantes del Club de la pelea no son agentes secretos, científicos, ni nada parecido. Son mozos, mecánicos, oficinistas, personas comunes y corrientes. Hartas de ganar poco dinero, hartas de sus empleos, hartas de las mentiras de la televisión. Y en ese sentido es un sentimiento que puede aparecer en cualquier parte: en USA, en América Latina, en Japón... ¿Quién no se ha sentido al menos una vez, estafado por la vida? ¿Atrapado en un empleo odioso por un sueldo miserable, que se agota al día siguiente de cobrarlo? ¿Quién no ve los modelos de los comerciales y siente envidia y resentimiento por sus cuerpos que la genética y el gimnasio hacen parecer perfectos? Esa furia y desánimo encuentran una válvula de escape en el Club de la Pelea. No diré más nada, excepto lo siguiente. ¿Quién no ha soñado con decir: "La primera regla del club de la pelea es que jamás hablas del club de la pelea"?

If it’s your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight
اوه مای گاد . فوق العاده بود . و همونجور که وعده اش رو داده بودم ، عاشقش شدم .
قبل از اینکه شروع کنم لازمه دو نکته رو یاد آوری کنم :
1.tاین نویسنده قصدش از نوشتن این رمان قصدش این بوده که ناشرش رو حتی بیشتر از قبل ناراحت کنه . ولی مثل اینکه برعکس از آب درومده !
2.tبه نظر من ، قلم این کتاب ، بیشترین شباهت رو به قلم براتیگان داره . بخاطر همینم هست که عاشقشم :)
کتاب بیشتر از هر کتابی که میشناسم دیالوگ قشنگ داشت که هایلایت کردم (احتمالا بخاطر شباهت بسیارش به قلم براتیگان) . این سبک نوشتن ، بخاطر اینکه خیلی با کتابای دیگه متفاوته ، ترجمه کردن سخته ، در اصل راحته ولی مشکل با خواننده هاست . خواننده ها فکر میکنن مشکل از ترجمه است ولی این سبک نوشتن متنه . و من کاملا از ترجمه راضی بودم (مخصوصا با وجود اون ترجمه هایی که برای کتاب های براتیگان انجام میدن :/)
در مورد فیلمش ، میتونم بگم فیلمش واقعا یه شاهکار بود . البته هیچ فیلمی وجود نداره که کاملا شبیه کتابش باشه و همون حس هم بده ، ولی این فیلمش حتی میتونه از کتابش هم بهتر باشه . ولی ازونجا که دیالوگهای زیبای کتاب ، خیلی بیشتر و بهتر از فیلم بود ، فیلم سه دو میبازه :/ . یه نکته ای هم هست در مورد علایقم اینه که اکثرا وقتی فیلم یه کتاب رو قبل از خوندنش میبینم اصلا وسوسه نمیشم که کتاب رو بخونم و معمولا هم نمیخونم (نمونه اش هری پاتره-ولی هری پاتر رو تصمیم گرفتم بعدا اصلشو بخونم) . ولی این فیلم ، نه تنها با یک بار دیدنش وسوسه شدم ، بلکه موندم چجوری سه تا دنیا رو با هم داشته باشم ؟ : دنیای آرتمیس – دنیای پندراگن – دنیای فایت کلاب :/ . خیلی سخته. فردا دوباره فیلمشو میبینم .
فقط یه تیکه اش رو میذارم ولی این کتاب رو از دست ندید :
تبلیغات رسانه ها باعث شده این آدم ها دائم دنبال اتومبیل و لباس هایی باشند که اصلا نیازی به آنها ندارند . چند نسل است که آدم ها شغل هایی دارند که از آن متنفرند و تنها دلیلی که ولشان نمیکنند این است که بتوانند چیزهایی بخرند که به هیچ دردشان نمیخورد .

I wanna start it all over right now.

Well I never saw the movie because I have zero interest in watching people hit people. And I never thought I would read the book, but I needed to read this author for a challenge and decided to make it his most famous book. Justifiably famous because it was really good!

The writing is excellent and action packed. There are no spare words or wasted pages, just a very cleverly spun tale about some very mixed up people. Not having seen the movie I was also unprepared for the magnificent twist although I had started to get a bit suspicious that something odd was occurring.

The characters are all equally awful and there are some really gruesome scenes but it was all to the point and necessary for the book's objectives. I am amazed I am saying this about a book that is way out of my normal reading tastes but I really liked it!

My first introduction to Fight Club was the movie Fight Club.
My second experience to Fight Club was the book Fight Club.

I’m constantly surprised with how many movies I enjoyed as a teenager were actually based on a novel, if only we had Goodreads in the 90’s!

With the vague memories of watching the film on VHS enough time had passed that the only ascent I could recall were the Fight Club rules.
It was great to be surprised again!

A relatively quick short read with a narrator that instantly hooks from the first chapter, I’ve enjoyed revisiting this story again!