I think it's more a 3,5*

I don't know what I expected but it sure wasn't what I got! (Yeah shame on me, I actually did not see the movie up until a day after finishing this book)

Tbh the big plot twist towards the end of the book wasn't that big of a twist to me. It was actually pretty obvious. But to be fair, I think back in the day when this was published, it probably was something new and shocking. Nowadays this is used so often as a plot that it just didn't surprise me anymore.

But besides that it was so unique and intriguing, I enjoyed it a lot. It's not like anything else I've read in my life. It took some time to get used to the writing style but once I did it was quite genius.

Still, I can't give this more than 3,5*.
I really don't know what keeps me from giving it 4*, but something just didn't klick with me while reading, I guess.



PS: I watched the movie the day after I finished this and I can't really say what I enjoyed more.

چقدر مریض و کامل بود!
چقدر توش حرف و نفرت بود.
پایان خیلی خوبی هم داشت. پایان متفاوتی بود. هم میشد برداشت داستانی کرد ازش، هم برداشت نمادین.
داستانی اگزجره، که در عین حال میتونه ادما رو به خودشون بیاره.

MORAL OF THE STORY -> GET SOME SLEEP!

n  THE RULES OF FIGHT CLUB:n

1st RULE: You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB.
2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about FIGHT CLUB.
3rd RULE: If someone says "stop" or goes limp, taps out the fight is over.
4th RULE: Only two guys to a fight.
5th RULE: One fight at a time.
6th RULE: No shirts, no shoes.
7th RULE: Fights will go on as long as they have to.
8th RULE: If this is your first night at FIGHT CLUB, you HAVE to fight.

In the summer of 2014 Kim and I were discussing movies and she mentioned- Fight Club. Since I had never seen it she told me that I needed to see it to stay her friend. I searched for months trying to find it but not until the other day did I notice that HBO was showing it. I watched it right away.

WHOA!!! I knew nothing about this movie except for the title and the first two rules (who hasn't heard that thrown around since the '90's). I just assumed it would be like Beautiful Disaster with fighting and romance. How naive of me to go into the movie thinking that because by the end of this one it BLEW MY MIND. I was so upset when I was done watching it because it was NOT like Beautiful Disaster and I was filled with questions. After bombarding Kim with all my questions I began searching online for answers and I learned that this was actually a book first and the ending in the book differs from the movie (but had the same general gist of the story).

For New Year’s 2014 Kim and I read The Bronze Horseman and we decided for New Year’s 2015 we would read Fight Club. I began searching the used bookstores around my area for a copy. I had envisioned finding a used SIGNED copy and mailing it to Kim. After searching three book stores my dreams were dwindling but on my fourth try I found one with used copies. They only had SIGNED copies which was exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, they ranged from $200 to $400. Sorry, Kim, but I wasn’t able to get you a signed copy.

On New Year’s Eve my family and I headed to the coast for a seafood ‘linner’ (lunch and dinner). We swung by a used bookstore and came across the cassette tapes. YAY!!! Kim and I listened to this one and the audio was great.

Here is the thing about this book/movie… it was the author’s debut novel and became a cult favorite. The movie made it even more popular. There are some differences between the two but overall it's a very close adaption of the book.

BECAUSE I REALLY WANTED THIS TO BE A LOVE STORY I'M GOING TO WRITE ABOUT "HOW IT IS A LOVE STORY."

Fight Club is a Disturbing Love Story... One where the reader questions the sanity of the characters. Our nameless narrator meets a woman named Marla. She will change his life. They meet at one of the many support groups that they attend (which neither of them have a legit reason to attend). “Marla doesn't have testicular cancer. Marla doesn't have tuberculosis. She isn't dying. Okay in that brain brain-food philosophy way, we're all dying, but Marla isn't dying the way Chloe was dying.”

Through the narrator's pursuit of Marla he begins to unravel. “I knew this would happen," Marla says. "You're such a flake. You love me. You ignore me. You save my life, then you cook my mother into soap.”

Okay, I know it’s a far stretch for me to say that there is a love story within this disturbing book but even people with mental health issues can love someone. I know this book is more about anarchy and the working class wanting to be treated with respect. But since I’m a romance reader I’m sticking to the "love story" part of this book.



After watching the movie and reading the book I’m pretty grossed out about eating soup in a restaurant and using soap. If you’ve read the book or seen the movie you’ll get it.

The author graduated from my alma mater, University of Oregon (before I attended). He also lives in Portland, Oregon and the house from the movie was inspired from a house in Portland. For those who will watch the movie there are several famous people in the movie: Brad Pitt (Tyler Durden) | Edward Norton (narrator) | Meat Loaf (Bob Paulson) | Jared Leto (Angel Face).

Standalone

n  n

n  There, drunk by the bar where no one was watching and no one would care, I asked Tyler what he wanted me to do. Tyler said, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”n

And so fight club is born. Ideology sprung between a young man and another he'd just met – Tyler Durden - outside of a bar – if you've read, or seen the movie you know Tyler. Substance of the everyday man. Hero to the lower working class. The other guy in the fight, and our mediator, or protagonist - middle class and once rising to upper, but caught in conflict of all of that label-ism.

So what brings a guy, who seemingly had all most would want, to throw it away for another man's dogma? Insomnia.

From hugs in the support group for those who lost a testicle, to a face getting mashed upon a concrete floor under a bar, to bars of premium soap rendered from human grade collagen, this book pretty much had me from the get go.

“The second rule of fight club is....” Well, I don't talk about that.

no shade but if i was in fight club, i'd win

No redeeming features that I found!

Well, I can't say that this happens to me very often. I got within 30 pages of the end of Chuck Palahniuk's FIGHT CLUB and set it aside. Too dark, too perverted, too distressing, too bizarre, too ugly, too violent, too sick, too toxic, too much of too many things. I see no reason at all why this dark, dark paean to violence should be celebrated as a classic of American literature unless it's true that American society is itself a paean to violence. Perhaps that's it!

Definitely not recommended.

Paul Weiss

n  Sólo después de haberlo perdido todo —dice Tyler— eres libre para hacer cualquier cosan

Voy a necesitar tiempo para procesarlo...

Cada quien es libre de pensar y actuar según su voluntad, pero debemos dejar de culpar a la sociedad por todos nuestros fracasos y frustraciones personales.

En realidad 3,2

Gracias a la ciencia, la tecnología y los descubrimientos de miles de seres que vivieron antes que nosotros, podemos disfrutar de una vida con muchas comodidades. No es una vida perfecta, claro está, pero debemos valorar lo que poseemos y lo que hemos logrado como especie, más allá de todos los errores que se han cometido como destruir la naturaleza, la extinción de muchas especies, etc. El problema del ser humano es que de la misma forma como es tan competente para crear herramientas tan útiles como la rueda, también lo es para causar destrucción por medio de armas, bombas, venenos, etc. Esto ocurre, simple y sencillamente, porque a pesar del progreso tecnológico y científico que hemos vivido como especie, no hemos aprendido a usar la herramienta que recibimos de nacimiento: El cerebro. Nuestro cerebro puede ser un gran aliado, pero también un arma terrorífica que nos puede impulsar a destruir nuestra vida y la de muchos seres más. De eso precisamente trata esta historia, de mostrarnos cómo se genera el caos y se crea una anarquía en una sociedad, a partir del inconformismo, infelicidad, y monotonía de quienes viven en ella.

Al inicio no sentí simpatía ni por la prosa, ni por el argumento, ni por los personajes. Esto, porque no me pareció un buen ejemplo que hombres que estaban desilusionados de la vida y que prácticamente querían morirse, se la pasaran golpeándose como animales los fines de semana para sentirse vivos, para sentirse «machos», y para desahogarse de toda la infelicidad con la que vivían diariamente. La sinopsis prometía eso, lo sé, pero quizás esperaba que esas peleas tuvieran un verdadero propósito, como por ejemplo que fueran apuestas, pelearan por algún poder, cargo, etc., pero al conocer en esas primeras páginas la simpleza de «pelear sin sentido» me empecé a preguntar seriamente: ¿Qué estoy leyendo? ¿Cuál es el objetivo de esta historia? Sin embargo, seguí leyendo con desinterés y sin expectativas, y fui entendiendo poco a poco, que estas reuniones solo eran una distracción del antagonista para ocultar sus verdaderos planes. Entonces, de allí en adelante y hasta la parte final, el argumento me pareció mucho más interesante, intrigante —pero sin exagerar—, y logré disfrutar de una historia de la que no esperaba hacerlo, teniendo en cuenta mis disgustos iniciales.

El club de la lucha es una historia que presenta en pocas páginas la suficiente violencia, crueldad, autodestrucción, desesperanza, depresión y anarquía, como para hacernos entender lo infelices que muchas personas se sienten viviendo en esta selva de asfalto y edificaciones. Un mundo donde nadie se compadece de nadie; un mundo donde es más importante el enriquecimiento que el dolor del prójimo; un mundo donde las personas desdichadas y fracasadas, necesitan visitar seres en peores situaciones para sentirse menos desventurados; un mundo donde la única solución parece ser la muerte; un mundo donde nadie es bueno porque la oscuridad los ha cegado por completo. Es un mundo que se asemeja mucho al real, pero en el cual solo se presenta lo negativo de la sociedad y no lo positivo. Por tanto, la ambientación ha sido excelente, no solo porque los hechos ocurran en sitios oscuros, viviendas pobres, sótanos, bares, etc., sino porque todas las personas sin importar su profesión, religión o riquezas, sufren de la misma enfermedad llamada infelicidad. La desdicha no es exclusiva de los que menos tienen, cualquier ser humano puede vivirla, sin importar su estrato, idioma o lugar de residencia. El autor necesitaba personajes hundidos en el vacío, y efectivamente ha logrado representarlos magistralmente. Por ello, es entendible el comportamiento de los personajes, así como sus ideas de extorsión y destrucción del prójimo. Solo son seres cansados de vivir con dolor y con problemas, es normal que no les importe nada. Naturalmente ese no es el camino que debemos tomar, pero eso es lo que el autor nos presenta y sobre ello es que debemos reflexionar. Claramente el libro puede tomarse como una seria crítica a la sociedad por no valorar a los individuos que pertenecen a ella, pero por otra parte cada quien es libre de pensar y sentir lo que quiere, por lo que es natural que en cualquier sociedad siempre exista la insatisfacción porque todos pensamos y sentimos diferente: De eso no tiene culpa la sociedad. El pesimismo y la desesperanza que presenta el autor se puede notar claramente en las siguientes líneas:

n  
«Todo lo que alguna vez amaste te rechazará o morirá.
Todo lo que alguna vez creaste será desechado.
Todo aquello de lo que estás orgulloso terminará convertido en basura.»
n

Ahora, si intento buscar una reflexión de esta obra algo más rebuscada, podría decir que esta historia es la demostración de que con pasión, disciplina y dedicación, podemos cambiar el mundo drásticamente. ¿Transformarlo para bien, o para mal? Esa sería la verdadera pregunta. Sin embargo, si cuidáramos un poquito más nuestra salud mental y combatiéramos con ferocidad nuestros demonios internos, quizás comprenderíamos que las razones para transformarlo positivamente son más valiosas que las negativas. Cuando las personas nos sentimos mal psicológicamente, olvidamos que nada es eterno y que si hoy nos sentimos como basura, puede que mañana nos sintamos felices por todo lo que tenemos a nuestro alrededor, pero a la vez esa felicidad también sufrirá una alteración cuando llegue el momento en que volvamos a sentirnos mal, luego se repetirá el ciclo, y así sucesivamente, eso es normal. Recordar que tenemos salud, que estamos vivos, que podemos cantar, reír, saltar, correr, observar un mágico amanecer... esas pequeñas acciones nos ayudan a sanarnos internamente y valorar este bonito regalo llamado vida. Si Tyler, el antagonista, un ser que «no servía para nada», fue capaz de transformar y pervertir tanto a los demás, ¿por qué nosotros con tantas habilidades, talentos y buenas intenciones no podemos transformar positivamente el mundo? Hay millones de Tyler’s en la vida real, con grandes capacidades para crear, servir e influenciar a muchísimas personas; es una lástima que aquellos Tyler’s usen mal sus habilidades, sería un mundo muy diferente si hicieran las cosas bien.

En cuanto a la prosa me ha parecido regular porque sentí que el argumento y las oraciones iban a velocidades diferentes. Es difícil de explicarlo, pero sentí que el argumento avanzaba a una velocidad normal, pero como las oraciones eran tan cortas la narración se sentía como una bitácora, muchas pausas y saltos de tiempo inesperados. Me hubiera gustado que en cada párrafo se expusieran los hechos sin tanto «afán» y sin tanta repetición. Específicamente cuando digo «sin tanta repetición» me refiero a las reglas de El club de la lucha; comprendo que eran importantes, pero citarlas cada rato es innecesario porque siento que con la primera mención queda muy claro todo para el lector. La prosa no llega a ser pésima, ni nada por el estilo, pero pudo ser mejor. No necesariamente todos los thrillers tienen que tener frases cortas y apresuradas, a veces hacen falta párrafos grandes para profundizar en los tópicos de una nóvela.

En resumen, El club de la lucha es una nóvela pesimista que me hizo recordar La metamorfosis de Franz Kafka, pero que tiene todos los tintes y ambientación de una novela policiaca, pero sin el rol de los policías. Sí, esperaba una novela diferente, pero encontrar una novela que critica a la sociedad porque no valora a los individuos que pertenecen a ella tampoco me ha molestado. ¿Me ha gustado? Sí, pero sin exagerar. La parte final estuvo genial y me encantó, y creo que por esas páginas y por ese «plot twist» es que vale la pena darle la oportunidad a esta obra, pero tampoco es que sea la «obra maestra». Es una obra para pasar el rato, para distraernos y quizás para cambiar nuestra monotonía. Le colocaría cuatro estrellas de calificación pero por su falta de desarrollo o reflexiones más profundas en algunas temáticas, no puedo colocarle una calificación mayor a tres estrellas.

"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.

Δεν έχω κάνει ούτε τη στοιχειώδη προσπάθεια να είμαι αντικειμενική με αυτό το βιβλίο και ούτε σκοπεύω να κάνω τη μορφολογική του ανάλυση. Για όσους έχουν δει την ταινία, επισημαίνω ότι το βιβλίο είναι -φυσικά-διαφορετικό. Ο Fincher έχει αποφασίσει να προσθέσει και να αφαιρέσει στοιχεία, να τροποποιήσει και να μεταφέρει με τον δικό του, mind-bending τρόπο αυτήν τη γαμάτη ιστορία στη μεγάλη οθόνη, δίνοντάς μας μάλιστα μία από τις ωραιότερες σκηνές στην ιστορία του κινηματογράφου.

Όσον αφορά το βιβλίο, θα πω μόνο αυτό: για εμένα αυτή ειναι η ουσία της λογοτεχνίας και της τέχνης γενικότερα. Να μπορείς να μιλήσεις για τα μεγαλύτερα ζητήματα, όχι με διδακτισμό ή περίπλοκες έννοιες, αλλά διαμέσου της ιστορίας που αφηγείσαι. Το Fight Club δεν είναι τύποι που δέρνονται. Το Fight Club είναι η επιτυχία, η αποτυχία, η ζωή, ο θάνατος, ο καπιταλισμός, ο φασισμός, η αναρχία και το μεγάλο "ως εδώ" του καθενός. Και μόλις έσπασα τους δύο πρώτους κανόνες.

DNF

“I want you to do me a favor. I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

I never had a particular urge to read Fight Club when it came out. As with things like the film Natural Born Killers, I thought I knew from the hype what it was about, and thought I knew it was an allegory about violence and American culture. I’ve lived and worked in Detroit, New York and Chicago. Violence is part of the places I have lived in. But I have in the past year been reading a lot of noir, and I had an audio version of the book for a family road trip (and ear buds so it was my own listen, not having to subject the family to the offenses) and I finally read it, and came to see what everyone loves about the book.

“You’re never as alive as you are at Fight Club.”

Chuck Palahniuk is like the love child of Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me) and Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues), just as violent as Thompson and more darkly humorous than Robbins, in his scary rollercoaster allegory of American life in the late twentieth century. It has a bit of Kafka on speed in it, too. Tarantino territory, clearly. Black humor. Dark social satire, often hilarious, with surprisingly great writing in places. Jules Feiffer’s Little Murders (okay, kids, look that one up and see it!).

The tale is about an unnamed narrator, let’s call him X, who suffers from insomnia. A doctor suggests a unique treatment, so he could "see what real suffering is like," to go to support groups for those suffering from testicular cancer and so on.

X meets Tyler Durden, and the two of them invent the Fight Club as a kind of way to speak to the boredom and chaos of their lives, even inventing rules for the club:
1.tYou don't talk about fight club.
2.tYou don't talk about fight club.
3.tWhen someone says stop, or goes limp, the fight is over.
4.tOnly two guys to a fight.
5.tOne fight at a time.
6.tThey fight without shirts or shoes.
7.tThe fights go on as long as they have to.
8.tIf this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.

So, they do what people do, they invent a cultural group, and make rules for the group. But why the rage and revolt? X is living in an apartment filled with Ikea furniture, working a dead-end job, going nowhere. Some of Palahniuk’s/X’s insights are fairly mundane and unoriginal as a basis for the sort of punk Rage Against the Machine revolt here: “The things you own end up owning you.” These anti-consumerist ideas seem to be at the heart of all the rage.

As Fight Club grows, and proliferates, it isn’t enough for them. It’s clear it is a gateway activity for a greater social goal, Project Mayhem, which has has its eventual goal of the End of Civilization. Anarchism, Tyler talks about from time to time.

"Burn the Louvre, and wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa. This way at least, God would know our names. . . God's hate is better than His indifference.”

“I want to kill all the fish in the world I can’t afford to eat. I want the whole world to hit rock bottom. . . to blast the world free of history.”

Now, I’m going to put this out there delicately, but on the one hand I hear in these passages Steve Bannon’s conservative anarchism and on the other hand ISIS terrorism. Just blow stuff up. Some of it is class warfare, true.

Fight Club is about reinventing yourself, but it is also about something we have been witnessing every year escalating since this 1996 book came out, the cultural turn to violence. It might also be about insomnia-induced hallucination. Or maybe madness. Jekyll-Hyde? Multiple personalities?

Palahniuk once called his book a call for “A new social model for men to share their lives,” and he may have been serious, in showing that most men just get together to watch violent sports like football and hockey and boxing. His book almost predicts Shark Tank and Mixed Martial Arts.

I like it a lot, especially in the first third, which is almost exhilarating. I winced more than a few times. I admire some of the invention and language. I laughed aloud several times while listening to it, unable to share the basis of the joke with my family. A dark satire about the new and ever-expanding American Barbarianism. Oh, yes, I will finally see the movie, I will.