Fight Club

Title: Fight Club Author: Chuck Palahniuk Date Read: 6/9/13 Summary: The unnamed narrator of this book uses support groups, for afflictions he is not a victim of, as a cure for his insomnia until he meets a fellow support group junkie, Marla Singer. Marla also attends support groups of various conditions and the narrator finds himself being judged for being a liar. Soon after, he meets Tyler Durden who changes the way he sees everything. Tyler is a sort of revolutionary who forces the narrator to take risks and re-evaluate his life. In doing so, Tyler creates Fight Club where people can beat each other up in order to experience a manner of freedom. As time goes on, fight club isn’t enough for Tyler so he creates Project Mayhem, a way for members to induce pandemonium on corporate America through various pranks and plots. The narrator eventually begins to see that Tyler is getting out of control which leads to the realization of some of his own ideas and view of things that he was previously unaware of. Review: Unfortunately, this was one of those times I saw the movie before I read the book and I think it greatly affected my opinion. The point of fight club is to be able to go somewhere and let out aggression and frustrations that other parts of your life are causing, in a very manly way of course. The narrator was very cynical while Tyler was very focused on bringing down the “man.” Since I saw the movie, I knew the big twist was coming and it changed how I read the narrative from the very beginning. I was able to pick up on queues that I know I would have missed on the first reading but it also allowed me to understand the book better than I think I would have had I not seen the movie. The writing was a little spacey and hard to follow at times but I believe that was to accentuate the narrator’s state of mind. I enjoyed how the book ended and the narrators desire to undo all of the things that got out of control. His realization that he was unable to do so was well done and the outcome of that was extreme but fitting. Overall, I’m not too big on anarchy or blood and punching people in the face to cope so this book wasn’t for me but I highly recommend the movie based simply on the fact that it’s one of Brad Pitt’s best. *Not a very positive review for my first blog post but at least you know I'll be honest :)