Jump to content

Fight Club (novel)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 68.235.241.206 (talk) at 00:40, 21 February 2006 (→‎Plot synopsis). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Otheruses2

File:Fightclub.jpg
Cover to the original hardcover edition

Fight Club[1] (1996) is the first published novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The plot is based around an unnamed protagonist who struggles with his growing discomfort with consumerism and changes in the state of masculinity in American culture. In an attempt to overcome this, he creates an underground boxing club as a new form of therapy. The novel was made into a movie of the same name in 1999 by director David Fincher, which resulted in the story becoming a pop culture phenomenon. In its popularity, the novel has become a target of criticism, mainly for its explicit depictions of violence.

History

When Palahniuk made his first attempt at publishing a novel (Invisible Monsters) publishers rejected it for being too disturbing. This led him to work on Fight Club, which he wrote as an attempt to disturb the publisher even more for rejecting him. Palahniuk wrote this story in between working while on the job for Freightliner. After initially publishing it as a short story (which became chapter 6 of the novel) in the compilation Pursuit of Happiness, Palahniuk expanded it into a full novel, which, contrary to what he expected, the publisher was willing to publish.[2] While the original, hardcover edition of the book received positive reviews and some awards, it had a short shelf life. Nevertheless, the book had made its way to Hollywood, where interest in adapting it to film was growing. It was eventually adapted in 1999 by screenwriter Jim Uhls and director David Fincher. The film was a box office disappointment (although it was #1 at the U.S. box office in its first weekend) and critical reaction was mixed, but a cult following soon emerged as the DVD of the film was popular upon release (with some critics changing their opinions on it as a result of the DVD). As a result of the film, the original hardcover edition became a collector's item.[3] Two paperback rereleases of the novel, one in 1999 and the other in 2004 (the latter of which begins with an introduction by the author about the conception and popularity of both the novel and the movie), were later made. This success helped launch Palahniuk's career as a popular novelist, as well as establish a writing style that would appear in all later books by the author.

Despite popular belief, Palahniuk was not inspired to write the novel by any actual fight club. The club itself was based on a series of fights that Palahniuk got into over previous years (most notably one that he got into during a camping trip).[4] Even though he has mentioned this in many interviews, Palahniuk is still often approached by fans wanting to know where their local fight club takes place. Palahniuk insists that there is no real, singular organization like the one in his book. He does admit however that some fans have mentioned to him that some fight clubs (albeit much smaller than the one in the novel) exist or previously existed (some having existed long before the novel was written).

Many other events in the novel were also based on events that Palahniuk himself had experienced. The support groups that the narrator attends are based on support groups that the author brought terminally ill people to as part of a volunteer job he did for a local hospice. Project Mayhem is loosely based on the Cacophony Society, of which Palahniuk is a member. Various events and characters are based on friends of the author. Other events came as a result of stories told to him by various people he had talked to.[5] This method of combining various stories from various people into novels has become a common way of writing novels for Palahniuk ever since.

Outside of Palahniuk's professional and personal life, the novel's impact has been felt elsewhere. Several individuals in various locations of the United States (and possibly in other countries) have set up their own fight clubs based on the one mentioned in the novel. Some of Tyler's on-the-job pranks (such as food tampering) have been repeated by fans of the book (although these same pranks existed well before the novel was published). Palahniuk eventually documented this phenomenon in his essay "Monkey Think, Monkey Do"[6], which was published in his book Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories, as well as in the introduction to the 2004 paperback edition of Fight Club.[7] Other fans of the book have been inspired to non-anti-social activity as well; Palahniuk has claimed that fans tell him that they have been inspired to go back to college after reading the book.[8]

Other than the film, a few other adaptations have been attempted. As of June 23, 2004 Fight Club is in development as a musical, developed by Palahniuk, Fincher, and Trent Reznor.[9] Brad Pitt, who played the role of Tyler Durden in the film, has expressed interest in also being involved. A video game loosely based on the film was published by Vivendi Universal Games in 2004, receiving poor reviews from gaming critics.

Plot synopsis

Template:Spoiler

The book centers around a nameless narrator who hates his job and the way his life currently is. The narrator works for an unnamed car company, organizing product recalls on defective models if, and only if, the cost of the recall is less than the total cost of out-of-court settlements paid to relatives of the deceased (which parallels the 1970s story of the Ford Pinto's safety problems and recall). At the same time, he is becoming disenchanted with a "nesting instinct"[10] of consumerism that has absorbed his life, causing him to define himself as a person based on the furniture, clothes, and other material objects that he owns. These aspects of his life, combined with frequent trips across multiple time zones (due to his job) disturb him to the point that they cause him to suffer from chronic insomnia.

At the recommendation of his doctor (who does not consider his insomnia to be a serious ailment), the narrator goes to a support group for men with testicular cancer to "see what real suffering is like". After finding that crying at these support groups and listening to emotional outpourings from suffering individuals allows him to sleep at night, he becomes addicted to attending them. At the same time, he befriends a cancer victim named Bob. Although he does not really suffer from any of the ailments that the other attendants have, he is never caught being a "tourist" until he meets Marla Singer, a woman who also attends support groups without needing them for their original purpose. Her presence "reflects" the narrator's "tourism", and only reminds him that he doesn't belong at the support groups. This causes him to be unable to cry and consequently causes him to hate Marla. As a result of both of these factors, the narrator is once again unable to control his insomnia. After a short confrontation between the two, they begin going to separate support groups in order to avoid bumping into each other again.

Shortly before this incident, his life changes radically after meeting Tyler Durden, a beach artist who works low-paying jobs at night in order to perform deviant behavior on the job. After his confrontation with Marla, the narrator's condo is destroyed by an explosion and he asks Tyler if he can stay at his place. Tyler agrees, but asks for one favor: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can."[11] The resulting fight in a bar's parking lot attracts more disenchanted males, and a new form of support group, the first "fight club", is born. The fight club becomes a new type of therapy through bare-knuckle fighting, controlled by a set of eight rules:

  1. You don't talk about fight club.
  2. You don't talk about fight club.[12]
  3. If someone says stop, goes limp, even if he's just faking it, the fight is over.
  4. Only two guys to a fight.
  5. One fight at a time.
  6. They fight without shirts or shoes.
  7. The fights go on as long as they have to.
  8. (unnumbered rule) If it's your first night in fight club, you have to fight.[13]

Meanwhile, Tyler rescues Marla from a suicide attempt and the two initiate an affair that confounds the narrator. Throughout this affair, Marla is mostly unaware of the existence of fight club, and completely unaware of Tyler and the narrator's interaction with one another.

As the fight club's membership grows (and, unbeknownst to the narrator, spreads to other cities across the country), Tyler begins to use it to spread anti-consumerist ideas and recruits its members to participate in increasingly elaborate attacks on corporate America. This was originally the narrator's idea, but Tyler eventually takes control from him. Tyler eventually gathers the most devoted fight club members and forms "Project Mayhem", a cult-like organization that trains itself as an army to bring down modern civilization. This organization, like the fight club, is controlled by a set of rules:

  1. You don't ask questions.
  2. You don't ask questions.
  3. No excuses.
  4. No lies.
  5. You have to trust Tyler.[14]

The narrator starts off as a loyal participant in Project Mayhem, seeing it as the next step for fight club. However, he becomes uncomfortable with the increasing destructiveness of their activities after it results in the death of Bob.

As the narrator endeavors to stop Tyler and his followers, he learns that he is Tyler[15]; Tyler is not a separate person, but a separate personality. As the narrator struggled with his hatred for his job and his consumerist lifestyle, his mind began to form a new personality that was able to escape from the problems of his normal life. The final straw in causing his mind to snap came when he met Marla; Tyler was truly born as a distinct personality when the narrator's unconscious desire to be with Marla clashed with his conscious hatred for her. Having come to the surface, Tyler's personality has been slowly taking over the narrator's mind, which he planned to take over completely by making the narrator's real personality more like his. The narrator's previous cases of insomnia had actually been Tyler's personality surfacing; Tyler would be active whenever the narrator was "sleeping". This allowed Tyler to manipulate the narrator into helping him create fight club; Tyler learned recipes for creating explosives when he was in control, and used this knowledge to blow up his condo.

The narrator also learns that Tyler plans to blow up several buildings in the downtown area of the city using homemade bombs created by Project Mayhem. During these explosions, he plans to die as a martyr for Project Mayhem, consequently taking the narrator's life with his. Realizing this, the narrator sets out to stop Tyler, despite the fact that Tyler is always thinking ahead of him. In his attempts to stop this, he makes peace with Marla (who now considers the narrator to be her boyfriend) and explains to her that he is not Tyler Durden. He is eventually forced by Tyler to confront him on the roof of the tallest building in the city, which is about to be destroyed along with the other buildings that Project Mayhem has targeted. There, the narrator manages to convince Tyler that he has no control over him anymore and that he will be the only one making decisions for himself from now on. This causes his hallucinations of Tyler to stop, ridding the narrator of his second personality for good.

With Tyler gone, the narrator waits for the bombs to explode and kill him. However, the bombs turn out to be duds due to the fact that Tyler used the paraffin recipe, which never worked for the narrator, and thus Tyler as well. Still alive and holding the gun that Tyler used to carry on him, the narrator decides to make the first decision that is truly his own: he puts the gun in his mouth and shoots himself. Some time later, he awakens in a mental institution, though he believes that he is dead and has gone to heaven. From there, he gets regular visits from Marla, who still cares for him. The book ends with members of Project Mayhem who work at the institution telling the narrator that their plans to change civilization as we know it are continuing to go through, and that they are expecting Tyler to make a return.

Characters

  • The narrator - The nameless protagonist (though near the end of the novel he shows Marla his driver's license with his real name). He starts the story suffering from insomnia, and starts going to support groups for terminally ill people (he fakes that he is dying of their diseases) to help him sleep at night (through crying at them). He eventually quits going to them after he becomes part of fight club. He co-founds fight club along with Tyler Durden as a method of dealing with his insomnia and annoyance with consumer culture. His self-loathing, mental instability, and violent behavior make him a good example of an antihero. Some fans of the film refer to the narrator as "Jack", which is in reference to a scene in which he reads stories written from the perspective of a man's organs (e.g. "Jack's medulla oblongata"); the protagonists' lines in the official movie script also use the name "Jack" to denote them. Furthermore, a number of props from the film (such as a paycheck for the narrator) have the name "Jack Moore" on them, indicating that members of the film's crew also thought the narrator's name was Jack. The name "Jack" was "Joe" in the novel, which was changed in the film to avoid conflicts with Reader's Digest over the use of the name (the articles read by the narrator were featured in the magazine). The narrator of Fight Club set a precedent for the protagonists of later novels by Palahniuk, especially in the case of male protagonists, as they often shared his anti-heroic and transgressive behavior.
  • Tyler Durden - A primitivist/ nihilist with a strong hatred for consumer culture. "Because of his nature"[16], Tyler works night jobs where he causes problems for the companies; he also does beach art to find "perfection". He is the co-founder of fight club (it was his idea to have the fight that led to it). He later launches Project Mayhem, from which he and the members make various attacks on consumerism. The unhinged but magnetic Tyler could also be considered an antihero (especially since he and the narrator are technically the same person), although he becomes the antagonist of the novel later in the story.
  • Marla Singer - A woman that the narrator meets during a support group. The narrator no longer receives the same release from the groups when he realizes Marla is faking her problems just like he is. After he leaves the groups, he meets her again when she meets Tyler and becomes his lover. In later novels by Palahniuk in which the protagonist is male, a female character similar to Marla has also appeared.
  • Robert "Bob" Paulson - A man that the narrator meets at a support group for testicular cancer. A former bodybuilder, Bob lost his testicles to cancer possibly caused by the steroids he used to bulk up his muscles, and had to undergo testosterone injections; this resulted in his body increasing its estrogen, causing him to grow large breasts (Gynecomastia) and develop a softer voice. The narrator befriends Bob and, after leaving the groups, meets him again in fight club. Bob's death later in the story while carrying out an assignment for Project Mayhem causes the narrator to turn against Tyler.

Motifs

At three points in the novel, the narrator claims he wants to "wipe [his] ass with the Mona Lisa".[17] This motif shows his want for chaos, later explicitly expressed in his want to "destroy something beautiful". Additionally, he mentions at one point that "Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart."[18]

After reading stories written from the perspective of a man named Joe's organs, the narrator begins using similar quotations to describe his feelings, often replacing organs with feelings and things involved in his life.

Subtext

Throughout the novel, Palahniuk uses the narrator and Tyler to comment on how people in modern society try to find meaning in their lives through commercial culture. Several lines in the novel make reference to this lifestyle as meaningless. Usually Palahniuk delivers this through overt methods, but there are also some allegorical references as well; for instance, the narrator, upon looking at the contents of his refrigerator, notices he has "a house full of condiments and no real food."[19]

Additionally, much of the novel comments on how many men in modern society have found dissatisfaction with the state of masculinity as it currently exists. The characters of the novel lament the fact that many of them were raised by their mothers due to their fathers either abandoning their family or divorcing their mothers. As a result, they see themselves as being "a generation of men raised by women", being without a male role model in their lives to help shape their masculinity. This ties in with the anti-consumer culture theme, as the men in the novel see their "IKEA nesting instinct" as resulting from the feminization of men in a matriarchal culture. Some readers and critics have noticed how the state of men in the novel is similar to the state of women in modern society, and that Palahniuk may have also been writing about the problems of female life.[20]

Maryville University of St. Louis professor Jesse Kavadlo, in an issue of the literary journal Stirrings Still, claimed that the narrator's opposition to emasculation is a form of projection, and that the problem that he fights is himself.[21] He also claims that Palahniuk uses existentialism in the novel to conceal subtexts of feminism and romance in order to convey these concepts in a novel that is mainly aimed at a male audience.[22]

Palahniuk himself gives a much simpler assertion about the theme of the novel, stating "all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people.”[23]

Criticism

While Fight Club has been praised for its insights into contemporary American culture, it has also received criticism from various academics and cultural commentators. Much of this surrounds the possibility that the novel promotes misogyny and self-destructive behaviour. Some passages in the novel seem to suggest that men have something to gain by ridding themselves of feminine characteristics and engaging in more masculine activities. Furthermore, these critics believe these activities, mainly fighting, are self-destructive. Even more problematic to some critics is Fight Club's role in pop culture, as such a role makes it easy to infer that the ideas presented in the novel are influencing the general populace. However, there is much polarization on this issue. Supporters of the novel have responded by noting that the narrator finally rejects Tyler and fight club, and seems to also place great importance on developing a more authentic relationship with Marla.

Many critics also accused Fight Club of being homoerotic. Amongst these were David Denby of The New Yorker, Laura Miller of Salon.com, both of whom used their claims to disparage Palahniuk.[24] Additionally, Robert Alan Brook and Robert Westerfelhaus published Hiding Homoeroticism in Plain View: The Fight Club DVD as Digital Closet to make similar claims.[25] It is worth noting that all these claims were made before Palahniuk publically announced that he is a homosexual.

Fight Club in pop culture

Because of the film's popularity, Fight Club is sometimes referenced in pop culture, having been referred to in television shows, music, and video games. Such references include the following:

  • Fable — There is a fight club in almost every town.
  • Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel — there is a scene in the game when you are in a desert town. When you first walk into a building, there is a dead man on a table, and a message pops up saying "His name was Robert Paulson."
  • Futurama — Professor Farnsworth, in the episode "Three Hundred Big Boys," leaves the Planet Express building saying "Gotta go, fight club."
  • Gothic 2 — Features a fight club, complete with rules, including "No one talks about what goes on behind the warehouse." Chuck Palahniuk is also listed among the game's credits.
  • Grandma's Boy — When Jeff is asked why he's so sweaty he replies, "Oh I just started a fight club."
  • Halo 2 — In this sequel to the original X-Box console game Halo (by Bungie Software), a particularly intense sequence of the game is titled "Fight Club"
  • Invader Zim — In the episode "Rise of the Zit Boy", Gaz reads a book called "Punch Club".
  • NCIS — Agent Anthony DiNozzo refers to Fight Club in one episode.
  • Spaced — In season 2, episode 3, Tim and Mike become part of the dark world of Robot Club.
  • Tony Hawk's American Wasteland — a gang of anti-commericalists called Skate Club blow up buildings and torch billboards. A few of the members resemble Brad Pitt. The rules of Skate Club are similar to those of fight club.
  • Undeclared — In a spoof episode, the main character is asked by his friend to "Hit me as hard as you can" and proceeds to punch him in the ear before getting beat up.
  • Undergrads — In the episode "New Friends", Rocko decides to start a fight club. But since he is the only member, he has to fight himself.
  • Warcraft III — Two men named Tyler and Jack are seen fighting in one village.
  • World of Warcraft — There is an area in the Undercity where a Tyler and Jack are fighting. The undead around them also have names from the movie, such as Marla and Chloe. A weapon in the game is also named Fight Club.
  • The Swedish band Slagsmålsklubben (which translates to "fight club" in English) was named after the film.[26]
  • Some songs by the bands Panic! At The Disco contain references to Fight Club.
  • Taking Back Sunday's music video for "Cute Without The 'E' (Cut From The Team)" was inspired by Fight Club.
  • The band Finch has a song called "Project Mayhem" on their first major label release, What It Is to Burn.
  • The band Limp Bizkit has a song called "Livin' It Up" on their CD entitled Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water where lead singer Fred Durst claims to have seen Fight Club 28 times.
  • Limp Bizkit also have a prescription bottle label on the inside cover of their 'Results may vary' album where the prescribing doctor is Dr. Durden, Tyler.
  • A trailer for the film of Fight Club was re-edited to make it look like a romantic comedy, which has become an internet phenomenon.[27]
  • Seether's music video for the song Remedy was confirmed to be inspired by Fight Club.

Awards

The novel won the following awards:

  • the 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award[28]
  • the 1997 Oregon Book Award for Best Novel[29]

ISBN numbers

  • ISBN 0393039765 (hardcover, 1996)
  • ISBN 0805054375 (paperback, 1997)
  • ISBN 0805062971 (paperback, 1999)
  • ISBN 0805076476 (paperback, 2004)
  • ISBN 0805076557 (paperback, 2004)
  • ISBN 0393327345 (paperback, 2005)

Notes

  1. ^ Throughout the book, Palahniuk writes the name of the club in lower case. The only occurrence of Fight Club as a proper noun is in the novel's title. Thus, all references to "fight club" in this article refer to the fictional club, while references to Fight Club refer to the novel itself.
  2. ^ The first rules of both fight club and Project Mayhem are repeated for emphasis. Fans of the novel and the film have latched on to the first two rules of fight club as a meme and have made it into a catchphrase (although slightly changed to "you do not talk about fight club", based on the variation in the film).
  3. ^ The narrator's inability to explain Tyler's existence earlier on in the story is a classic example of an unreliable narrator.

See also

References

In addition, the following versions of the novel were used as references for this article:

  • Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: Owl Books, 1999. ISBN 0805062971
    • ^ p.25
    • ^ p.43
    • ^ p.45
    • ^ p.46
    • ^ p.48-49, 122
    • ^ p.49
    • ^ p.119, 122, 125
    • ^ p.124, 141, 200
  • ^ Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: Owl Books, 2004. ISBN 0805076476
Wikiquote has quotations related to Fight Club (novel).
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fight_Club_(novel)&oldid=40501163"