Perry's Reviews > Fight Club

7/6/19--Nearly 3 years on, I still pose the politi-cultural question:

Did this 1996 novel presage the election, two decades on, of a populist POTUS who could stir like a hornet's nest the white, middle class, male Gen X'ers--such as Fight Clubbers--out of their malaise to smack those they see as effete elitists and paternalistic bureaucrats?

Now, my original review:
Gen X Gladiators' Hunt for Identity and Meaning (12-Stepping Middle Class WM Melancholia?)


Violence is the quest for identity. When identity disappears with technological innovation, violence is the natural recourse. Marshall McLuhan

Until November 2015, I was apparently one of the few WASP men who had not either seen the Fight Club movie or read this skillfully turbulent novel which wields a wallop in relatively short order (224 pp.). In interviews I've read, Chuck P says he wrote this as a male counter to the plethora of best selling novels in the early 1990s in which women get together for a social gathering, such as The Joy Luck Club, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and How to Make an American Quilt.

The narrator tells this story in the first person. He doesn't give his name. He's struggles with insomnia and finds relief in impersonating a cancer survivor at several support group meetings around town. He then somehow meets Tyler Durden, a cinema projectionist, waiter and anarchist, who he describes as "funny and forceful and independent, and men look up to him and expect him to change their world." He moves in with Tyler after an explosive device destroys his apartment.



Together they start a Fight Club where white collar guys get together on weekends to pummel one another then show up at work on Mondays covered in bruise with some teeth loose. The basic idea is:

I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived... and I see... an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, ...no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact, and we're very very pissed off.”

But underlying this rage against the Man, is a concept familiar in 12-step circles:

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. ...” "The lower you fall, the higher you fly." And, "only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit."

Things quickly evolve (or devolve) into a more exclusive club of the most loyal Fight Club members: Tyler Durden's anarchic "Project Mayhem." I won't spoil the rest for those of you, who like me when considering this book, haven't seen the movie or read the book.

I'll add that this novel includes the most sinister and hilarious prank played on the host of a social party I've ever read of or heard. A maliciously merry amusement.

This novel is a remarkable, raucous romp with a twisted ending, that you can get through in a couple of days.