Fight Club: A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation

A nameless narrator wages a personal battle against the forces that make his life in 1990s America so insipid, like advertising and capitalism. At least that’s what I got out of this strange novel. It didn’t speak to me.

I am not fan of nihilism of any form. Turning towards self destruction, even with taking whole world in flames with oneself is idiotic move that does not solve anything. It is equivalent of childs tantrum.

But as author shows when people are pushed to the edge they will follow those that give them meaning. And in more cases than not, this ends up in disaster.

And story of our antihero begins. From the very beginning pushed toward people whose misery will make him feel better (another so common streak of human character) he will become a cornerstone of new movement, so called Fight Club. Hand to hand, bare knuckle, combat between two men, often to the very brink of death, is a leveling field between members of the club. They might be coming from various spheres of society but in combat they are equal, members of secret brotherhood. Here they can be unburdened by ever suffocating society, can relax and be themselves.

This might have been weird in 1990s but today with more than visible division encouraged even by political powers, with quite an economical pressure, and unhealthy society bent on eating its own and constant pressure to keep ones thoughts to oneself (once thought to be trademark of Eastern block but today very present all over the world coupled with even society encouraged snitching and finger pointing with serious repercussions) more and more people are pushed to breaking point, without means of venting out their anxiety and frustration.

As a result societies like one in the novel, anarchistic in nature, bent only on violence and destruction, will pop up in entire political spectrum. Lots of people are feeling trapped and are seeking people with same ideas and principles. If one thinks this is just fiction I would refer to Europe post WW1 and arious armed gangs (again from all parts of political life) that roamed their nations and fought for political dominance.

Problem is that once out, genie cannot be put back into the bottle, as rather comic attempts of our antihero show.

This is rather gory novel with some very disturbing, and lets be honest, disgusting elements to it, that are so interesting to young rebels that need those few years of rebellion before ending up as cogs in the machine (like it happened to all those hippies in 60's) but also that one, with age, understand they play no role, except for tantrum acts. All characters are very vivid and dialogues are very interesting, expecially the way our antihero tells the story, one can actually feel the pressure he is under.

Path to madness and views of absolute nihilism and (self)destruction might be very tempting at times, but once taken it can bring only insanity, not just to the person suffering but to everyone around.

Excellent novel, keeps reader glued to the pages 'til the very end.

Surprisingly weak for being his big hit. Choke was better and much funnier. American Psycho, the main dicklit rival, is a lot more transgressive and funnier as well. Fight Club captures a hole in the modern male psyche but doesn't really do a lot with it other than point to it being there.

In the end, I found "Fight Club" to be both innovative and inspiring. Although the subtext is deeply cynical, it is never smug or pretentious. Palahniuk's view and vision is multi-faceted, multi-leveled, and engrossing. I am also impressed that a book written in a quasi-experimental style, like this one, ended up achieving such a high level of commercial success. The plot, though not classically linear, contains great momentum, like a supercollider that circles back onto itself. The end of the novel is mysterious--who lives, who dies, I'm not entirely sure. Nonetheless, the symbolism contained within the conclusion of this work is clear. This dark satire, as it has been referred to in several other reviews of this book that I have read, vividly exposes the psyche, and / or state or being, of the typical 21st century American male (given that there is only one prominent female character in this novel) -- who, in having his identity bound up in the ethical shortcomings of the materialistic lifestyle, resulting from the "age of information" / service economy-influenced society, has become effectively impotent. The author "smashes the forms" of the current state of American life and prophesies a dark time of nihilism and anarchism. "Tyler Durden", the man and the metaphor, pulverizes, grinds, and disintegrates all of the non-essential garbage we come into contact with everyday, and then blows that dust into the wind; only through destruction will the planet be cleansed and made new once again. After reading "Fight Club", I also saw the film version (directed by David Fincher) for the first time; to its credit, it follows the book quite faithfully (except for the neo-Hollywood-style happy ending).

I had wanted to read this book for ages! And well, I have officially enjoyed my very first audiobook. It was a new experience.

Getting back to this book, I dare say the movie is one of my favorites, so I entered the book with very high expectations, maybe even impossible ones. Now that I have read the book, I believe this is one of the very rare cases where the movie is better than the book.

I wouldn't say that the book is bad. It's just that the film's screenplay is absurdly good and perfectly well cast, starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helen Bonham Carter. I would not like to say anything bad about the narrator of this audiobook since he did a good job, but I have grown up so used to Edward's narration style that it is an unsurmountable hill to climb for me.

The book follows the same premise as the film, so I will focus on some differences, which helps explain why I prefer the movie.
1. The book's side quest where the protagonist has a fling with Chloe seems off-skelter and distracts the plot too much. The movie avoids wasting time with this, and it is far better for leaving Chloe as a passing tertiary character.
2. Bob doesn't play much of an important role in the book (outside of his death scene), whereas he is a recurring supporting character in the film.
3. The limo scene and driver's license human sacrifice scenes are so much better with Tyler Durden in them. Having a random mechanic driving the limo in the book takes away 90% of the life-changing impact of the scene. The mechanic only appears in two chapters of the book and is very meh.
4. The scene where our protagonist beats himself up and blackmails his boss into staying on payroll in exchange for not pressing legal charges for assault happens in the catering restaurant instead of the protagonist's regular job. The scene is the same; the boss isn't. Moving this scene to the character's regular day job makes more sense because the book enters the quandary that the character is supposed to be financed by the restaurant blackmail. Yet, he continues to show up to work for no logical reason.
5. Lou doesn't appear in the book. Bummer.
6. Tyler is more interactive in the film (a visual media like cinema just favors this story, hands down), and the movie's soundtrack further enhances these positives.

But rest assured, not everything is better in the film. There are two mini-scenes in the book that would have looked great in the movie:
1. Tyler instructs his space monkeys to perform driver's license sacrifices for project mayhem. The movie is too vague since we only see IDs in the Paper Street house and must guess who collects them.
2. Marla visits the Paper Street house, and the space monkeys order her to stand outside for 3 days just like everyone else. I found that scene to be hilarious in the book. Maybe they did film it, and the scene is only available in some obscure extended version. Bummer.

There is scant dialogue in the book. While the social criticism monologues sound brilliant in the film, they started to grate me after a while in the book because there are so few scenes with regular dialogue, and Tyler seldom speaks at all.

I already knew the ending of the book was different from the film, and it is still good, but I like the movie ending much more. In a nutshell, this is a book with certain story pacing flaws that don't quite live up to the film version, but without this story, we would have never had a Fight Club movie to begin with.

So I will be nice and give it 3 1/2 stars.

I liked this book a lot. Quite a lot. I think I'd like to read it again after I think about it some more.

I'm not sure what to write as I feel my opinions and even my understanding of the book were heavily influenced by the fact that I saw the movie before the book.

I should start by saying that I really enjoyed the movie - the acting, the story, the way it was shot.

Because I had seen the movie, I knew what was happening in the book, but I honestly feel that had I not seen the movie, I would have found the book rather confusing and disjointed and a little cold.

The writing wasn't anything special, and I could not bond to any of the characters, even though I loved the same ones in the film. I just never got into it and despite its short length I had to put in an effort to read it. And now I am finished it all seems like a blur with only the movie in my memory.

An insomniac protagonist creates a secret club where men assault each other. He is then powerless to stop the monster he has created. He and his girlfriend attend cancer victims’ support groups even though neither has cancer.

I disliked this book. I do not see the point. Perhaps it is meant to say that in order to “feel alive” people need to do more than peacefully coexist? If so, what a horrible message.

In the Afterword, the author states that this book began as a short story. I can see it would make a decent short story but repeating the same message with slight variations in each of 30 chapters felt like beating a dead horse (so to speak). I thought about not finishing but it is short. Bleak. Depressing. Not for me.

It packs a punch to your brain I liked reading this book, it was fun, darkly funny and hypnotic to read.
Apparently while Chuck Palahniuk was writing this book, he had the album The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails on repeat and Trent Reznor the singer from Nine Inch Nails had the film Fight Club on repeat while he was writing the album The Downward Spiral.
Since I am a big fan of both of these people I think that is inspiring :) If you like gritty, dark stories about self-destructive losers then you will love this book.
After awhile, I have to admit, that I get get a bit fed up with the protagonist or other characters talking about the rules of fight club, since it is all about macho men, beating their chests and showing everyone else who is bigger and better than them.
I liked the fact that the protagonist suffered from insomnia, and he hated his life, his job and his boss and everything was a copy of a copy of a copy, just like the Nine Inch Nails song A Copy of A which reminded me of the band Nine Inch Nails,Trent Reznor is a inspiring & creative person in various ways.
His insomnia is so severe that he can't even tell when he is awake or when he is asleep and dreaming.
I did however like the surprising twist about Tyler Durden's character and weather he was just an hallucination, or a separate entity altogether. Overall, I liked the fact that the main protagonist was relatable, and self-destructive till he was severely hurt and still continued on with his job and attending the various different fight clubs or project mayhem.

The movie is better.

Dead. I'm never going to finish this. I got halfway through, and I don't really want to force myself to go further. I'm tired of feeling about how 'phony' these people are, I'm tired of hearing about how they're terrible to people around them, I'm tired of the descriptions of Tyler Durden's dick. Since I'm no longer in school, I don't have to force myself to finish something that I hate so much.

Palahniuk does another stunningly good job, with a story that knocks the air out of you. His descriptions are breathtakingly graphic, but his storytelling is great, and his pacing is also excellent. I am not sure I would have been able to follow this without having seen the movie; it is very possible, but I am not sure. It is definitely a more gritty take on the story. It has all the texture of originality, and is the better of what I have read of Palahniuk's books.

I was glad that I'd seen the movie before I read the book, because I'm sure that if I hadn't already understood the characters and knew where the story was going I would have given up a third of the way in out of distaste for the characters and what they were doing.

That said, this is a well-written, face-paced book that rides the edge of absurdity in such a daring way it's easy to give the story the benefit of the doubt.

Seriously could not get enough of the movie. But, reading the book, I have NO idea how they were able to make a movie from this. It's wandering, disjointed, and self-absorbed as a book. I wish I had quit instead of wasting precious reading time finishing this one.

There was no denying the pull to this story for me. Because I've seen the movie, I knew pretty much what was going to happen, but it's just such a train wreck that I couldn't possibly look away. Sad when you think of it in the mental illness light, but amazing piece of writing for sure.
4 stars

Loved the movie, and was a bit disappointed with the book because I was expecting something more.
It is very close to the movie, up until the last part.
The ending almost made me give 5 stars.

Oh dear. Another rating conundrum. Soooo, Fight Club. This book dives right into the action. In fact, Palahniuk serves us bite sized pieces of plot, packed in chapters. His style is pretty unique, post-modern, shall we say. I did not care for it much at first. I don't think I would've been able to follow very well if I hadn't seen the movie (although the last time I saw it was many years ago). Then you get the violence, then he started namedropping brands and listing formulas for explosions and details about his automobilian line of work. I thought, oh shit, no! Another American Psycho! While that book wasn't half bad. It was half-ruined by this tireless namedropping and description of high-tech stuff (which, due to the book being from 1991 becomes a tad risible, HQ tape decks, fuck yeah!). It also, eventually, managed to bore me with over the top torture, which can't be good.

Anyway, there I was, fearing the worst, and even thinking that for once the movie might have been better than the book, but my worries had been premature. At one point it all clicked, and the namedropping and technical gibberish faded away or was at least used in a stylish way. The book just kept getting better and better. I started to really dig Palahniuk's style of writing and the subject matter was just beyond cool. Dark, cynical and pessimistic? Sign me up!

I finished it and I thought, wow, hey, that was great. This is one I should re-read and then I might even dig the first bits. Oh and I should watch the movie again, haven't seen that in ages. But wait. The movie! The movie I initially thought was going to be superior to this. Hold on. This book was great, but how cool would it have been had I not known most of the plot (albeit vaguely), had I not known the big plot twist (you don't forget a thing like that)? Then this might have been an easy 5.
Sure, there were clues all throughout the book, that pointed towards this solution, but I'm slow, I'm sure I would have been surprised as hell. Like I said, I haven't seen the movie for quite a while, but I do remember some things were different.

I think there was a big explosion at the ending of the movie, with WhereIs My Mind playing. That was cool. In the book he ends up shooting himself and ends up in heaven, which I think is supposed to be a mental hospital. I think Tyler introduces himself as a soap maker on a plane, rather than on a nude beach. I still think the movie was really good, but I can't help but wonder what it would have been like if I hadn't known. It's a bit of a shame. It's also a bit of a shame that no one seems to know the movie was based on a book, which Palahniuk reiterates in a comical fashion in the afterword. I read somewhere on goodreads that he does think the movie is better though. Go figure. I'm sure he would've expected the plot twist as well.

For now I think this floats around the 4.5 mark. Maybe I'll change my mind. Maybe not.

First rule of Fight Club, don't talk about fight club. Makes it kind of hard to write a review about that which you are not supposed to talk about. It is a fine story about one mans mental issues that causes him to go to various support groups to be able to go to sleep.

I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that this was possibly one of the worst books I have ever read and managed to finish. On the same hand, I cannot ignore the many 5* reviews so more than likely the problem was with me.

We all know the story, mostly from the film, which I saw years ago and obviously thought was ok enough to make me pick up the book when I saw it. The writing I found far too jumping around, the plot disjointed and I really wasn't interested enough to find it out. I won't be reading any more of Palahniuk books if this is supposedly one of the best. I still can't believe I made it to the end, maybe I enjoyed the pain being self inflicted by dragging myself through each page. Hell, maybe I would fit in well at fight club.... I wonder if maybe it was a secret initiation process......

I think the main thing I got from reading Fight Club was to never talk about Fight Club again.

Re-read after a few years and it's still a great book. What I love about Palahniuk is that he (I think) is carefully, slowly and almost imperceptibly tearing apart what you think he is glorifying the whole time. For a huge chunk of a story it can be infuriating, but it is completely worth it.

I'm not sure what to say about this book, really! I dashed through it in the time it took to listen to 2.5 albums. The writing is tense – short sentences, all action, no detail. The central message of the book is, or seemed to me to be, that working life sucks and life is pointless. It's the protagonist's hatred for his life that spawns his alter ego Tyler, and thus instigates all the events of the book. The thrill of violence, of cruelty, appeals to the men who fight because it's the only escape their have from their monotonous and deeply pointless existence. Of course, the reality is that most working class people's lives are monotonous and miserable, and the book is reasonably class conscious, with for instance this amazing paragraph:

The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are the cooks and the taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.

The book is really depressing. Marla's philosophy is that no one should get old, and Tyler clearly has no objection to thrill-seeking in violence and cruelty. The protagonist actually does react against this to a certain extent and claims that Tyler's gone too far, but this is purely out of self-interest - he doesn't want to lose his body to his alter ego Tyler, he doesn't want to be castrated, and he doesn't want Marla (who he's developed some affection for) to die. I guess there's a reason why this book gets called nihilist.

The other complaint I could make is that it's a book all about machismo, with only one female character, but it didn't really bother me that much; machismo is just the topic of the book. Books can't just explore everything ever - that's why we read a range of books - and this one was self-consciously about machismo and the masculine, so it didn't bother me the way it would have in a book that wasn't about that. And having said that, I'm unsure why I bothered writing this entire paragraph. Because it's something that crossed my mind while reading, I guess.

Overall, it was quite the page-turner and I enjoyed it, with its appropriately climactic ending and all. I recommend it, especially since it's short! (Jan 2013)

I had no idea what I was getting into with Fight Club (except that the first rule is to not talk about fight club) and I was taken for a whirlwind of a story. It's hard to write a spoiler-free review so I'll keep it short and sweet. Palahniuk knows how to craft a mind blowing, raw story. I never knew where he was taking me, which sometimes was great and sometimes frustrating. I also found the halting style of Palahniuk's writing was a hit or miss; again, sometimes I loved it and sometimes it drove me nuts. All in all, an exciting read.

Loved this.

Madness. Ugly. Violent.
Clever. Blackly witty.
I need coffee.

It's awesome! It's well-written! :P And for those who have seen the movie... read it! It's full of funny hints etc, leading to the end. It's awesome!

“The doorman blew his nose and something went into his handkerchief with the good slap of a pitch into a catcher’s mitt.”

This is the second book I’ve read as prep for my upcoming novella. I was informed it had been written in second person. It partially is, as it is also written in first and plural first person. Persons? Or is it first-person plural? Exactly. It doesn’t really matter since the narrative, although shifting skin like a transmigratory rattler, propels the action ever forward—unstumbling, bruised, and smiling through bloody teeth.

It’s impossible to disassociate this novel from the Fincher movie; especially since I’d seen it in the theater for my birthday on its release in October of 1999. Has it really been almost twenty years? Do ??? remember? Were ??? there? Are ??? Tyler Durden? And are you tired of hitting CTRL and “i” even though this book was supposed to have been written in second person? Who’s typing then? Punch punch punching the keyboard.

It’s impossible because the movie was so very faithful, maybe even expanding on the text in a few key places, making it better than the book. Yes, the movie’s better. That said, the book’s good, too, and I wonder just how much more I may’ve enjoyed it if I’d read it when it was published in 1996. It hardly matters since I didn’t ???? the book. (Fucking CTRL + i addiction.)

Why didn’t I love the book? It’s cynical. I mean, the cinematic version’s none too cheery either, but at least there are enough pretty faces getting pulverized, dazzling cinematography, cocaine-injected edits, and howling mayhem to keep one from slipping into misanthropy. Somehow, even for the novel’s headlong pace, the fiction splashes in dirty puddles and repeats that splashing until everyone—characters, writer, reader—is as grimy as the paste bandage peeled from the concrete floor. Cynical and dogmatic. A manifesto from a stylite who removed himself from the fight, yet cheering the unshirted masses beneath his stone column to bash each other into grease-smeared oblivion. I don’t know, like when the unnamed protagonist/antagonist warns Marla off from the clam chowder. Come on, dude, if you’re willing to piss in people’s bisque you shouldn’t be surprised if you’re going to guzzle your fair share of urine, too.

And how did so much self-dissatisfaction turn to world-destroying anarchy, anyway? In the movie it felt like a natural progression of the plot. In the book, it seems like the writer let go the reins to watch those doom-fueled horses stomp and storm into an enemy camp while the poor bastards dreamed of war on the morrow. Maybe that was the point. However, lines like this: “Burn the Louvre,” the mechanic says, “and wipe your ass with the ???? ????. This way at least, God would know our names” make me almost want to fight Chuck himself. Almost. What would a fight accomplish? I’d give in to the easiest, most reactionary temptation: to smash the cheek of the one who’d hit me. I don’t want to make napalm or pipe bombs or pretend that destruction will somehow usher in a purer world instead of merely replacing (if they succeed!) the existing brutal order with another brutal order. They want to erase history—Projects Mayhem and Mischief and the Paper Street Soap Company. If they’d only studied that history a little closer, maybe they would’ve heard of Napoleon or Mussolini or Hitler and realized that that shit’s got a short shelf-life. Even Alexander the Great died at thirty-two, apparently weeping over unconquered lands. Fuck you, Alexander. You got what you deserved. And fuck you, too, Tyler Durden. You’ll definitely get what you deserve. Maybe they’ll make soap out of you. Maybe an acolyte on the rise will come up with a ninth fight club rule: Don’t turn into a terrorist for you’ll only end up terrorizing yourself.

It was fun, though, for the most part. I’m being highly critical. I couldn’t have written this. Hell, I ??????’? have written this. I’ll use this as more of a litmus test for when my own fiction goes too cynical than glean anything from my intention: second person narration. ??? know what I mean. Because when you take your rage out on yourself, on your brothers, on your enemies, on civilizations with histories as complex and sparkling as that brain map sequence in the beginning of Fincher’s movie, you only succeed in displacement, dismantlement, and dissolution. Maybe those swinging fists should open and grasp another’s hand and pull that poor battered soul from the dirty floor.

Otherwise, I fear we’ve not enough fat on our bodies to render into soap and wash all that annihilation clean.

Still, I’m a sucker for a good ass-kicking passage:

“I tagged a first-timer one night at fight club. That Saturday night, a young guy with an angel’s face came to his first fight club, and I tagged him for a fight. That’s the rule. If it’s your first night in fight club, you have to fight. I knew that so I tagged him because the insomnia was on again, and I was in a mood to destroy something beautiful.
“Since most of my face never gets a chance to heal, I’ve got nothing to lose in the looks department. My boss, at work, he asked me what I was doing about the hole through my cheek that never heals. When I drink coffee, I told him, I put two fingers over the hole so it won’t leak.
“There’s a sleeper hold that gives somebody just enough air to stay awake, and that night at fight club I hit our first-timer and hammered that beautiful mister angel face, first with the bony knuckles of my fist like a pounding molar, and then the knotted tight butt of my fist after my knuckles were raw from his teeth stuck through his lips. Then the kid fell through my arms in a heap.
“Tyler told me later that he’d never seen me destroy something so completely. That night, Tyler knew he had to take fight club up a notch or shut it down.”

You know the first two rules of fight club.

You can count me among the ones that have read the book after seeing the movie. And I must say that even if that ruins a couple of plot twists and surprises, the novel is different enough and I really enjoyed it. Loved the style. A lot.

As for the movie, now that I've read the book I appreciate even more the brilliant adaptation for the big screen made by Jim Uhls and David Fincher. It reminds me of The Shining, in the sense that Fincher (like Kubrick) followed the novel, but not quite, and he was clever enough to make significant changes to the story to produce a better movie than the one that could have been made if someone had followed the book more closely.

I think I may have enjoyed this book more had I not seen the movie first. I like the author's writing style, but feel at times that it becomes repetitive. Though the book is good in its own right, if I had the choice between reading the book or watching the movie, I'd go with the movie.

I really liked it. What can I say. It's funny, out there, a really good read. There are enough reviews on this book to satisfy so only a rating this time. Straight four it is then. Recommended.