Fight Club (1996)

I was impressed with how well this book had been captured by the movie. I was even more pleasantly surprised with the different ending. A good, twisted read that has convinced me to read more of his work. Oh, yeah, and it's another good read from my local library. ( )

At times I find myself worrying that this might all just be shocking for the sake of it bullshit, but it's very well written whatever it is. Super tight prose and extremely compelling. ( )

Now, this is a movie that was better than the book. I liked the book because it had some great quotes, but I think the movie took the best quotes from the book. ( )

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. ( )

This was unusual in that I rarely read the book after seeing the movie, especially a movie which I have seen so many times. Certainly, much of the dark satire around our consumer culture, our spiritual dissatisfaction and ennui-manifesting-as-violence felt like a more fresh idea when this book first emerged. But the societal ills still remain, so it still feels pretty relevant. Just replace IKEA with Facebook and I think the song remains the same.

I was impressed with how faithful the film was to the book, and intrigued by the differences (where Tyler met our protagonist, Marla's mom's ashes, the changing of "I am Joe's..." to "I am Jack's..." when going from page to screen).

The criticisms of Fight Club are, in many respects, fair. There's a lot of poseur machismo going on here, but I see it as a criticism of it rather than an attempt to cater to it. Yes, Tyler attacks "the system" and then goes on to create one of his own, but it's one he cant' stop, which I think is the message here. Even revolution eventually leads to hierarchy and structure. The big plot twist seems less so in the rear view mirror, but at the time I saw the film, I was too caught up in the message to see it coming. And a lot of the "message" may seem trite, but a lot of it still rings very true to me.

I've been warned I may not appreciate some of Palahniuk's other work ("Rant" is my next foray) but "Fight Club" works for me, if only because it stirs up a sense of unrest that I believe needs confronting. It serves not only as a warning as to where our culture continues to slouch toward, but also the fatal mistakes we can make if we don't consider the proper path in righting our course. ( )