Fight Club (1996)

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! ( )

I'm glad I read it. I think I understand *chan now. That's kinda scary, but exciting at the same time. ( )

“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 𝘺𝘰𝘶 remember? Were 𝘺𝘰𝘶 there? Are 𝘺𝘰𝘶 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 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 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 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘢 𝘓𝘪𝘴𝘢. 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 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯’𝘵 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. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 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. ( )