Fight Club: A Novel

By Chuck Palahniuk

The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation's most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basements of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 17, 2005
• ISBN: 9780393066395

Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk nació en el estado de Washington en 1962. Es licenciado en periodismo y ha trabajado en una empresa de fabricación de contenedores, en una cadena de montaje y como mecánico. Escribió su primera novela, El club de la lucha, en tres meses; casi tan rápida fue también su conversión en un bestseller que, además, terminó siendo adaptada al cine. Actualmente es un autor de gran éxito cuyonombre aparece muy a menudo en la lista de los más vendidos en Estados Unidos. Otros títulos del autor son Monstruos invisibles, Asfixia, Nana, Diario. Una novela, Error humano, Fantasmas, Rant. La vida de un asesino, Snuff, Pigmeo, Al desnudo, Condenada y su continuación, Maldita. Todas ellas están publicadas por Literatura Random House y Debolsillo. Vive en la Costa Noroeste de Estados Unidos.

Book preview

1

TYLER GETS ME a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends. People are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durden.

The barrel of the gun pressed against the back of my throat, Tyler says, We really won’t die.

With my tongue I can feel the silencer holes we drilled into the barrel of the gun. Most of the noise a gunshot makes is expanding gases, and there’s the tiny sonic boom a bullet makes because it travels so fast. To make a silencer, you just drill holes in the barrel of the gun, a lot of holes. This lets the gas escape and slows the bullet to below the speed of sound.

You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow off your hand.

This isn’t really death, Tyler says. We’ll be legend. We won’t grow old.

I tongue the barrel into my cheek and say, Tyler, you’re thinking of vampires.

The building we’re standing on won’t be here in ten minutes. You take a 98-percent concentration of fuming nitric acid and add the acid to three times that amount of sulfuric acid. Do this in an ice bath. Then add glycerin drop-by-drop with an eye dropper. You have nitroglycerin.

I know this because Tyler knows this.

Mix the nitro with sawdust, and you have a nice plastic explosive. A lot of folks mix their nitro with cotton and add Epsom salts as a sulfate. This works too. Some folks, they use paraffin mixed with nitro. Paraffin has never, ever worked for me.

So Tyler and I are on top of the Parker-Morris Building with the gun stuck in my mouth, and we hear glass breaking. Look over the edge. It’s a cloudy day, even this high up. This is the world’s tallest building, and this high up the wind is always cold. It’s so quiet this high up, the feeling you get is that you’re one of those space monkeys. You do the little job you’re trained to do.

Pull a lever.

Push a button.

You don’t understand any of it, and then you just die.

One hundred and ninety-one floors up, you look over the edge of the roof and the street below is mottled with a shag carpet of people, standing, looking up. The breaking glass is a window right below us. A window blows out the side of the building, and then comes a file cabinet big as a black refrigerator, right below us a six-drawer filing cabinet drops right out of the cliff face of the building, and drops turning slowly, and drops getting smaller, and drops disappearing into the packed crowd.

Somewhere in the one hundred and ninety-one floors under us, the space monkeys in the Mischief Committee of Project Mayhem are running wild, destroying every scrap of history.

That old saying, how you always kill the one you love, well, look, it works both ways.

With a gun stuck in your mouth and the barrel of the gun between your teeth, you can only talk in vowels.

We’re down to our last ten minutes.

Another window blows out of the building, and glass sprays out, sparkling flock-of-pigeons style, and then a dark wooden desk pushed by the Mischief Committee emerges inch by inch from the side of the building until the desk tilts and slides and turns end-over-end into a magic flying thing lost in the crowd.

The Parker-Morris Building won’t be here in nine minutes. You take enough blasting gelatin and wrap the foundation columns of anything, you can topple any building in the world. You have to tamp it good and tight with sandbags so the blast goes against the column and not out into the parking garage around the column.

This how-to stuff isn’t in any history book.

The three ways to make napalm: One, you can mix equal parts of gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate. Two, you can mix equal parts of gasoline and diet cola. Three, you can dissolve crumbled cat litter in gasoline until the mixture is thick.

Ask me how to make nerve gas. Oh, all those crazy car bombs.

Nine minutes.

The Parker-Morris Building will go over, all one hundred and ninety-one floors, slow as a tree falling in the forest. Timber. You can topple anything. It’s weird to think the place where we’re standing will only be a point in the sky.

Tyler and me at the edge of the roof, the gun in my mouth, I’m wondering how clean this gun is.

We just totally forget about Tyler’s whole murder-suicide thing while we watch another file cabinet slip out the side of the building and the drawers roll open midair, reams of white paper caught in the updraft and carried off on the wind.

Eight minutes.

Then the smoke, smoke starts out of the broken windows. The demolition team will hit the primary charge in maybe eight minutes. The primary charge will blow the base charge, the foundation columns will crumble, and the photo series of the Parker-Morris Building will go into all the history books.

The five-picture time-lapse series. Here, the building’s standing. Second picture, the building will be at an eighty-degree angle. Then a seventy-degree angle. The building’s at a forty-five-degree angle in the fourth picture when the skeleton starts to give and the tower gets a slight arch to it. The last shot, the tower, all one hundred and ninety-one floors, will slam down on the national museum which is Tyler’s real target.

This is our world, now, our world, Tyler says, and those ancient people are dead.

If I knew how this would all turn out, I’d be more than happy to be dead and in Heaven right now.

Seven minutes.

Up on top of the Parker-Morris Building with Tyler’s gun in my mouth. While desks and filing cabinets and computers meteor down on the crowd around the building and smoke funnels up from the broken windows and three blocks down the street the demolition team watches the clock, I know all of this: the gun, the anarchy, the explosion is really about Marla Singer.

Six minutes.

We have sort of a triangle thing going here. I want Tyler. Tyler wants Marla. Marla wants me.

I don’t want Marla, and Tyler doesn’t want me around, not anymore. This isn’t about love as in caring. This is about property as in ownership.

Without Marla, Tyler would have nothing.

Five minutes.

Maybe we would become a legend, maybe not. No, I say, but wait.

Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels?

Four minutes.

I tongue the gun barrel into my cheek and say, you want to be a legend, Tyler, man, I’ll make you a legend. I’ve been here from the beginning.

I remember everything.

Three minutes.

2

BOB’S BIG ARMS were closed around to hold me inside, and I was squeezed in the dark between Bob’s new sweating tits that hang enormous, the way we think of God’s as big. Going around the church basement full of men, each night we met: this is Art, this is Paul, this is Bob; Bob’s big shoulders made me think of the horizon. Bob’s thick blond hair was what you get when hair cream calls itself sculpting mousse, so thick and blond and the part is so straight.

His arms wrapped around me, Bob’s hand palms my head against the new tits sprouted on his barrel chest.

It will be alright, Bob says. You cry now.

From my knees to my forehead, I feel chemical reactions within Bob burning food and oxygen.

Maybe they got it all early enough, Bob says. Maybe it’s just seminoma. With seminoma, you have almost a hundred percent survival rate.

Bob’s shoulders inhale themselves up in a long draw, then drop, drop, drop in jerking sobs. Draw themselves up. Drop, drop, drop.

I’ve been coming here every week for two years, and every week Bob wraps his arms around me, and I cry.

You cry, Bob says and inhales and sob, sob, sobs. Go on now and cry.

The big wet face settles down on top of my head, and I am lost inside. This is when I’d cry. Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.

Anything you’re ever proud of will be thrown away.

And I’m lost inside.

This is as close as I’ve been to sleeping in almost a week.

This is how I met Marla Singer.

Bob cries because six months ago, his testicles were removed. Then hormone support therapy. Bob has tits because his testosterone ratio is too high. Raise the testosterone level too much, your body ups the estrogen to seek a balance.

This is when I’d cry because right now, your life comes down to nothing, and not even nothing, oblivion.

Too much estrogen, and you get bitch tits.

It’s easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die. On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero.

Bob loves me because he thinks my testicles were removed, too.

Around us in the Trinity Episcopal basement with the thrift store plaid sofas are maybe twenty men and only one woman, all of them clung together in pairs, most of them crying. Some pairs lean forward, heads pressed ear-to-ear, the way wrestlers stand, locked. The man with the only woman plants his elbows on her shoulders, one elbow on either side of her head, her head between his hands, and his face crying against her neck. The woman’s face twists off to one side and her hand brings up a cigarette.

I peek out from under the armpit of Big Bob.

All my life, Bob cries. Why I do anything, I don’t know.

The only woman here at Remaining Men Together, the testicular cancer support group, this woman smokes her cigarette under the burden of a stranger, and her eyes come together with mine.

Faker.

Faker.

Faker.

Short matte black hair, big eyes the way they are in Japanese animation, skim milk thin, buttermilk sallow in her dress with a wallpaper pattern of dark roses, this woman was also in my tuberculosis support group Friday night. She was in my melanoma round table Wednesday night. Monday night she was in my Firm Believers leukemia rap group. The part down the center of her hair is a crooked lightning bolt of white scalp.

When you look for these support groups, they all have vague upbeat names. My Thursday evening group for blood parasites, it’s called Free and Clear.

The group I go to for brain parasites is called Above and Beyond.

And Sunday afternoon at Remaining Men Together in the basement of Trinity Episcopal, this woman is here, again.

Worse than that, I can’t cry with her watching.

This should be my favorite part, being held and crying with Big Bob without hope. We all work so hard all the time. This is the only place I ever really relax and give up.

This is my vacation.

I went to my first support group two years ago, after I’d gone to my doctor about my insomnia, again.

Three weeks and I hadn’t slept. Three weeks without sleep, and everything becomes an out-of-body experience. My doctor said, Insomnia is just the symptom of something larger. Find out what’s actually wrong. Listen to your body.

I just wanted to sleep. I wanted little blue Amytal Sodium capsules, 200-milligram-sized. I wanted red-and-blue Tuinal bullet capsules, lipstick-red Seconals.

My doctor told me to chew valerian root and get more exercise. Eventually I’d fall asleep.

The bruised, old fruit way my face had collapsed, you would’ve thought I was dead.

My doctor said, if I wanted to see real pain, I should swing by First Eucharist on a Tuesday night. See the brain parasites. See the degenerative bone diseases. The organic brain dysfunctions. See the cancer patients getting by.

So I went.

The first group I went to, there were introductions: this is Alice, this is Brenda, this is Dover. Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.

I never give my real name at support groups.

The little skeleton of a woman named Chloe with the seat of her pants hanging down sad and empty, Chloe tells me the worst thing about her brain parasites was no one would have sex with her. Here she was, so close to death that her life insurance policy had paid off with seventy-five thousand bucks, and all Chloe wanted was to get laid for the last time. Not intimacy, sex.

What does a guy say? What can you say, I mean.

All this dying had started with Chloe being a little tired, and now Chloe was too bored to go in for treatment. Pornographic movies, she had pornographic movies at home in her apartment.

During the French Revolution, Chloe told me, the women in prison, the duchesses, baronesses, marquises, whatever, they would screw any man who’d climb on top. Chloe breathed against my neck. Climb on top. Pony up, did I know. Screwing passed the time.

La petite mort, the French called it.

Chloe had pornographic movies, if I was interested. Amyl nitrate. Lubricants.

Normal times, I’d be sporting an erection. Our Chloe, however, is a skeleton dipped in yellow wax.

Chloe looking the way she is, I am nothing. Not even nothing. Still, Chloe’s shoulder pokes mine when we sit around a circle on the shag carpet. We close our eyes. This was Chloe’s turn to lead us in guided meditation, and she talked us into the garden of serenity. Chloe talked us up the hill to the palace of seven doors. Inside the palace were the seven doors, the green door, the yellow door, the orange door, and Chloe talked us through opening each door, the blue door, the red door, the white door, and finding what was there.

Eyes closed, we imagined our pain as a ball of white healing light floating around our feet and rising to our knees, our waist, our chest. Our chakras opening. The heart chakra. The head chakra. Chloe talked us into caves where we met our power animal. Mine was a penguin.

Ice covered the floor of the cave, and the penguin said, slide. Without any effort, we slid through tunnels and galleries.

Then it was time to hug.

Open your eyes.

This was therapeutic physical contact, Chloe said. We should all choose a partner. Chloe threw herself around my head and cried. She had strapless underwear at home, and cried. Chloe had oils and handcuffs, and cried as I watched the second hand on my watch go around eleven times.

So I didn’t cry at my first support group, two years ago. I didn’t cry at my second or my third support group, either. I didn’t cry at blood parasites or bowel cancers or organic brain dementia.

This is how it is with insomnia. Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you.

Then there was Bob. The first time I went to testicular cancer, Bob the big moosie, the big cheesebread moved in on top of me in Remaining Men Together and started crying. The big moosie treed right across the room when it was hug time, his arms at his sides, his shoulders rounded. His big moosie chin on his chest, his eyes already shrink-wrapped in tears. Shuffling his feet, knees-together invisible steps, Bob slid across the basement floor to heave himself on me.

Bob pancaked down on me.

Bob’s big arms wrapped around me.

Big Bob was a juicer, he said. All those salad

Reviews for Fight Club

[ratvampyre · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

this book was actually very captivating despite my having seen the movie *before* reading the book! i’m really glad about that because usually that can make reading the book kind of a drag. that definitely was not the case with this one.

i personally feel that the book kept a really great pace. the first ¾ of it seem to detail a very slow descent into something maddening, and the last ¼ of it *is* the something maddening. it’s a slow but steady spiral into chaos.

this book made me feel something of an existential crisis for a bit as i read it. there’s a lot of (very casual) talk about identity, bouts of disassociation, anarchy…and it all was the perfect cocktail to push my brain into a place much akin to alice’s descent into wonderland. confusion, questioning, doubt…but i recovered from that mindset and finished the book! and it was great!

[knerd.knitter · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The casting on this movie is brilliant. That alone makes it better than the book.

[zare_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[a.godhelm · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.

[stephencbird · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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).

[chirikosan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[amcheri-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 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.

[spiritedstardust · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[castlelass · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

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.

[evilcreature-592127 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[bibliophageoncoffee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The movie is better.

[tikimoof · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

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.

[et.carole · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[jsabrina-219220 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[karatenursemary · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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.

[tonifgmamtc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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

[tiagodll · Rating: 4 out of 5 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.

[superpeer · Rating: 4 out of 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.

[foof2you · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[bridgey_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

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.

[tduvally-355175 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[jayeless-698797 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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)

[bookishtexpat · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[shahnareads · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved this.

[philipjhunt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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

[catherine_gv · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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!

[toddsherman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“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.”

[dougcornelius_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

You know the first two rules of fight club.

[chaghi-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[borrows0n0wants · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.