Book #53: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk

 Released: August 17th, 1996

My 23nd book for 2024 was Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight Club”.

Most people are familiar with Fight Club from the movie adaptation that was based on this book.  They remember Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter.  The novel is a bit darker, and a lot more chaotic.

I had heard about Fight Club for years but never read the book nor saw the movie until decades later.

My first exposure to Fight Club dates back to 2016.  I was managing a Walmart store just outside Seattle.  The job was stressful, but the other managers and I used humor to get us through.  One day, the store manager asked me "What's the first rule of Fight Club?"  I responded, "I don't know, I've never seen it."  The store manager was stunned.  "Get out of here, you're leaving early.  You need to go watch Fight Club tonight and then tell me about it tomorrow."

I went back to my apartment at the Angeline Apartments in the Columbia City district in the south side of Seattle.  I rented the movie theater room (a custom-built living room with a 90-inch TV) and watched it for the first time.  The film was really good, and shortly after I found out it was based on a novel.  (I really love imdb.com).

A couple years later, my best friend was talking about it, and said he recommended reading it.  A couple weeks ago, I was hanging out with him, and he asked me about it again, and when I said I hadn't read it, he lent me his copy to read.  Awesome, just need to finish the colossal "Iron Flames" and then I can get started.

The book is very interesting.  I certainly see a demographic who would relish in its unique style.  The book carries a very Generation X theme to it.  Dreading the culture's corporate structure of the Baby Boomer era.  The dull, lifeless menial work that people trudge through day in and day out.  The feeling of flying from place to place to place with exhaustion and overworking hours upon hours.

Another theme is seeking out what one is truly passionate about.  Things we don't learn until we get to the end of our rope and lament what could have been.  There are a lot of very striking ideas that hit hard in this book, but the one scene where the narrator has a gun to a man's head, and intimidates him into chasing his childhood dream over working a meaningless job to afford bread and watch TV.  

I think about all the things I wanted to do as a child: Pro Wrestling, Musician, Entertainer, IT personnel, Business Manager.  I sit here at 35, and wonder where my life went.  I've managed businesses, I've performed music and stand-up comedy.  I was a tech guru for one job.  Currently, my true passion is investing.  I love my morning routine, but I want to build it into something more.  I wake up, get dressed, go downstairs, make my coffee, urinate, make my protein shake, take my morning medication, then read 20+ pages over an hour while I play my videos to earn money before heading into my job.  My dream is to own a big house where I can wake up 5am, go to my gym room (think an office space with a elliptical, a weight bench, and a TV mounted in the upper corner facing down diagonally.  Then after that, grab a shower with a rainfall showerhead.  Make some breakfast and eat as I check the news and review my investments in the morning, then plan out my afternoon.  Do I want to fly somewhere?  Am I helping my community somehow?  Do I need to mow the lawn?  Plant a garden?  Take care of someone?  Plow the snow?  I seek freedom and flexibility.  The more I can better myself, the more I can better and empower others.  That's my dream.  That's my goal.

Winding tangent there, but point being, everyone has a goal and a dream.  Most of us sell our dreams short due to lack of belief in ourselves, or inability to navigate the difficult parts.  We end up selling our time to fulfill someone else's dream.  Increasingly, the world has become more and more self-centered.  There's a growing "us vs them" theme.  It feels addressed in this book.  While I don't think people need to kill their boss, nor destroy their cities, I do believe there are better ways to accomplish things.  And while the mentality shifts from generation to generation, I think we need to focus more on uniting together than breaking apart.  Not everyone wants to sit in a cubicle 9-5.  Nor work retail for life.  Some want to do something greater.  But it's finding the courage and the mindset to do so as well as the people who will back them up and support them when times get tough.

Another major theme in the book deals with death.  People often use the phrase "I wanna die" or "kill me now" when faced with a daunting task.  Do they really want to die?  Do they truly want to unravel years of existence to reach a seemingly meaningless conclusion?  Personally, I tend to favor life over death.  I know some feel the world would be better without their existence.  This theme weighs heavily in this book.  The narrator feels the endless indulgence of overly stressful work and traveling fuel his existence.  He goads death on to an extent and falls on the side of anarchy with how "Tyler" influences him and his ongoing life.  

Here is what I learned:

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• Most of the noise a gunshot makes is expanding gasses.

• Tyler knows how to make plastic explosives.

• The Parker-Morris Building is the world’s tallest building.

• The building has 191 floors.

• Seminoma has almost 100% survival rate.

• Bob’s testicles were removed 6 months ago.

• “It’s easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.”

• Remaining Men Together is a testicular cancer support group.

• They meet Sunday afternoons at the Trinity Episcopal church.

• The narrator has been to Phoenix, Chicago, New York, Boston, Washington DC, Dallas, Seattle, Michigan, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Denver.

• Tyler Durden works part-time as a movie projectionist.

• He only works night jobs.

• Life insurances pays off triple if you die on a business trip.

• Old movie theaters run a movie with 2 projectors.

• The two dots at the end of a reel are called “cigarette burns.”

• The first white dot is the 2-minute warning.

• The second white dot is the 5-second warning.

• Crissy Field is misspelled “Krissy” in the novel.

• Projectionists used to steal naked frames from movies.

• The narrator is a recall campaign coordinator.

• The narrator met Tyler at a nude beach.

• The narrator always wears a watch.

• At support groups, people say “agent” instead of parasite.

• At support groups, people say “treatment” instead of “cure”.

• Modern bombs don’t tick.

• On every trip, the narrator packs the same thing (six white shirts, 2 black trousers, a traveling alarm clock, cordless electric razor, toothbrush, six pair underwear, and six pair black socks).

• The narrator’s home was a condominium on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise.

• Tyler rents a house on Paper Street.

• “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

• “The first rule about fight club is you do not talk about fight club.”

• Tyler has stacks of Reader’s Digest around his place.

• Marla lives at the Regent Hotel

• The narrator begins writing haikus.

• Tyler knows how to make soap.

• Tyler says if your boss angers you, forward their mail to Rugby, North Dakota.

• Tyler was a Boy Scout.

• Marla shops at Goodwill.

• Tyler knows how to make dynamite.

• You can use lye to open clogged drains.

• Tyler’s company is the “Paper Street Soap Company”

• The tide is a natural astringent.

• “Your father is your model for God.

• Seven pages is the perfect length for a short story.

• According to a rumor, Margaret Thatcher has unknowingly eaten a waiter’s cum 5 times.

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Overall, the book reads fairly decent.  I think older generations would struggle reading this more, where Gen X would praise it as a holy novel of sorts.  As for the younger generations, technology has consumed us to such a point that even the 1990's are becoming a time relic.  It's hard to sit here and believe the 1990's were 30 years ago when that was really the birthplace of the modern generation.  Yet even then, so much has changed with the world.  Hyperfocus on phone use, 9/11 security measures, COVID protocols, all sorts of things.  There are a lot of dark thoughts in this book, and I feel the wrong mind would take things literally or use them for ill-intent.  Some maturity is needed.

I recommend it but keep an open mind about where the writing is going.  It's more thematic than literal.

On to Book #54: “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson.