Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Paperback, 224 Pages
2005, W. W. Norton
ISBN: 0393327345
Synopsis
The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club. Chuck Palahniuk's outrageous and startling debut novel that exploded American literature and spawned a movement. Every weekend, in the basements and parking lots of bars across the country, young men with white-collar jobs and failed lives take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded just as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter, and dark, anarchic genius, and it's only the beginning of his plans for violent revenge on an empty consumer-culture world.
Review
Fight Club is nothing smaller than a worldwide cult phenomenon. Even if you've never read the book or seen the movie and have no clue who Tyler Durden is, you know that the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club.
The movie was actually a little less raw than the novel, even though it followed the story line closely. By reading the book after having seen the movie, you lose a a lot of the shocks knowing what you know. The book is better, in my opinion, but it losses its impact without the surprises.
Fight Club is disgusting. I would never use soap or eat in a restaurant again if I could help it. The fact that I have to do those things now makes my skin crawl. The book is almost horror based in reality. The horror of human nature.
Fight Club is shocking without feeling as though anything is written for pure shock-value. It messes with your mind, which seems to be Palahniuk's very effective signature. It's guaranteed to make you feel at least a little crazy. Fight Club is a very impressive book greatly deserving its cult following.
Rating
Links
No comments:
Post a Comment