Book Title:

Fight Club

Author:

Chuck Palahniuk

Reviewer:

Scott Fisher

Summary:

An unnamed narrator tells Palahniuk's story in the first person. The narrator is a depressed office worker suffering from insomia and the mundane quality of his lifestyle, that is, until he meets Tyler Durden. The narrator meets Tyler in a bar after his house is destroyed by an explosion. After a conversation in which Tyler tells the narrator that he and the rest of the world need to start over, without possessions, the two characters proceed outside. There, a revelation occurs in which Tyler asks the narrator to punch him; it is here where the idea of fight club begins. From here, Tyler and the narrator start a underground boxing club where two men fight at a time, until one is knocked unconscious or submits. The fight club eventually develops a huge following, despite its violent nature. The members find joy in having their lives stripped down to a brawl in which they see how much pain they can dish out, but more importantly, how much they can take. The fight club takes the members away from their boring lives and creates excitement and importance.
The creation of fight club reveals Tyler's goal to change the world as it is. Tyler despises the modern world, because it makes everything material and his character continuously tries to create new beginnings for everything, by means of destruction and terrorism. Fight club becomes and international organization and Tyler begins to be viewed as a messiah by its members. Siezing his chance, Tyler embraces this and changes fight club into an international terrorist organization. After commmitting repeated acts of destruction and terrorism, Tyler concocts his ultimate plan-the destruction of some very important credit and banking companies, thus causing complete chaos and beginning society anew. Nearing the end of this project, the narrator begins to discover some very interesting things about Tyler and realizes that he and Tyler have a much closer relationship than he originally thought. This discovery leads to an explosive climax that solves many of the novel's questions while posing new ones.

Opinion:

 Fight Club is a creative, original and desperately nihilistic view of our modern world. Through humor, creative plot schemes, and well thought-out themes, Chuck Palahniuk is able to keep his audience laughing, frightened, and most of all entertained in the reading of his first work. Through the novel Chuck Palahniuk shows us the vulnerability of our minds to insanity and the fake nature of our society. Palahniuk's writing style is original as well and keeps his audience humoured and intriuged. Fight Club is a truly original novel that deserves recognition from the literary world.

Rating:

 5 stars out of 5