So, yeah, Fight Club was the start of something big for this disaffected generation.Įven if you've seen the movie, you have to read the book.

Both the novel and the movie were so successful at tapping into human emotion, that an assortment of real-world copycat fight clubs popped up across the world. The book has been accused of having dangerous anti-consumerist themes, and the movie, a faithful adaptation, was called 'a fascist rhapsody posing as a metaphor of liberation.' ( source). Palahniuk definitely succeeded at writing something controversial. Project Mayhem intends to tear down the American social structure, replacing puffy-shirted bureaucrats with testosterone-fueled manly men as the ruling class. After achieving success with Fight Club (in no small part thanks to the movie), Palahniuk has gone on to author twelve additional novels.įight Club itself focuses on an unreliable narrator, his relationship with an enigmatic man named Tyler Durden, and their creation of fight club, an underground boxing club which evolves into the anarchistic organization Project Mayhem. Palahniuk expanded a short story he had written into a full-length novel, and Fight Club was born kicking and screaming into the world, ready to take names. Unable to get his first novel, Invisible Monsters, published because it was a wee bit too disturbing, Palahniuk set out to write something even more controversial. Talk about street cred.Īlthough it wasn't the first piece he wrote, the 1996 Fight Club was Chuck Palahniuk's first published novel. In case you totally missed the 90s, Fight Clubis a cult favorite novel that was later adapted into the visually stunning 1999 feature film, directed by David Fincher (who also adapted The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. stop cracking jokes about the first rule of Fight Club. Oh, and then we found this piece of paper in the copy machine: 'The first rule of Fight Club is. And there was a human tooth in the water fountain.

See, people are walking around with black eyes and bloodstained ties. We've noticed something weird around Shmoop HQ lately.

Fight club by chuck palahniuk