A review by ste3ve_b1rd
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

5.0

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).