Fight Club, A Novel

Overview

Chuck Palahniuk's outrageous and startling debut novel that exploded American literature and spawned a movement.

THE FIRST RULE about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.

Every weekend, in the basements and parking lots of bars across the country, young men with whitecollar 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.

"An astonishing debut . . . Fight Club is a dark, unsettling, and nerve-chafing satire."--Seattle Times

"Fight Club offers diabolically sharp and funny writing."--Washington Post Book World

"A powerful, dark, original novel . . . a memorable debut by an important new writer."--Robert Stone

Editorial Reviews

Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inflicting a violent anarchy upon the land, Palahniuk's apocalyptic first novel is clearly not for the faint of heart. The unnamed (and extremely unreliable) narrator, who makes his living investigating accidents for a car company in order to assess their liability, is combating insomnia and a general sense of anomie by attending a steady series of support-group meetings for the grievously ill, at one of which (testicular cancer) he meets a young woman named Marla. She and the narrator get into a love triangle of sorts with Tyler Durden, a mysterious and gleefully destructive young man with whom the narrator starts a fight club, a secret society that offers young professionals the chance to beat one another to a bloody pulp. Mayhem ensues, beginning with the narrator's condo exploding and culminating with a terrorist attack on the world's tallest building. Writing in an ironic deadpan and including something to offend everyone, Palahniuk is a risky writer who takes chances galore, especially with a particularly bizarre plot twist he throws in late in the book. Caustic, outrageous, bleakly funny, violent and always unsettling, Palahniuk's utterly original creation will make even the most jaded reader sit up and take notice. Movie rights to Fox 2000.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk's eight previous novels are the bestselling Rant, Haunted, Lullaby, Diary, Choke--which was made into a 2008 film by director Clark Gregg, starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston--Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher. He is also the author of the nonfiction profile of Portland, Oregon, Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journeys series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest. www.chuckpalahniuk.net.

Customer Reviews

• Just Read It

  Posted December 31, 2008 by Mookie Kong, San Jose, CA

  Well worth the read, even if you've seen the film.

Additional Info

Imprint

W. W. Norton & Company

Filesize

491.21 KB

Number of Pages

224

eBook ISBN

9780393067477