The author of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk, uses some very interesting techniques in his novels that occur mostly when the characters are talking to each other. One of the most fascinating moments of this to me is when Marla first has relations with Tyler. In this particular moment, everything kind of goes haywire with time and it bounces all over the place. We get so much character development in such a short time. We get the story about the house that they live in, how the narrator lost his job at Microsoft, about the narrator being the messenger for his estranged parents, what happened between Tyler and Marla, and the aftermath of the narrator being the messenger between Marla and Tyler. It is almost every other line that the author changes stories and time periods. The only way I could ever describe how incredible it wrote is that it is like a spider web and each story is a different thread and they are all intersecting at the same time.

One thing in this dialogue that I found amazing is that the author starts the chapter with the narrator talking about readers digest and the people with their ruined bodies. It is the narrator and his world is slowly being taken apart and after each individual thing he recalls it in a way by saying things like “I’m Joe’s Prostate.” and “I am Joe’s grinding teeth.” He also does something close to the same thing in another chapter where he is being fired and the narrator says he is being very Buddhist and zen. He keeps interjecting haikus in between his events and for some reason, it just makes these chapters flow so smoothly and makes you want to have sympathy for the narrator. All in all, the dialogue constantly changing in this book definitely sets it apart from anything else I have ever read.

One of the most interesting things about fight club is that it is all about uneventfulness. All of the characters we read about are bored with their lives and I think that this is one of the most creative plot devices ever used. You start off with your unnamed protagonist who has insomnia and does not know what to do with himself. The same goes for his best friend who travels around the country to project movies. It is a twist of events that ends up with them in a bar. They fight because they feel like they have not experienced anything or as they say in the book “I just don’t want to die without a few scars.” It is inventive because I think there are millions of people out there who are just bored with their lives or have issues without a way to work them out. I personally get bored with life sometimes, but I usually spend that time playing video games and watching movies.

On the topic of movies, there are lots of them that are about people just being bored so they go do something outside of their comfort zone. One of the first that comes to mind is Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in Stripes. This movie draws so many parallels to the basic premise of this book. It starts with two friends who are bored with life, but instead of starting a fight club they join the army. Another movie/book with the same idea is Get Shorty. John Travolta plays a mob enforcer who gets bored, so he goes to Hollywood to make movies. I think the reason this appeals to consumers is that we like the idea of being able to change our lives on a whim. Fight Club does an amazing job illustrating the underlying thoughts of people especially those with a bit of an existential crisis.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton