Fight Club - Kirjakasa

Paperback, 264 pages

French language

Published Dec. 3, 1999 by Gallimard.

ISBN:: 978-2-07-074855-6
OCLC Number:: 421778835

(1 review)

A man who struggles with insomnia meets a colorful extremist, and they create a secret organization together.

Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation’s most visionary satirist in this, his first book. Fight Club’s estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret after-hours boxing matches in the basement of bars. There, two men fight "as long as they have to." This is a gloriously original work that exposes the darkness at the core of our modern world.

14 editions

Thom reviewed Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Review of 'Fight Club' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

First off, I haven't seen the film. Many reviews say the movie was better than the book; I am guessing that it is certainly easier to relate to.

The original short story was Chapter 6, and is decent enough. The chapters added before that are fair to good, building groundwork and laying out interesting characters. Setting up the first chapter as the ending is nothing new, but it works.

The chapters added after wander, twist and muddle. The ending is not in sight until the very end, and in fact could have been missed completely. Put a different way, the building up of the highly regimented anarchist movement is good stuff; the earlier groundwork and characters are mostly ignored. This leaves our protagonists flat and their situations tedious. As to the overall philosophy, for me much of the subtlety is lost in the slog.

I read this during Banned Books …

First off, I haven't seen the film. Many reviews say the movie was better than the book; I am guessing that it is certainly easier to relate to.

The original short story was Chapter 6, and is decent enough. The chapters added before that are fair to good, building groundwork and laying out interesting characters. Setting up the first chapter as the ending is nothing new, but it works.

The chapters added after wander, twist and muddle. The ending is not in sight until the very end, and in fact could have been missed completely. Put a different way, the building up of the highly regimented anarchist movement is good stuff; the earlier groundwork and characters are mostly ignored. This leaves our protagonists flat and their situations tedious. As to the overall philosophy, for me much of the subtlety is lost in the slog.

I read this during Banned Books week. This book was banned in China in 1999 for giving instructions on how to make various explosive devices, and these instructions are likely correct, given the author's membership in the Cacophony Society.