Review of Fight Club Novel by Chuck Palahniuk

Review of Fight Club Novel by Chuck Palahniuk

The first rule about Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club, but I am going to anyway (or at least the novel ).

Chuck Palahniuk is the author with the unpronounceable last name who penned the wildly successful “Fight Club” nearly 20 years ago. The book has taken on something of a cult status in dark corners of the reading world, due in large part to the movie of the same name starring Brad Pitt.

MY IMPRESSION
“Fight Club” is a fistful of fun and an enjoyable read that will punch you in the face. KA-POW! **Spoiler Alert** What Palahniuk has done is provide a modern take on “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” that Robert Louis Stevenson gave the world back in 1886. In the middle of FC we learn that the mild mannered desk clerk and the wild founder of the underground fight clubs and Project Mayhem are the same person. Palahniuk does a good job of masking it, but ultimately the foundation of originality in the dissociative personality trait stuck in a novel rests with Stevenson.

The originality in FC is found on the surface in the fight club concept and the plans of Project Mayhem. Readers also learn all they ever wanted to know about making soap from the extracted fat of the rich and how to sell it back to them. And who in their lives hasn’t longed to have that knowledge bouncing around in their brain? There is also a love story going on in the novel. I was surprised as anyone in reading the afterword by the Palahniuk when he claimed that the novel is a romance. Does it belong on the shelves next to pink-covered Joan Collins novels? I’ll let you be the judge.

I RECOMMEND IT
“Fight Club” is not a perfect novel and what piece of art is, especially when it is a first novel? There are the little annoyances like quote malfunction in the form of the opening quote being reversed. This may be from the print to ebook conversion, but who knows? Maybe it’s High Art.

I recommend this wild read of a novel. It has action, pithy text, original surface contexts and a love story. “Fight Club” is, after all, a “romance.”

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