Project Mayhem and other social clubs

Mule:

Me and Librarian are going to do a call-and-response thing about Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996). This is the first novel published by Palahniuk and it was turned into a very successful film directed by David Fincher (Fincher has also directed Aliens 3 and Seven). The movie starred Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter.

Mule:
If you just see the posters for the movie Fight Club you might think it’s just another of those testosterone-heavy boys-will-be-boys kind of things. But for those of us who actually read we know the story is a lot darker than that. And the book is definitely darker than the movie.
So, Librarian, what surprised you most about the book?

Librarian:
Well, I was dragged kicking and screaming to see the movie on DVD (already having fallen asleep on the couch during the first few scenes once, and still thinking precisely that it was some testosterone filled, street fighting glorifying crap) and then it completely blew me away once I realised it wasn’t at all what I’d expected. Anyway, having seen the movie before finally reading the book, the actual topic and story line obviously didn’t surprise me as much as it might have – but the style of writing certainly did! I was not in the least prepared for Palahniuk’s terse narrator’s voice. I’m not sure what I had expected, but those sparse, short, clipped sentences really bugged me for 10-20 pages. “Would it kill you to use an adjective once in a while? Sheeesh.” But it grew on me, it really did.

Mule:
I guess it’s only fitting that you can actually fall asleep while watching Fight Club since one of the basic premises for the existence of Tyler Durden is insomnia, but still…
Speaking of insomnia, let me just say that the description given of sleep deprivation is actually dead on. The state of mind that you get into after a couple of days – if you don’t turn into Tyler Durden, that is, is that everything seems like a copy of a copy of a copy. The colour drains out of reality. I know what I’m talking about here, I have had that. The main character also states that you’re not really awake, but you don’t really sleep either. And that is exactly what it’s like. It’s not that you don’t sleep. It’s more like you can’t really sense when you’re awake and when you’re sleeping. The style of writing is just like Librarian says, really terse. It’s also a textbook example of the “unreliable narrator” – you shouldn’t really trust the narrating voice too much. He even starts off by giving little hints like “I know this, because Tyler knows this”. The voice is also witty and sarcastic and dark. How did that work for you Librarian?

Librarian:
The witty and sarcastic narrator’s voice worked very well for me once I got used to the clipped writing style. That voice lingers. And it certainly matches my sense of humour. So many episodes and one-liners in this novel had me chuckling – at times a slightly uncomfortable chuckle, true, but still. As for the “unreliable narrator”, I agree that the clues are there – but I think I would have been deceived by that narrator, had I not seen the movie already. I am used to evaluating and scrutinizing bits and pieces of information, I do it every day at work – hell, I even teach others how to do it – but for some reason I often switch that process off when reading fiction. I guess I like being surprised by the twists and turns of the story as it unfolds.

Mule:

With fiction you do what Coleridge recommended – the wiling suspension of disbelief. It sort of goes with the territory.
Since I am one of the odd breed that has ten years of university and still works menial jobs through no fault of my own it’s easy for me to identify with lines like “they have us working jobs that we hate so we can buy stuff that we don’t need”. It is a comment on the inherent premise of modern western living that make us sit and try to figure out which coffee-table defines us as a person so we can buy that and fulfil our obligations as consumers. But being a consumer is not the same as being a member of society. Or even a human being for that matter. The basic message of Fight Club seems to be that we have become so far removed from the basic struggle of life that we now focus on stuff that doesn’t matter. And even though I agree with that it is a truth that only applies to the western life-style. And let’s face it – we are spoiled. And like spoiled children we easily forget that not everyone’s experience of life is like ours. Another aspect of the novel and the movie worth spending a few lines on is the role of women in this new society – what about Marla and her sister victims in this story?

Librarian:
In all honesty, I think the few women portrayed in this novel are so exceptionally weird and in such odd places in their lives that I hardly even think of them as women. They are just quirky additions to the story line. I remember thinking, as I read Fight Club, that the author didn’t really have to make Marla *that* much over the top, female or not. While on this topic – another thing that bugged me a bit was the absolute exclusion of women in Tyler’s troops. Why would a personality as clever as Tyler consciously omit half of all the “little people” he could have added to his ranks once the whole plot escalated to being something beyond just the Fight Club sessions per se? I don’t remember if the issue was even explicitly addressed in the novel.

Mule:
I suppose it is kind of difficult to see women getting the same kind of basic gratification from pure testosterone based violence. I do think the terrorist department of project Mayhem definitely could have used a few key women who were active. Marla is basically a damsel in distress. At one point she describes a bridesmaid’s dress as something somebody loved intensely for one day and then threw away. You get the feeling she is describing human interaction in general and her own relationships in particular.

I’d like to close with my favourite quote:

“We’re the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve you dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you’re asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life. We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we’ll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won’t – and we are just learning this fact, Tyler said. So don’t fuck with us.”

Librarian and Mule