In the end, I found "Fight Club" to be both innovative and inspiring. Although the subtext is deeply cynical, it is never smug or pretentious. Palahniuk's view and vision is multi-faceted, multi-leveled, and engrossing. I am also impressed that a book written in a quasi-experimental style, like this one, ended up achieving such a high level of commercial success. The plot, though not classically linear, contains great momentum, like a supercollider that circles back onto itself. The end of the novel is mysterious--who lives, who dies, I'm not entirely sure. Nonetheless, the symbolism contained within the conclusion of this work is clear. This dark satire, as it has been referred to in several other reviews of this book that I have read, vividly exposes the psyche, and / or state or being, of the typical 21st century American male (given that there is only one prominent female character in this novel) -- who, in having his identity bound up in the ethical shortcomings of the materialistic lifestyle, resulting from the "age of information" / service economy-influenced society, has become effectively impotent. The author "smashes the forms" of the current state of American life and prophesies a dark time of nihilism and anarchism. "Tyler Durden", the man and the metaphor, pulverizes, grinds, and disintegrates all of the non-essential garbage we come into contact with everyday, and then blows that dust into the wind; only through destruction will the planet be cleansed and made new once again. After reading "Fight Club", I also saw the film version (directed by David Fincher) for the first time; to its credit, it follows the book quite faithfully (except for the neo-Hollywood-style happy ending).
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I'm going to break the first rule of fight club, and I'm going to talk about it - because as in the book, Fight Club is just too brilliant an idea not to talk about.
I knew the ending of the book/movie since 2012, from a throwaway Reddit comment. I saw the movie for the first time a few months back, so I already knew the entire plot. I was still blown to smithereens.
The narrator hates his hollow existence. He meets Tyler Durden, a projectionist and waiter who has visions of society being destroyed through destructive anarchy. They both begin to form fight clubs through which they begin to set their plan, Project Mayhem, into motion. If it sounds mind-bending, it's because it most certainly is.
This will remain on my mind for a long time to come. The book holding its own till date, even after the film became a cult classic, is only testimony to Palahniuk's grand vision. ( )

Hands down, movie was better.. One of the few books that was outshone by the big screen. ( )

I had wanted to read this book for ages! And well, I have officially enjoyed my very first audiobook. It was a new experience.

Getting back to this book, I dare say the movie is one of my favorites, so I entered the book with very high expectations, maybe even impossible ones. Now that I have read the book, I believe this is one of the very rare cases where the movie is better than the book.

I wouldn't say that the book is bad. It's just that the film's screenplay is absurdly good and perfectly well cast, starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helen Bonham Carter. I would not like to say anything bad about the narrator of this audiobook since he did a good job, but I have grown up so used to Edward's narration style that it is an unsurmountable hill to climb for me.

The book follows the same premise as the film, so I will focus on some differences, which helps explain why I prefer the movie.
1. The book's side quest where the protagonist has a fling with Chloe seems off-skelter and distracts the plot too much. The movie avoids wasting time with this, and it is far better for leaving Chloe as a passing tertiary character.
2. Bob doesn't play much of an important role in the book (outside of his death scene), whereas he is a recurring supporting character in the film.
3. The limo scene and driver's license human sacrifice scenes are so much better with Tyler Durden in them. Having a random mechanic driving the limo in the book takes away 90% of the life-changing impact of the scene. The mechanic only appears in two chapters of the book and is very meh.
4. The scene where our protagonist beats himself up and blackmails his boss into staying on payroll in exchange for not pressing legal charges for assault happens in the catering restaurant instead of the protagonist's regular job. The scene is the same; the boss isn't. Moving this scene to the character's regular day job makes more sense because the book enters the quandary that the character is supposed to be financed by the restaurant blackmail. Yet, he continues to show up to work for no logical reason.
5. Lou doesn't appear in the book. Bummer.
6. Tyler is more interactive in the film (a visual media like cinema just favors this story, hands down), and the movie's soundtrack further enhances these positives.

But rest assured, not everything is better in the film. There are two mini-scenes in the book that would have looked great in the movie:
1. Tyler instructs his space monkeys to perform driver's license sacrifices for project mayhem. The movie is too vague since we only see IDs in the Paper Street house and must guess who collects them.
2. Marla visits the Paper Street house, and the space monkeys order her to stand outside for 3 days just like everyone else. I found that scene to be hilarious in the book. Maybe they did film it, and the scene is only available in some obscure extended version. Bummer.

There is scant dialogue in the book. While the social criticism monologues sound brilliant in the film, they started to grate me after a while in the book because there are so few scenes with regular dialogue, and Tyler seldom speaks at all.

I already knew the ending of the book was different from the film, and it is still good, but I like the movie ending much more. In a nutshell, this is a book with certain story pacing flaws that don't quite live up to the film version, but without this story, we would have never had a Fight Club movie to begin with.

So I will be nice and give it 3 1/2 stars. ( )

Chuck ( )