Fight Club (novel)

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Fight Club is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk . The book was the template for the film of the same name with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton . The success of the film raised the prestige of the novel by Palahniuk. In 2015, the sequel to the novel was published as a comic series .

background

Palahniuk was inspired to write the novel when he went to work with a black eye from a brawl. Although the injury was clearly visible, his colleagues did not ask him what happened:

“At the time, I had a black eye, a souvenir from a fight during my summer vacation. None of my colleagues had said a word about it, and I imagined that you could do anything in your private life if you looked so battered that no one asked about the details. "

Originally, Fight Club was a short story that later became chapter 6 in the novel:

“It was the first real story I've ever sold [...] To turn the short story into a book, I incorporated everything my friends had to tell. I collected material at every party. For example, the story of Mike who cuts porn scenes into family films. Or the story of Geoff, who pees in the soup as a waiter at a banquet. "

The novel received good reviews and interest in making it into a film quickly grew. In 1999, screenwriters Jim Uhls , August Olsen , and co-producers Conor Strait and Aaron Curry decided to work with director David Fincher . The film was less successful in the cinema. Still, it became a cult movie when the DVD hit the market. As a result, the hardcover first edition of the book became a collector's item.

Fight Club's cultural influence is great. There are few films that have found so many imitators. It found z. B. Underground fights take place or pranks, such as urinating in celebrities' food described in the novel . But there have also been cases where the film has encouraged people to go back to college.

In addition to Fight Club , other works by Palahniuk were also filmed, including a. in 2008 Choke - The Simulant .

Fight Club was reprinted in 1999 and 2004 with an author's foreword to the film and book.

Since 2010 the play "Fight Club", based on the novel and the film script by Jim Uhls , has been performed in the off-theater Rottstrasse 5 Theater in Bochum . Directed by Oliver Paolo Thomas .

Summary

The protagonist, unknown by name, works in the recall department of a car company and is responsible for product recalls . The stress of work in connection with his constant travel causes him constant jet lag . He becomes aware that his life consists entirely of his job and senseless consumption . He suffers from chronic insomnia .

When the protagonist goes to the doctor, he explains that everything is physically okay with him. The doctor adds that insomnia cannot die. When the protagonist begs for help, the doctor tells him that there is no need to complain. If he wants to see people who are suffering, he should go to a testicular cancer self- help group . Following this advice, he visits the self-help group . When he takes pleasure in it, he pretends to have all sorts of illnesses in order to attend a different therapy group every day. His sleep problems disappear: “To lose all hope was freedom. [...] If people think you are dying, then listen to yourself properly. ”When Marla Singer, another simulant, joins the same support groups, his sleep problems return.

Standing under stress, the protagonist takes a vacation and meets Tyler Durden, a strange stranger, on the nude beach. He watches Tyler build a structure out of tree trunks on the beach. The tree trunks cast a strange shadow on the sandy beach. For a minute, at a certain time, the shadow is perfect: "A minute is enough, said Tyler, a person has to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection is worth the effort. One minute is the utmost that you can expect perfection. "

When the protagonist's apartment and property are destroyed by a supposedly accidental explosion, the victim asks if he could stay with Tyler. He agrees, but asks him a favor: "I want you to hit me as hard as you can."

The protagonist moves in with Tyler Durden in a shabby, ramshackle house, where Tyler makes soap and sells it to the upper class under the name "Paper Street Soap Company". Together they found a fight club in a bar . The number of members increases soon and so more clubs in other cities follow.

At some point the Fight Club is no longer enough. In a fight, the protagonist beats a man he describes as an "angel face" so badly that Tyler Durden decides to start Project Chaos . From now on, the destruction should "wander up from the basement" and shake the social order. The members of the fight clubs are recruited by Tyler and also move into the protagonist's house. From now on they are referred to as "space monkeys". They should learn “that they can make a difference in history”. Tyler forms several groups: the Arson, Assault, Mischief, and Disinformation Committees. They are given one task per week to complete. The city becomes a playground for the "space monkeys" of "Project Chaos". In doing so, one does not shy away from the dead and human sacrifice. The main character loses track of the "Project Chaos" more and more, and he can no longer find Tyler either. So he decides to look for him and travels to different cities, goes to the fight clubs and asks about Tyler Durden. When he asks a bartender in Seattle if this bartender had ever met Tyler Durden, the latter replied: "You stopped by last week, Mr. Durden [...] you don’t remember?" the protagonist later calls Marla from his motel room and asks her for his name. She replies, “Tyler Durden. Your name is Tyler Durden. "When he wakes up after a short sleep, Tyler suddenly stands next to his bed and the protagonist realizes" Tyler is a projection. It is a dissociative personality disorder. Tyler Durden is my hallucination. ”As the protagonist begins to rebel against his second personality, the latter proclaims to destroy him.

There is a showdown. Tyler and the protagonist stand on the roof of a skyscraper that is about to collapse and crash into a museum. However, the explosive charge does not detonate. Tyler Durden holds a gun in the protagonist's mouth when he realizes that it is he who is holding the gun. Marla comes to the roof of the skyscraper with members of the self-help group and tries to prevent him from killing himself. The protagonist still pulls the trigger to get rid of Tyler. So he ends up in the hospital for a long time. There, too, he repeatedly meets alleged members of the Fight Club who whisper to him: “Everything is going according to plan. [...] We will destroy civilization so that we can make something better of this world. [...] We look forward to having you back with us soon. "

Characters

protagonist

The protagonist is an employee of a car company who takes care of product recalls. He's nameless, but he often talks about "Joe's sense of vengeance," so you'd think his name was Joe. But this is only a guess. The protagonist constantly uses exclamations of the figure “I am Joe's [organ / feeling]”. These refer to the Reader's Digest magazine he is reading. In the articles in this magazine, human organs tell of themselves in the first person. Another indication that the protagonist could be called Joe can be found in Chapter 16. There the homework of the "Project Mayhem" is explained based on the idea of ​​luring a "Joe" into a fight on the street. The idea is to take some Joe on the street who's never been in a fight and recruit him. This alludes to the first fight scene in which the protagonist is supposed to hit. I want you to hit me as hard as you can. Because he has never harmed a fly either.

Tyler Durden

A charismatic but nihilistic primitivist who despises materialism , property and the consumer society . He vows to destroy civilization itself. He describes the perfect world as a neo- Paleolithic paradise, in post-apocalyptic urban ruins. He is the narrator's alter ego. "I break my connection to physical power and possessions," says Tyler, "because only by destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my mind."

Marla Singer

A woman whom the narrator meets in self-help groups. The narrator can no longer let himself fall into the groups as soon as she appears. She reappears in the novel when Tyler "keeps her up all night" after being poisoned by pills.

motive

In two places in the novel the narrator says he wants to "wipe his ass with the Mona Lisa "; a mechanic (this character is only marginally involved) from the Fight Club repeats this elsewhere. At another point he says: “Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is decaying ”. There are theories that the narrator and the other fight club members suffer from an Oedipus complex . A statement by the mechanic can be cited as evidence:

“If you are white and Christian and live in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never knew your father, if your father runs away or dies or is never home, what do you think about God? "

The color “cornflower blue” appears as the color of the tie that the narrator's boss wears, later as an icon symbol that his boss chooses. It is also mentioned that his boss has this eye color. In Palahniuk's books the color “cornflower blue” appears more often as a motif.

subjects

Much of the book revolves around masculinity and how it is dealt with in modern society. The narrator and Tyler Durden complain that they are a "generation of men who were raised by women", that they are "the middle children of God".

Palahniuk gives a simpler description of the topic: "all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people".

language

The author works a lot with indirect speech. Often direct and indirect speech are mixed up.

Furthermore, some key phrases are repeated several times in the book. The rules of the fight club, descriptions of how to make explosives, and haikus act as a buffer to prepare the reader for a change of subject without losing them. A lot of paragraphs are used to indicate leaps in thought. The narrator is not reliable and at times speaks directly to the reader.

The author himself describes the language of the book in an afterword of a more recent version as follows: 

"A kind of glue or mortar that would hold together a mosaic of different moments and details. Giving them all a continuity and yet showcasing each moment by not ramming it up against the next moment."

Differences between novel and film

  • The narrator likes his boss in the book, but despises him in the film.
  • Tyler appears relatively early in the novel, right at the beginning of the narrator's beach vacation.
  • In the novel, Tyler and Marla inflict wounds on themselves with burning cigarettes. In the film, Tyler burns the narrator.
  • In the novel, Tyler steals Marla's late mother's fat from the refrigerator to make soap. In the film, Tyler and the narrator steal the fat from a liposuction clinic.
  • In the novel, Tyler does not shy away from dead in Project Chaos, in the film nobody is explicitly supposed to die.
  • In the novel, the narrator keeps his job with the car company until the end. Instead, he blackmailed the hotel manager of the luxury hotel in which, thanks to Tyler, he works; For his part, Tyler blackmailed the film distributors.
  • The self-referential statements of organs that tell of themselves are uttered in the book by Joe and in the film by Jack.
  • In the film the size of the narrator's apartment is 160 m², in the novel it is only 150 m².

musical

At the moment there are plans to adapt the material as a musical . David Fincher , director of the film adaptation of the novel, and Julie Taymore are responsible for this . Trent Reznor was hired by Nine Inch Nails for the music . The first thoughts on this were already given in 2004, which were resumed in 2008 on the occasion of the 10th birthday of the Fight Club film adaptation of David Fincher, but were not further specified at the time.

continuation

In May 2015, the US publisher Dark Horse Comics published the first of a ten-part sequel as a comic, Fight Club 2 , which includes illustrations by Cameron Stewart . All parts were released in the United States through March 2016.

The version translated into German by Bernd Kronsbein was published by Splitter Verlag in December 2015.

Awards

The novel won u. a. the following awards:

  • 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award
  • 1997 Oregon Book Award for Best Novel

Proof of citation

  1. ↑ Sam Jemielity: Chuck Palahniuk: The Playboy Conversation ( Memento June 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Chuck Palahniuk, Foreword to Fight Club 2004
  3. ^ A b Sarah Tomlinson: Is it fistfighting, or just multi-tasking? . Salon.com, October 13, 1999.
  4. ^ Art Linson: What Just Happened ?: Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line . New York: Grove Press, 2008, pp. 125-127.
  5. ↑ Craig Offman: Movie makes "Fight Club" book a contender . Salon.com , September 3, 1999.
  6. ↑ Fight club draws techies for bloody underground beatdowns . Associated Press , May 29, 2006.
  7. ^ Chuck Palahniuk: Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories , pp. 212-215.
  8. ↑ pieces . On: Website of the Rottstraße 5 Theater . Retrieved March 7, 2014.
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club . Roman (paperback), ISBN 978-3-442-54210-9
  10. ↑ Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club . 2006, p. 119f.
  11. ↑ Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club . 2006, p. 52.
  12. ↑ Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club , 1999, pp. 124, 141, 200.
  13. ↑ Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club , 1999, p. 49.
  14. ↑ Chuck Palahniuk: Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories , pp. Xv.
  15. ↑ Chuck Palahniuk, afterword to Fight Club. 2005
  16. ^ Fight Club Musical with music by Trent Reznor . NINfos.de. Retrieved May 27, 2015.
  17. ↑ Jade Chang: tinseltown: fight club and fahrenheit . BBC .co.uk, July 2, 2004.
  18. ↑ 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award . Retrieved June 3, 2018.
  19. ^ Oregon Book Awards . Literary Arts, Inc. Retrieved June 20, 2005.