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Chuck Palahniuk

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Fight Club: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Chuck Palahniuk (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

15,132

Book 1 of 1: Fight Club Series

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The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.

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 basements 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.

Book 1 of 1

Fight Club Series
Print length

221 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

October 17, 2005
File size

768 KB
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Popular Highlights in this book

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"It’s only after you’ve lost everything,” Tyler says, "that you’re free to do anything.”
Highlighted by 5,329 Kindle readers
Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.
Highlighted by 4,776 Kindle readers
"If you don’t know what you want,” the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don’t.”
Highlighted by 3,107 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The only person who gets called Ballardesque more often than Chuck Palahniuk is, well... J.G. Ballard. So, does Portland, Oregon's "torchbearer for the nihilistic generation" deserve that kind of treatment? Yes and no. There is a resemblance between Fight Club and works such as Crash and Cocaine Nights in that both see the innocuous mundanities of everyday life as nothing more than the severely loosened cap on a seething underworld cauldron of unchecked impulse and social atrocity. Welcome to the present-day U.S. of A. As Ballard's characters get their jollies from staging automobile accidents, Palahniuk's yuppies unwind from a day at the office by organizing bloodsport rings and selling soap to fund anarchist overthrows. Let's just say that neither of these guys are going to be called in to do a Full House script rewrite any time soon.

But while the ingredients are the same, Ballard and Palahniuk bake at completely different temperatures. Unlike his British counterpart, who tends to cast his American protagonists in a chilly light, holding them close enough to dissect but far enough away to eliminate any possibility of kinship, Palahniuk isn't happy unless he's first-person front and center, completely entangled in the whole sordid mess. An intensely psychological novel that never runs the risk of becoming clinical, Fight Club is about both the dangers of loyalty and the dreaded weight of leadership, the desire to band together and the compulsion to head for the hills. In short, it's about the pride and horror of being an American, rendered in lethally swift prose. Fight Club's protagonist might occasionally become foggy about who he truly is (you'll see what I mean), but one thing is for certain: you're not likely to forget the book's author. Never mind Ballardesque. Palahniukian here we come! --Bob Michaels

From Publishers Weekly

Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inflicting a violent anarchy upon the land, Palahniuk's apocalyptic first novel is clearly not for the faint of heart. The unnamed (and extremely unreliable) narrator, who makes his living investigating accidents for a car company in order to assess their liability, is combating insomnia and a general sense of anomie by attending a steady series of support-group meetings for the grievously ill, at one of which (testicular cancer) he meets a young woman named Marla. She and the narrator get into a love triangle of sorts with Tyler Durden, a mysterious and gleefully destructive young man with whom the narrator starts a fight club, a secret society that offers young professionals the chance to beat one another to a bloody pulp. Mayhem ensues, beginning with the narrator's condo exploding and culminating with a terrorist attack on the world's tallest building. Writing in an ironic deadpan and including something to offend everyone, Palahniuk is a risky writer who takes chances galore, especially with a particularly bizarre plot twist he throws in late in the book. Caustic, outrageous, bleakly funny, violent and always unsettling, Palahniuk's utterly original creation will make even the most jaded reader sit up and take notice. Movie rights to Fox 2000.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In the world of Fight Club, healthy young people go to meetings of cancer support groups because only there can they find human warmth and compassion. It's a world where young men gather in the basements of bars to fight strangers "just as long as they have to." And it's a world where "nobody cared if he lived or died, and the feeling was fucking mutual." Messianic nihilist Tyler Durden is the inventor of Fight Club. Soon thousands of young men across the country are reporting to their work cubes with flattened noses, blackened eyes, and shattered teeth, looking forward to their next bare-knuckle maiming. The oracular, increasingly mysterious Durden then begins to harness the despair, alienation, and violence he sees so clearly into complete anarchy. Every generation frightens and unnerves its parents, and Palahniuk's first novel is gen X's most articulate assault yet on baby-boomer sensibilities. This is a dark and disturbing book that dials directly into youthful angst and will likely horrify the parents of teens and twentysomethings. It's also a powerful, and possibly brilliant, first novel. Thomas Gaughan

From Kirkus Reviews

Brutal and relentless debut fiction takes anarcho-S&M chic to a whole new level--in a creepy, dystopic, confrontational novel that's also cynically smart and sharply written. Palahniuk's insomniac narrator, a drone who works as a product recall coordinator, spends his free time crashing support groups for the dying. But his after-hours life changes for the weirder when he hooks up with Tyler Durden, a waiter and projectionist with plans to screw up the world--he's a ``guerilla terrorist of the service industry.'' ``Project Mayhem'' seems taken from a page in The Anarchist Cookbook and starts small: Durden splices subliminal scenes of porno into family films and he spits into customers' soup. Things take off, though, when he begins the fight club--a gruesome late-night sport in which men beat each other up as partial initiation into Durden's bigger scheme...This brilliant bit of nihilism succeeds where so many self- described transgressive novels do not: It's dangerous because it's so compelling. (First serial to Story) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

"A powerful, dark, original novel . . . a memorable debut by an important new writer."
― Robert Stone

"Fight Club offers diabolically sharp and funny writing."
― Washington Post Book World

"An astonishing debut . . . Fight Club is a dark, unsettling, and nerve-chafing satire."
― Seattle Times

From the Back Cover

Every weekend, in the basements and parking lots of bars across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded just as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter, and dark, anarchic genius, and it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on a world where cancer support groups have the corner on human warmth. As the narrator of Fight Club puts it: "If people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention". Where does Tyler Durden come from? Why do his violent schemes so capture the troubled, insomniac narrator? What events bring them to the roof of the world's tallest building, wired to explode in ten minutes? What will the end of the millennium feel like? Readers of Chuck Palahniuk's brilliantly apocalyptic and unnerving first novel are going to find out.

About the Author

Chuck Palahniuk is the best-selling author of more than eighteen fictional works, including Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, Choke, Lullaby, Diary, Haunted, Rant, Pygmy, Tell-All, Damned, Doomed, Beautiful You and The Invention of Sound. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

From The Washington Post

"Fight Club offers diabolically sharp and funny writing."

From AudioFile

Palahniuk's bestselling debut novel, which was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, is revisited with this rousing narration by Jim Colby. With such memorable past performances from the two Hollywood actors, the challenge of breathing new life into this story is immense. Happily, Jim Colby delivers a raw intensity that is spot-on for the twisted mind of the protagonist. As the evil Tyler Durden, Colby is astonishing, capturing every inch of the character's darkness while still projecting his sense of humor. The result is a performance that draws its inspiration from Palahniuk's well-crafted characters and not from the memorable acting roles most will remember upon starting the first track. L.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000U0O9FM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue edition (October 17, 2005)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 17, 2005
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 768 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 221 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #54,736 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #82 in Satire
- #175 in Satire Fiction
- #429 in Fiction Satire

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Chuck Palahniuk

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Chuck Palahniuk's nine novels are the bestselling Snuff, Rant, Haunted, Lullaby and Fight Club, which was made into a film by director David Fincher, Diary, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Choke, which was made into a film by director Clark Gregg. He is also the author of the non-fiction profile of Portland Fugitives and Refugees and the non-fiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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4.6 out of 5

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MeganKreu

Better in my 30s

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2024

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Reread this, and it hits harder now. Chuck Palahnuik is a genius. It's a quick read but has pages of thought-provoking quotes. It's a book that you think about and remember forever.

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2024

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Great pace, a very fast read with plenty of meat. I could not put it down. We await your return Mr. Durden.

One person found this helpful

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That one guy

A great read, but it may be showing its age

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2023

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First things first: Palahniuk has a profound gift for language. His writing is poetic and punchy (no pun intended). Some reviewers have complained that Fight Club is difficult to read because Palahniuk doesn’t tell a straightforward story in a straightforward way, but I love a novel that forces me to do some of the work. Palahniuk lays out the dots and tells us to connect them. He sets a pace and demands that we keep up.

Palahniuk is also a master storyteller. The plot of Fight Club unfolds incrementally, at just the right pace. Pieces gradually click into place until everything gels at the end—and blessedly, Palahniuk knows exactly when that end should come. He doesn’t drag out things for hundreds of superfluous pages. His writing style is as spare and fit as his characters.

That said, I’m not sure how well Fight Club has aged. That’s not because of any “un-PC” elements in the plot (although those definitely exist). It’s more because of the book’s fairly naive view of how the world works and how it can be changed.

Fight Club purports to be—at least to some degree—a response to capitalism and consumerism and their “emasculating” effect on society. It’s no stretch at all to compare the community of men created by the book’s fight clubs to today’s real-life Proud Boys. Like Tyler’s “space monkeys”, the Proud Boys have generated attention and taken some action, like helping to launch a failed coup of the US government on January 6, 2021. But ultimately, the actions of both groups—the space monkeys and the Proud Boys—seem like futile, misguided attempts to reclaim some fabled masculine identity.

If the book were written today, all of Tyler’s explosive know-how would have to be channeled into screen-friendly social media campaigns. The Proud Boys have shown that, at least in America, brute force alone can’t compete with the power of influencers, the vast budgets the fuel consumer culture, or the other complexities of capitalist society.

25 people found this helpful

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pope thud

I wish I could talk about this book, but y'know the rules

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2024

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Really enjoyed reading a book that I can't talk about. I'd say the cuts from scene to scene were innovative, but I can't talk about it. I'd ask if Marla was a third personality, but can't talk about it. Great read.

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Alyssa

One of my favorite books of the year!

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2024

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I asked my gf if she had any book recommendations for me, and she mentioned this book. I have never seen the movie and honestly had no idea what the story was about, so I was reading this book completely blind!! I did NOT like this book the first several chapters. I just didn't understand why the main character and was listening and following the other character around like he was! BUT THEN, once you know, it changes everything! I LOVED this book after that! Yall who like this book know what I'm talking about, but once you get to THE PART, it makes you want to read the entire book over again! I'm very happy I have it in my collection now. If you like crazy and psychological thrillers, then I recommend reading this book. Take it from a sceptic who would have NEVER read this book if it weren't for my gf. She told me to read Choke next, by the same author. That will be next months book!

One person found this helpful

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Pablo Wunderlich

The world of Fight Club

Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2013

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REVIEWS

Having watched the movie was the strongest reason why I didn't feel the need to read the book. It always bumped in my mental vault, the fact that someone had come up with such a powerful and compelling idea, executed it impecably on screen (Norton's and Pit's acting was phenomenal; perhaps Pit's finest performances). I finally gave the book a try. I was surprised to see that the book was short. It didn't put me off at all, it was just an observation, especially after having watched the movie I expected a lengthier book.

As I read through the pages I was aware of the nuances with the movie, something that made my neurons glitch from time to time, for I expected one thing, yet found something else. Yet, Palahniuk's mastery of his unique style and narrative kept me reading and reading, constantly trying to decipher why the writing style was so good and so bold and so... damn original.

The story itself is strong, consistent to the bone and detail oriented without being overwhelming. I figured Fight Club was very successful because it defined a putrid, rotten world that exists within the human realm. Fight Club gave this world a face, a personality, a tangible morphology we could finally grasp. This world occupies the mind of the bluest, the raw material of hatred towards the organized, paved by those who seek to control through the creation of rules that determine a beings reality. This reality has a big blind-spot, and the world Palanhniuk described in Fight Club defined this blind-spot and exploited it. This blind-spot is an individual's need to feel unique, and yet, the opposing desire to feel he is part of a movement, a group, to be part of a collective. To be part of Fight Club one had to slay one's reality, to lay naked midst the ugly and emerged reborn, only to join a new set of dogmas. This is portrayed as the idea of propagating organized-chaos, an idea that spread through the mediocre like a virus. The virus lived among society cloaked under the veil of working men, men who seemed to follow a set of social rules; the virus unveiled during the night, during Fight Club. An integrant of Fight Club was a menacing soul in search of freedom, from social expectations and the boxed-in sensation felt by binding rules of how one must supposedly behave midst peers. The soul within Fight Club sought freedom, even from itself, only to be lured by its desire to belong, to be part of the clan: the paradox of wanting to be unique and yet, the inevitability of desiring to be part of cult, to be part of the change. Man's demise is served cold in Fight Club, for example, when Tyler makes soap out of fat rendered by liposuction--society's shame--, sold back to the thinned as soap, purchasing what once was thought as biological waste, now regarded precious and a standard of "high society".

To leave aside the story, I would like to mention Palahniuk's writing style. To achieve the deliverance of a message so profound, in such a raw manner, using short sentences and explicit imagery is indeed a literary achievement. I truly enjoyed this read, far better than watching the movie. The movie, however, is also an achievement in itself.

17 people found this helpful

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Whitney B.

A classic

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2024

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A classic and a fave - for good reason! Excited to own a physical copy of it now. Would love to see a special edition in the future; there's so many cool hardcover with sprayed edge books out there now, I bet they could come up with something neat!

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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William

Buen producto

Reviewed in Mexico on April 3, 2024

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Llegó a tiempo

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Kindle Customer

Amazing read.

Reviewed in Canada on January 12, 2024

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A foreman where I work got me into reading and I dabbled at most....until he handed me this book as a gift because I told him how Fight Club was hands down my favorite movie (and I've watched a he'll of a lot of movies) and he said that books are always better...boy was he right! Long live Tyler Durden.

Olivia

Adore the book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 12, 2024

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I absolutely love this book, I studied it for my English literature A Level and analysed it for my coursework, it's very cleverly written, the Narrator/Tyler etc. Can't recommend it enough

Stefano

Adoro questo libro

Reviewed in Italy on January 19, 2024

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Per migliorare in inglese l’ho comprato in lingua e devo dire che è ancora più bello che la versione italiana

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Wakanda forever

This is what you need!

Reviewed in India on November 5, 2023

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Tyler is the most influential character for masculinity, leadership, communication and anything you want to learn.
The way of fight club is to do not talk about it.

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Fight Club: A Novel Kindle Edition

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Chuck Palahniuk

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