Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk

I did not know that there was a novel as well. And when I did it came highly recommended. But this was years ago. What made me order this novel of recent was the nature of books I had been reading. They were mostly classics and the style of writing can get a tad bit boring after a while. So I ended up ordering this one and after a few books, this one jumped the line and I started it.

I finished it in about a day's time. Something that I have not done in quite a while; sitting and reading a book cover to cover within a day's time. Since I, like many others, am a big fan of the movie the characters and sequences were terribly mixed up with it. The characters already had faces. The locations already had settings. There were sequences that were probably less descriptive in the book and better portrayed in the movie that I did not wholly mind being incomplete. My imagination was in a confusion. And the confusion was awesome. Chuck Palahniuk, despite all the incompleteness in his scenes and story, has done an incredible job of creating characters. The immortality of these characters is evident the way Tyler Durden is worshipped as a symbol of anarchy, as a symbol of rebellion. And of course there is this whole idea of a "fight club". But the first rule of fight club is that you don't talk about fight club... Palahniuk planned this book as a piece of writing that would connect the men of the world together. He added on to this idea with various elements that he got from anywhere and everywhere and put it under the blazing light of anarchy.

There is an unnamed protagonist who is fed up of life and his needs and wants to start afresh. He "meets" Tyler Durden on a flight and they strike a friendship. Tyler is confident and full of useful information. Especially about homemade explosives. The protagonist moves in with him in an abandoned industrial sector of town after his house and all his belongings are destroyed in an explosion. They create a fight club to feel what it is like to get into a real fight. Then there are fight clubs springing up all over the country. There is anarchy being conceived for the better of the human race.

Palahniuk's work was not one of the best for it's literary qualities but it was so vivid (or maybe it was so because I had seen the movie, but then it was this book that inspired the movie as well) that I could imagine every scene and every thought of the pitiable narrator. It was certainly something that I would like to read again sometime. So he stays on the list.