Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

First, a warning. Seeing the movie Fight Club before reading the book will spoil much of the impact. Probably the reverse is also true.

For those who haven't seen the movie -- the unnamed narrator is seeking relief from insomnia and begins going to support groups for Dread Diseases to find emotional release and thus sleep. At one such session he meets Marla, who is a fraud, just as he is. She will become part of the sort-of love triangle. Later, he falls asleep on a beach and when he wakes up he meets Tyler Durden for the first time, who becomes his house mate and his partner in the founding of Fight Club. What starts as a bunch of guys getting together to beat each other to a pulp for recreational and psychological purposes expands into Project Mayhem, whereby a bunch of guys get together to commit pranks and later more lethal escapades. In this surreal situation of nihilism and violence, events--and Tyler--spiral out of control. And then comes an unexpected plot twist.

I am the wrong audience for this book; it's not surprising that I didn't like it very much. I am always excessively annoyed by the "modern life is empty and stultifying and devoid of meaning" scenario, which is portrayed here. I also found the writing style to be highly unpleasant; the prose is ragged and rough and choppy. I like shapely and flowing and grammatically correct sentences.

Some of my other complaints may be entirely owing to my personal lack of understanding (but I don't think so). Is there a point being made, a moral to the story, so to speak? Maybe it's just meant to be an interesting plot with an unexpected conclusion, but it seems that Palahniuk had more in mind. I just missed it, maybe. Also, the back cover blurbs call this "darkly funny." I missed that, too. Are accounts of waiters spitting and urinating in food supposed to be humorous? Were the very excesses of blood and violence and anarchy supposed to elicit chuckles?

To give the book its due, Fight Club has a goodly amount of raw power and is highly unsettling. It has become an "underground classic." I'm sure the right reader finds it riveting.