Fight club is literally my favourite movie of all time, and I
had been meaning to read the book in which it was about for a long time but had
never gotten around to it until recently. I was never into films and television
when I was younger, but Fight Club stirred something up within me and planted a
seed that has blossomed and ingrained in me until this day. A vision of what
lies behind and below, and expressed in such a clear and exciting way. Fight
club was more than a movie, it was an alternative of living, an alternative you
almost come to wish upon yourself. It gives you an excuse to do the things to
yourself that arm you and halt progress in your life, because after all self
destruction is the answer.
I was surprised how short the book was initially, but after
reading a number of chapters and understanding the style of writing that was
being used, I became to realise why. The story is written almost hastily,
moving from one moment to another in quick succession, giving the atmosphere of
the book a feeling of anticipation and excitement. It is half diary, half analysis
of some unfortunate souls life, which has steadily fallen until he eventually
hits rock bottom after finding out too late that the person he has been
spending all his time with and listening to isn't actually real, and that he
has been on some crazed trip around the states starting up fight clubs that he
doesn't remember because he was asleep, and cannot ask about because the first
rule of fight club is. . . there is no fight club.
The protagonist (played by Edward Norton in the movie)
eventually figures all this out, albeit too late, and tries to stop Tyler
Durden (Brad Pitt in the movie) from destroying almost everything. He soon
finds out that fight club, turned into Project Mayhem, was now much larger than
he had known and his followers soon began to stop him, under his orders, while
he was asleep, being Tyler Durden.
The book contains a number of chapters that don't occur in
the movie version. Most notably, the first fat that they used to make the soap
was not from the liposuction clinic, but from the fat send from Marla's mother
to Marla herself, with the belief that she could use it if she was to ever need
it in getting implants into her lips. The next is that Tyler Durden had
actually gotten Marla pregnant and whilst Tyler on the phone asks Marla what's
his name, and have they slept together before, she replies saying that she had
his abortion.
The book is well written, but does not flow as well as many
other novels, it gets away with it due to the style of the storyline itself and
the message it holds within. It can also come across as a story of escapism,
and becomes clear that much admiration is shown towards Tyler Durden (everyone
knows the name). Other than that, the story itself is set out a lot different
to the movie, and would work well together if the movie was 'based upon' the
'diary' which is 'fight club'.
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