Fight club

Up until the publication of fight club, Chuck Palahniuk struggled to find an agent or publish any of his books. His first two books were rejected, the first one never went anywhere and second was rejected for it's disturbing content. Fight Club was his third book and his most famous one. Just a little background information on the author.

Fight club is centered around an anonymous main character who has insomnia and hasn't slept in a long time. In order to explain things easier I will call him Jack. Jack works as a product recall specialist for a major car company and lives in an ordinary apartment. He focuses on material objects like furniture and kitchen appliances that he orders off of ikea catalogs. He hates the way his life is going but he doesn't try to change anything. He starts to attend support groups for people with testicular cancer, brain parasites, and so on. He finds that these support groups allow him to cry and in turn sleep. One day while on a business trip, he meets Tyler Durden. Coincidentally, Tyler and Jack both carry the same suitcase. When Jack comes home he finds that his apartment has been blown out of the building. With nowhere to sleep and nowhere to go, he calls up his friend Tyler. After having a few drinks at the bar, the two men stand outside in the parking lot and Tyler asks Jack to hit him. Tyler tells Jack "How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight before?" They start to fight it out and some other men observe. Eventually they have a whole group of guys fighting in the parking lot. The next night they move it down to the basement of the bar and fight club is born. Fight club is kind of like Jack's new support group, just like the testicular cancer one, except instead of releasing his feelings through crying he releases his feelings through fighting.

 Tyler lives in an old, dilapidated building half a mile away from civilization in every direction. Tyler hates consumerism, anti-consumerism is a big theme in the book. He makes a living as a soap salesmen and his main ingredient in the soap is fat. At night, these two men run over to the liposuction clinic and steal bags of fat. Tyler's soap making skills are also used to make bombs (this will tie in later in the story). I can't go into much more because I don't want to ruin the book for anyone, I highly recommend that everyone read this book. This is the kind of book that you can read over and over without getting bored, same goes for the movie. Each time you read it you will pick up on little details that you didn't catch before, and in my opinion, this book teaches you some valuable lessons. Underneath all the violence and destruction, there are some important lessons to be learned through this book.