Brief background of the author: Chuck Palahniuk is an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist. As a child, Palahniuk lived with his poor family in a motor home in Burbank, Washington, his parents eventually divorced, forcing Palahniuk and his three siblings to live with their grandparents. In his writing Palahniuk focuses on short powerful sentences that can be related to by the most common of readers because of their simplicity yet resonate a powerful, almost bitter tone.
In Palahniuk’s 1996 novel, Fight Club, an anonymous protagonist suffering from insomnia develops an alternate personality in the character of Tyler Durden. Tyler serves as an escape for the protagonist, he creates the idea of “Fight Club” in which men of varying sizes and ages fight each other as a form of radical psychotherapy. Throughout the novel Durden expresses a devout disgust of materialism, capitalism, popular culture, and social order. Eventually this hatred turns into violent destruction when Tyler creates, “Project Mayhem”, a terrorist group that attacks consumerism through destructive acts. The striking differences between the mysterious protagonist and his alternate personality, Tyler Durden, leads readers to think of the two characters as different people when in reality Durden is our protagonist’s alternate personality, the protagonist expressing his true feelings, his escape.
The protagonist’s struggle to balance his two lives eventually leads to a chaotic, epic conclusion. If you’re interested in what you’ve heard so far (even if you’ve seen the movie Fight Club) I would highly recommend you hop on Palahniuk’s tumultuous ride and find out what happens (it’s much better than the movie’s ending).
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Creek (this is your 'handle', right?),
This is a solid review--though it's pretty brief. You'd have been better starting off with your second paragraph rather than the first (which actually contains some interesting biographical information which you might have tried to connect to the novel itself). I suppose most of your readers have seen the movie version (so I don't think your comment on the main character really qualifies as a spoiler); and while I appreciated the nod toward the author's stylistic innovations, I would have appreciated more on this.
All in all, though, a solid review--and I'm genuinely glad that you--even having seen the film--liked the novel as much as you apparently did.
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