When it happens, it feels like winning the lottery. An email arrives out of the blue, from one of my publishers or a festival director or a member...
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Mels Musings, July 17, 2011 (view all comments by Mels Musings)
Chuck Palahniuk reminds me of Jerzy Kozinski and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
When you read his books, you are taken into disturbing worlds where things are turned upside down and you are upset, even appalled at times by his visions.
I am a reader who loves the type of book that makes you think and question your perspective on the world, so I adored Fight Club.
It centers around a man who hates his job, hates his life, and is beginning to reject and be angered by consumerism.
His growing insomnia sends him to the doctor, who advises that he should go to a support group about testicular cancer, to see "what real suffering is". This is one plot line as he becomes deeply involved in these groups.
Another plot line is about the actual fight club, how it comes about, the rules, and what it morphs into.
Then the novel explodes with a plot twist that will have you reeling.
A truly interesting psychological journey.
Cam Waller, November 23, 2009 (view all comments by Cam Waller)
This book gives an insight on the modern/underclass american man. A feel of the stress of how to fit in, feel good about your self and be a man. How everyone needs a way to let loose, and have a wild side. Showing the true face of every human, and how we really do all have to faces.
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Product details
224 pages
Henry Holt & Company -
English9780805062977
Reviews:
"Staff Pick"
by Fidel,
This one's somewhat redundant ? I mean, everyone raves about Fight Club. Adding my voice just seems trite. But?it's true?Fight Club was one of the most original novels published in the late '90s. Granted, it suffers from huge quantities of nihilism, but the '90s were one of America's most self-involved decades (a tough call in a country that wallows in navel gazing). The great thing about this book is that Palahniuk puts a face on, and a heart into, a portion of what drives American nuttiness. I mean, forget Iron John, this is a real book with real male characters who feel like they're struggling with the kind of angst that real men in late 20th-century America struggle with. It's dark, it's funny, it's insightful ? good book, great read!
by Fidel
"Review"
by The Washington Post Book World,
"Fight Club offers diabolically sharp and funny writing."
"Review"
by Booklist,
"This is a dark and disturbing book that dials directly into youthful angst and will likely horrify the parents of teens and twentysomethings. It's also a powerful, and possibly brilliant, first novel."
"Review"
by Seattle Times,
"An astonishing debut....Fight Club is a dark, unsettling, and nerve-chafing satire."
"Review"
by Sven Birkerts, Esquire,
"[A]n apocalyptic, post-grunge taste from the West Coast...a bizarre, ugly, and determinedly cranked-up novel, a novel, you must dislike while reading, but there is something else in the pulse — the staccato, edges-exposed way it gets from line to line — that makes you wonder if the author might not know a few secrets. Palahniuk can write."
"Review"
by Robert Stone,
"A powerful, dark, original novel...a memorable debut by an important new writer."
"Review"
by Bret Easton Ellis,
"Maybe our generation has found its Don DeLillo."
"Review"
by Thom Jones,
"Even I can't write this well."
"Review"
by L.A. Weekly,
"Palahniuk's language is urgent and tense, touched with psychopathic brilliance, his images dead-on accurate....[He] is an author who makes full use of the alchemical powers of fiction to synthesize a universe that mirrors our own fiction as a way of illuminating the world without obliterating its complexity."
"Review"
by San Francisco Examiner,
"Palahniuk displays a Swiftian gift for satire, as well as a knack for crafting mesmerizing sentences that loom with stark, prickly prose and repetitive rhythms."
"Synopsis"
by Netread,
With more than 300,000 copies sold, Chuck Palahniuk's brilliant first novel and cult classic is being reissued with a new Introduction by the author
An underground classic since its first publication in 1996, Fight Club is widely recognized as one of the most original and provocative novels of the last decade. Now the author adds his own voice to the critical debate he generated. In a new Introduction, he discusses the various interpretations in the popular media of Fight Club and the movie it inspired, as well as his personal reactions to the work's reception and the influence that the Fight Club phenomenon has already had on our culture.
Chuck Palahniuk's darkly funny first novel tells the story of a disenfranchised young man frustrated with his bureacratic job and superficial relationships and disillusioned with the consumer culture's prepackaged pleasures. Relief for him and his peers comes in the form of Tyler Durden, the intensely charismatic inventor of Fight Club. Waiters, clerks, and middlemen seek out the visceral satisfaction of secret after-hours boxing matches in the basements of bars, thinking they have found a way to live beyond their confining and stultifying lives. But in Tyler's world there are no rules, no limits, no brakes.
"Synopsis"
by Macmillan,
An underground classic since its first publication in 1996, Fight Club is now recognized as one of the most original and provocative novels published in this decade. Chuck Palahniuk's darkly funny first novel tells the story of a godforsaken young man who discovers that his rage at living in a world filled with failure and lies cannot be pacified by an empty consumer culture. Relief for him and his disenfranchised peers comes in the form of secret after-hours boxing matches held in the basements of bars. Fight Club is the brainchild of Tyler Durden, who thinks he has found a way for himself and his friends to live beyond their confining and stultifying lives. But in Tyler's world there are no rules, no limits, no brakes.
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