Fight Club

Rating: 10/10 (9 December 2013)

The unnamed narrator is a traveling automobile company employee who suffers from insomnia. His doctor refuses to give him medication and advises him to visit a support group to witness more severe suffering. The narrator attends a support group for testicular cancer victims and, after fooling them into thinking that he is a fellow victim, finds an emotional release that relieves his insomnia. He becomes addicted to attending support groups and pretending to be a victim, but the presence of another impostor, Marla Singer, disturbs him, so he negotiates with her to avoid their meeting at the same groups.
After a flight home from a business trip, the narrator finds his apartment destroyed by an explosion. He calls Tyler Durden, a soap salesman whom he befriended on the flight, and they meet at a bar. A conversation about consumerism leads to Tyler inviting the narrator to stay at his place; outside the bar he requests that the narrator hit him. The two engage in a fistfight, and the narrator later moves into Tyler's dilapidated house. They have further fights outside the bar, and these attract a crowd of men. The fighting moves to the bar's basement where the men form a "fight club", a routine opportunity to fight recreationaly.