This bloody and violent little book is now being mass-marketed as a profound parable for our times. Fight Club , however, is nothing but surface effects and glib posturing. So thoroughly is he out of touch with his feelings that he attends support groups for cancer patients just so he can experience pain and awfulness up close. The novel immediately loses its way in these scenes which mock New Age psychobabble while at the same time portraying the sick and dying as grotesque and freakish. One quickly realizes that Palahniuk is playing a game of chicken to see who blinks first, the author or his readers.
Every page is guaranteed to shock or offend.
While traveling on business, he also meets the enigmatic and charismatic Tyler Durden, a movie projectionist and small-time anarchist. But like many of the novel's themes, it's outdated by about 30 years. After a mysterious explosion destroys the narrator's apartment, he asks Durden to take him in as a roommate. This, of course, is the genesis of fight club. Marla moves into the apartment with the two men.