Book· 1996· Literary

Fight Club

by Chuck Palahniuk

Fight Club: 1 recorded work traces back to it.

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What Fight Club influenced

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Fight Club

Film · 1999

AdaptationHIGH

Fincher's film of Palahniuk's first novel, screenplay by Jim Uhls. Close on voice, structure and the twist; the narrator stays unnamed in both. The ending is the one real divergence, and the author preferred the film's. Palahniuk has said repeatedly that Uhls improved on him: the novel ends in a mental institution with the narrator believing he is in heaven, the film ends with the towers coming down and the two of them watching. He has called it a better ending than his own more than once, which is rare enough to be worth recording.

About the work

Fight Club

It was Palahniuk's first published novel, and follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. The protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups, after his doctor remarks that insomnia is not "real suffering" and that he should find out what it is really like to suffer. The protagonist then meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.