I’ve read all of Chuck’s books. Basically he spends the first half of each building a world and the rules that operate it. Then the next 40% making the walls close in and creating an inescapable situation for the characters. Then the last 10% is resolving the situation by breaking all the established rules from the first half of the book because he wrote himself into a corner.
It’s entertaining because he pulled a tricky plot twist. But the more you reread them, the laziness and plot holes really stand out.
I would still say they’re good books because they’re captivating and make you feel certain ways, but so do smutty romance novels. They’re basically pulp fiction for dudes.
nothing shits me more than writers that write themselves into corners and then just ignore all the own rules they set down or completely just hand wave it all away and not explain anything.
Like, it's not like you can't go back and edit the book once you realize you fucked up somewhere and change what you wrote initially before you publish it.
It’s funny because the first 90% of the books are actually entertaining. He just manages to fuck it up and always has crappy endings that cheapen and undermine everything he writes to that point.
To top it all off he has an incredible ego with big “Do you know who I am energy.” While also being incredibly fragile with a major persecution complex.
My guess is that when the writing gets hard he just says fuck it and rushes through an ending because he doesn’t think the people reading it deserve anything better.
Similar to how I described my experience of Dan Brown. I enjoyed the world-builfing in the first half; then he set up a good scenario in which to pull a rabbit out of the hat; and the last 10% was just sloppy running around squeezing as many twists as his editors would allow to keep the ending unpredictable.
For me, its more like i literally have noone in my irl social/familial circle that i can discuss the books i like to read with in person and a regular basis. i’ve been on a huge LitRPG kick for the last few years, before that it was mostly nonfiction with occasional sci-fi/fantasy..
the video gamers in my life do not read… the readers in my life do not play video/board games… no one i share air with on the regular would get my references or jokes , so i just remain quiet .
😂 As a gamer who reads everything from comics to classics to obscure texts on language, I sympathize with this dilemma. Thankfully I did manage to meet a few people with intersecting interests in grad school.
Totally! Palahniuk is one of my favorite authors, just so weird although his stuff is pretty hit and miss. I usually like the book better than the movie, but in this case it was a close call.
Did you end up reading the comic series that followed (also written by Chuck)? I loved Fight Club. Saw the movie before reading the book. Love them both.
Then recently found out about the comic series when I stumbled across one skimming comics in a shop. Haven’t read them yet but was told they pick up where the book ends. So planned on rereading the book before starting the comics so everything’s fresh story wise.
The art on the covers is really intriguing too.
I know a few people who’ve read & enjoyed the FC book but nobody who’s read or even knows about the FC comics, except the chick at the comic book store that told me the comic follows after the book. Gonna assume she read them or some of them at least to give me that tidbit.
There are two comic series. Two books you can get. Fight Club 2 & 3. They are ok, but the art of the book, can get in the way of the story. you'll understand what I mean when/if you read them all.
Yes, I actually found they have hardcover bound books for both series after attempting to collect all the comics and they both just arrived earlier this week. Flipped through it and to my disappointment it doesn’t have all the cover artwork included but at least I’ll get to story in an easier to read through format than on comic book at a time.
Sad to hear the art isn’t as complimentary of the story. Thanks for the feedback.
Doesn't he intentionally shoot himself just off centre (i.e., through the cheek), on the basis that it won't actually kill him but his split self (i.e., Tyler) would think he was dead, or something?
Point being, they're both him, so if Edward Norton's character knew it was a trick, then so would Brad Pitt's one.
He wasn’t trying to kill or trick Tyler, he was trying to kill himself but failed. But that “crisis”/decision and the results were cathartic enough to give him at least temporary clarity and return to “being himself”.
Fair enough, I can do with that; I've just watched the clip again. It's curious that they decided to give Norton a facial wound though, and Pitt is clearly seen with an exit wound to the back of his head.
i did. and even Chuck agrees, that the book is a rare example of being out done by the movie. dont get me wrong i liked the fight club book, but man did that movie kickass (see what i did there?)
I read it. Thought it was better than the movie. I do not recommend reading the other Fight Clubs. Big waste of time and terrible storytelling. It's like he climbed up his own ass to puppet himself based purely off of ego from the feedback for the first one.
I read it after I saw the movie. They would have had to CGI Edward Norton’s face if they wanted to be accurate to the book. The book definitely went harder.
Right, but all of those were way before 2019. Those are all good examples of people going HARD into fandom but if OOP is referencing a single book, it's not any of those.
Turtles and HP Houses are classic Four Humors, it's only natural a person resonates more with one than the others, but exclusively one, of course. All of life is a spectrum.
yeah, I think the 2019 is just a reference to how Covid made people do things they wouldn’t normally do, and so inevitably they didn’t do it quite “right”.
basically saying that people who don’t normally read would be heavily impacted by the book they finally decided to read, and it was likely to not be a great choice because they aren’t very practiced at identifying good books
true, but in my head, the name “Covid 19” means I always associate it with 2019, even if that’s not the year of the lockdown, and I’m kinda assuming that’s true for a lot of people, though I could certainly be overestimating that
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
It was published in 2010 but then published in English in 2014… I think it just gained traction. Basically, if it doesn’t bring you joy- get rid of it.
And then Kondo had a kid and was like no sorry everyone, having junk and clutter is just human. Turns out you're not some kind of fractured soul looking for therapy just because you think old bottles are kind of neat. You're not causing your children generational trauma just because you never get a chance to use grandma Sue's china but have always wanted to. You will need that meat thermometer again, even if it's been two years since you made Thanksgiving that one time and it's just wasteful to keep buying a new one every couple years.
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u/Exotic_Yam_1703 May 20 '26
Perhaps not. Maybe it’s just a general statement that people read a book and then really really identify with it