The Side Quest Book Club Podcast

Hey Adventurers! Today, we continue our dive into Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Over three episodes, we delve into this groundbreaking novel. From its gritty exploration of masculinity and rebellion to the dark allure of anarchy, we unpack the story’s themes and iconic characters.

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Chapters
(00:00) Intro
(03:20) Exploring Fight Club's Themes
(09:09) Character Dynamics: Marla and the Narrator
(14:59) The Emergence of Tyler Durden
(20:49) Consumerism and the Soap Business
(25:11) Project Mayhem: Purpose and Identity
(31:15) Marla's Role in the Narrator's Journey
(37:33) Corruption and Rebellion Against the System
(40:54) The Moral Dilemma of Destruction
(43:50) The Cycle of Frustration and Development
(46:10) Masculinity and the Search for Identity
(51:00) Project Mayhem: From Inward to Outward Focus
(56:53) Marla's Growth vs. Narrator's Stagnation
(01:01:44) Catalyst Moments and the Nature of Change
(01:06:31) Confronting the Consequences of Chaos
(01:11:54) Acceptance and the Ambiguity of Reality & Outro

Creators and Guests

Host
Jonathan
Host
Slava
Digital Strategist. Co-Host. Aspiring writer of stories.

What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

If you’re a reader looking for something deeper or an indie author working on your book, The Side Quest Book Club is for you. We skip the usual book reviews and ratings. Each episode turns fun side quests into real lessons, so you’ll leave not just entertained, but with a better understanding of why storytelling matters.

Jonathan:

Good morning, good afternoon, and good night, wherever you're tuning in. We are Slava and Jonathan bringing you the SideQuest podcast where we talk about character development, stories, and all things that are world building. And we occasionally take SideQuest because, frankly,

Slava:

Good morning, Jonathan.

Jonathan:

Good morning, Slava.

Jonathan:

Happy Fight Club. Happy Fight Club. Wait. We can't talk about Fight Club.

Slava:

Happy nondescript, rabble rousing in the late evenings, early mornings? Does that work?

Slava:

That tracks.

Jonathan:

Okay. Then happy that.

Slava:

Happy that. And audience, welcome to Not Fight Club. Is it count

Jonathan:

if we owe Not Not Fight Club?

Slava:

I think so. I think Chuck would be okay. So would Tyler.

Jonathan:

Well, I was gonna say I don't care I don't care about Chuck. Tyler's the one you gotta maybe or maybe not fess up to, plus project mayhem.

Slava:

All that. You don't want a second kiss with Lai on your other hand.

Jonathan:

Not, not so much. But earlier this week, you sent me a video of Chuck on Conan O'Brien, may he rest in peace, the show, not the person.

Slava:

He's still alive. In case

Jonathan:

that needs to be made clear. In case that needs to be made clear, where Chuck had people starting their own fight clubs when this came out.

Slava:

Yeah. At Brigham Young University, and apparently it was 7,000 strong. 7000 Mormons beamed the crap out of each other late in the night.

Jonathan:

Hey. Only 2 guys to a fight. No shirts, no shoes. No coffee. At a time, and no coffee. It's gonna take a while to finish that fight club.

Slava:

Right. And what would a what would a discussion about Mormons be without a little, little jam about them not drinking coffee?

Jonathan:

Well, in this case, it'd just be 2 men getting naked and, beating the tar out of each other.

Slava:

Yeah. I'm down. I get naked if the Mormon would be the tired of them. Just kidding. But I don't know.

Slava:

Whatever. Mormons are fine. You don't Just kidding.

Jonathan:

You don't have to be naked for that?

Slava:

Right.

Slava:

And for those who can't think in categories, those are just a joke. I don't want to cause harm to Mormons. For legal purposes, I must say that.

Jonathan:

For legal purposes. Now you sound like, you were just waiting for the cops to roll up and put a rubber band around your your boys.

Slava:

What kind of cops do you have in your state? Did you

Jonathan:

read this book? Oh, damn it. Yeah. Wow. Slava didn't read the book, I guess.

Jonathan:

So

Slava:

Yeah. I stopped reading after I passed out and peed myself, apparently.

Jonathan:

Oh, I thought you stopped reading after Marla said I wanna have your abortion.

Slava:

I like the line in the movie better. It's more visceral, which she says that what did she say? Oh, yeah. I haven't been screwed like that since grade school.

Jonathan:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's weird that they changed it to that. Right.

Slava:

Because the censors are like, no. Abortions are bad. Pedophilia, okay. Alright. It, yeah.

Slava:

Sure, censor.

Jonathan:

Doesn't track, but okay. Anyway, on today's episode, we are going through plot, start to finish, chapter 1 to chapter 30.

Slava:

So Buckle in. This episode is gonna rival the Joe Rogan length.

Jonathan:

Buckle in. Let your hand off the wheel, and let us know what you

Slava:

Close your eyes.

Jonathan:

Yeah. What you wanted to

Slava:

achieve before you died. Because death is only the beginning.

Jonathan:

Welcome back, fellow book lovers, as we set off on today's side quest. Be sure to hit that subscribe button so that you never miss an episode.

Slava:

Alright. Well, let's get into the plot. So last episode, you mentioned where we began, which is the end. We have the narrator counting down the final 10 minutes before the building he's on is about to be demolished by a bomb by project mayhem. Got in his mouth.

Slava:

He recalls how he knows how to build bombs, how to make napalm, and he says that he knows this because Tyler knows this. And that's how we get thrust into this story, which I remember you saying is kinda circular.

Jonathan:

Yeah. It's not quite as fleshed out as it was in terms of its circularity, but he definitely has this line where he's like, he I know this because Tyler knows this, and then he starts telling us how he met Tyler. And so he goes back. As the first few chapters go on, we are drawn to forget that we've been to the end of the book because we're just immersed in the journey now. But the end of the book is where we get hooked because there's a guy on the top of a skyscraper with a gun in his mouth, and there's a bomb countdown going off.

Jonathan:

So now for those who have not read the book because they've only watched the movie, the bomb doesn't go off in the book. So that's one major difference. And then the other ending or the ending continues on where Tyler ends up in in a sane asylum, but the chapter is written as a and we can get into this more later, but I think that the difference of the movie to book is actually pretty fun and and interesting. He's in an insane asylum written in an analogy of being in heaven. And then one of the angels is like, we look forward to seeing you again soon, sir, as they hand him his pills.

Jonathan:

So it's certainly a twisty turny fun ending, but it is not as powerful as the book. And, honestly, people don't have the appreciation of nuance in theaters, so it makes sense to me that the final version is him standing up there with Marla with his face half blown off, and the buildings are exploding around them listening to the pixies.

Slava:

And it's not just one building that is demolished in the movie. It's all the buildings around the one that him and Marla are standing in.

Jonathan:

Yeah. It's powerful at the end of the movie.

Slava:

I can't say I like one over the other, but I thought it was a powerful scene. He gets rid of Tyler, but the consequences of his actions while under the control of Tyler, they're unfolding right in front of them. It's it's still ambiguous like the ending in the book, but it's a different ambiguity. You don't know what's gonna happen after all the buildings are done.

Jonathan:

Right. Because they supposedly took down the financial structures.

Slava:

Right.

Jonathan:

I used to like the movie better the first time I read Fight Club, but I was also younger when I first read Fight Club. Now that I'm older, I appreciate both of them just differently because I have less of a bent on cinema is better than books because I've actually been reading books for quite a long time now and seen the I've begun to appreciate the nuances of the depth that books can go into that movies can't. They just don't have time. But movies don't have time, and people don't have the attention span for it. So to your point, I agree that I like both of them, but I don't have to pick one over the other.

Jonathan:

It's a life lesson.

Slava:

It's the same with Kubrick and The Shining that King put together. It's 2 different stories. Exactly. It's not a one to one analogy here, but the movie, although it follows the book pretty well, it's still a different medium of telling the stories, and it's a different story. If you really wanna think about it, it's kind of a different story.

Slava:

Yeah. You can say that about almost any adaptation of a book. Jurassic Park, for example, which I wanna cover on the podcast, the book and the movie are similar, but it's still a different story. Spielberg told a different story with Jurassic Park even though maybe he pulled in some of what Crichton wanted to say with the book, which is briefly man with technology usually, you know, is like a monkey with a hand grenade. You can pull that out of the movie, but not really.

Slava:

It's more of a fun kinda romp to the jungle, and things go awry, and the heroes get away from the giant dinosaurs. I guess what I'm saying I'm repeating myself, but I guess what I'm saying is movies and books, 2 different mediums, and you can tell 2 different stories even using the same source material.

Jonathan:

Yeah. I think we talked about that in an early episode where it might have been China Mayville. I'm, like, trying to remember it now. Someone can take the same story and retell it multiple times. I really think actually that was the the book.

Jonathan:

Anyway, yeah, you can take people took Taming the Shrew, and they've made it into, like, 17 different movies.

Slava:

Right.

Jonathan:

But it's just like, oh, modern day, western, Victorian, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. That's fun. I said the same thing about The Hobbit when people were frustrated, like, the 3 part movie that Guillermo was who then became off the project was working on is not gonna be the same. It's like, it's fine. Is it entertaining?

Jonathan:

Did it do the job of entertaining? Yes? Okay.

Slava:

Are you not entertained?

Jonathan:

Thank you. With Gladiator 2 coming out or being out or whatever. Yeah. It did the job. But like you said, it's 2 different anyway, bring us back to the book.

Slava:

No. Bring us back to Marla. We have Marla introduced in the beginning, which is the end, and the way he meets Marla, I think, is fun. So in the next chapters, he says that he can't sleep. He's overwhelmed.

Slava:

He doesn't have a sense or purpose, and he's like a ship sailing on the waters without any guidance, whatever the right analogy there is. So he goes to the doctor and explains his woes to him. Doctor says, you wanna see some people with some pain? Go check out the guys at the support group for testicular cancer. And he seems to find some solace there and peace, and he's able to sleep after meeting Bob.

Slava:

The big cheese bread. The big cheese bread, bitch tits. A quick side quest. You see him still using that kinda language where he's still it's irreverent. Right?

Slava:

So he's in the support groups, at least from my perspective. There's still this sense of irreverence towards the people around him. It's only later that he finds some compassion for Bob after Bob dies. He gets shot by cops. His name was Robert Paulson.

Slava:

His name was Robert Paulson. But, anyway, side quest over the introduction of Marla is fun. I think the movie does a great job introducing her visually as this kind of almost ominous person, like this ominous presence where she's just sitting in the back, and the narrator's world again starts falling apart because he thinks he's found himself like a magic pill almost with these support groups, and in comes Marla, and the narrator sees Marla behind every door that he enters. She's in every support group that gives him the piece that he's looking for.

Jonathan:

Yeah. He becomes obsessed with her in some ways. We don't actually explore that very much. It's just a matter of fact for the story. It's one of those things that I think if Fight Club were to be longer, I'd like to see a little more of that.

Jonathan:

But in this case, and I'm changing my ways, I don't think it's a bad thing that she didn't have the play that I'm saying that if Fight Club was longer because it didn't I I guess I'll say this. It didn't add to the story, and so it wasn't necessary.

Slava:

Explain that. Is she the catalyst for Tyler appearing? Yeah. Tyler and him meeting on a on a nude beach, which is him meeting himself. That's where his personality splits.

Slava:

Is the Marla the one that, instigates Tyler? Because this is just another nail in the narrator's proverbial coffin where he life falling apart, no direction, can't sleep, no purpose. Doctor says check out this support group. He does. It actually helps him, and along comes Marla.

Slava:

They have a little spat where about splitting the support groups, exposing each other as frauds that are threatening each other, then Tyler shows up. So is Marla the catalyst for Tyler showing up?

Jonathan:

I don't think so. But to get to your first question, you asked why I don't think that it was necessary to have more of her. My point was that I think that it wasn't necessary to keep more of his obsession with her and discovering, like, why that was because that wasn't the point of the story. So I think that if he would have added that in the current rendition and not, like, added anything else, it would have taken away from the story. That's the specific thing that I'm saying.

Jonathan:

As for whether or not I think Marla was the instigator in terms of Tyler being born, if you will. I'd say no because she well, because kinda tying it to part 1 where she didn't really get as much play in the book, and so it's really literally just him. Was she a piece of it? Sure. But she wasn't the main thing.

Jonathan:

I mean, he's just a broken individual who hated his life and didn't see a way out, and so he started he he invented a new self, which can be really healthy. This was not one of those instances, but it can be really healthy.

Slava:

Yeah. If in your efforts to rebrand yourself, for lack of a better term

Jonathan:

that's that's a stretch. That's a that's one way to put it.

Slava:

Yeah. To rebrand yourself, to improve yourself, you break your own mind and have a split personality. That's really not improving yourself. Thanks, Shallan. You're welcome.

Slava:

I have things to say about Shallan, but, we'll save that for the Shallan episode. Yeah. So Tyler let's talk about how Tyler and him meet and if there's any anything that stood out to you. Is him being in a nude beach just another coping mechanism or him trying to do some sort of, oh, what's the word I'm looking for? Is it doing something that's

Jonathan:

Makes him feel alive? Makes him feel alive. Yes. I think so. Because I don't recall from the front end of the book where we actually see him on a nude beach because the book starts with the end of Project Mayhem, and then he's, like and that's where I met Tyler.

Jonathan:

But it isn't until later closer to the actual end moment where he's, like, Tyler and I met on a nude beach when he's trying to figure out, like, who is Tyler Durden. And he's, like, oh, I'm Tyler Durden, and he has this realization. So I think it's one of those moments, like, the Blarney Stone or, like, I went to college and then called my dad, and he's like, well, now you should find a wife or whatever. And he's like, these these flashback snippets that are just kinda left out.

Slava:

Yeah. Okay.

Jonathan:

Oh, actually, I do remember Tyler using Driftwood in the sand. I just don't remember it being a nude beach. I think that's the thing that's, like, hiccuping me my my brain because I don't remember it being a nude beach. I'm sure it's there in the book, but I I just skipped over that point.

Slava:

Yeah. I remember it being a nude beach.

Jonathan:

I bet you do, you and your Mormon friends.

Slava:

Yes. Fighting nude on the beach. That's, one of the field trips. Okay. Weird.

Slava:

Don't knock until you try it.

Jonathan:

I I carry on. Next chapter.

Slava:

But before we move on, adventurers, are you enjoying the side quest? Want us to cover more transgressive novels? Go to our Instagram account and share some of your favorite transgressive stories in the comments or DM us. Maybe we'll cover your favorite story in the coming months.

Jonathan:

So we meet Tyler, and then I wanna call him Edward Norton, but we don't actually know his name. So we meet Tyler, and then the narrator has to go back to his life. He goes back to his job that he hates. He continues walking us through the things that he's struggling with where he's like, I I hate the stuff that I buy. I hate my life.

Jonathan:

I hate all these all these things. Also tells us about the, the job that he has where he notes whether or not they're gonna do a car recall because of safety issues. And then he flies around and does the investigation and blah blah blah, which leads to his quote, unquote insomnia, which we later find out is not actually insomnia. He's just 2 people. One of the times when he comes home, he comes home to an exploded apartment, which is the second explosion in the book so far, even though the first one didn't actually go off at the beginning.

Slava:

So he's making bombs and blowing up his own apartment. And his own life. And I think here's where the destruction on the condo is the, like, the turning point, right, of the book. It's now a symbol of him rejecting whether it's the consumerism, whether it's his old life, his old philosophy of of things. He now well, Tyler does it, but he destroys everything that he loved so he can start anew.

Slava:

And then we get him in the bar where Tyler, which is himself, asks to be hit leading to the first fight of Fight Club. It's very creative on Palanuk's part that the first fight he has is with himself, and the movie, I think, portrays this also really well. It's a humorous portrayal where you figure out then the movie that Tyler is Edward Norton, Edward Norton is Tyler, narrator, are the same people. The people who are watching him, it's Edward Norton kicking his own ass.

Jonathan:

Mhmm. Not only is his first fight with himself, but his last fight is with himself as well.

Slava:

Yeah. So the whole book really can be the narrator's internal, external, mental, and emotional struggle with everything around him, his whole his whole being and his immediate surroundings.

Jonathan:

A 100%. How long do you think it took Palanuk palanuk to come up with the rules for Fight Club? Oh. If he's just sitting there staring at the wall, and he's like, what are the rules for Fight Club?

Slava:

Oh, yeah. This goes back to some conversations we've had over the year of this podcast where how do authors come up with anything? You have to build the world. You have to build rules for the world, the magic system, the political system, the socioeconomic system to make it all fit and be believable. This falls under world building, I think, to some extent.

Slava:

Yeah. What rules make sense for the story, which is transgressive, and we discussed that in the previous episode. I won't belabor that here. But for a transgressive story that's supposed to be a social commentary, How do you come up with some of these rules? So they're weird and kinda off in a way because they're ironic.

Slava:

Right? So this is this fight club that's supposed to bring in men to explore the catharsis of primal masculinity and give them a purpose and give them a setting where they can be themselves, but you can't talk about it.

Jonathan:

Which holds irony because especially when Chuck wrote this book, that was one of the things he was reeling against. Right? Yeah. And so I'm sure that, honestly, I think that that one and maybe that's why he emphasizes it as the first two rules. It's like, you don't talk about Fight Club.

Jonathan:

You don't talk about Fight Club. Like, oh, men aren't allowed to talk about things. They aren't allowed to talk about their fights, their internal struggles, their internal whatevers, and he he puts it as two rules,

Slava:

the first two rules. One could be a statement about the secrecy of the fight club, meaning, hey. This is our thing. We don't talk about it, but also we don't talk about fight club. So there's like the dual meanings for each of the rules.

Slava:

Right? So there's there's a layer to it that is fascinating, and this is why I love this kind of fiction. And I mentioned this in a previous episode, the commentary on social structures and tradition, some of which are just arbitrary. If you think about it, if you break them down, they're like, well, why are we doing this? Well, because we've always done it this way.

Slava:

And then there are traditions and social structures that are born out of, I think, some benevolence even if it's nobody thinks about it. Uh-huh. I'm gonna do an evil thing. But the structures that we set up, they're benevolent, and they're destructive consequences of the efforts of the people who set them up. And we all participate in them.

Slava:

I'm not saying there's a cabal of people out there pulling some strings and screwing with us. If there are, we all participate willingly with it to some degree.

Jonathan:

To some degree. Anyway, that was my little side quest about asking about the rules for for fight club, which shall not be named that which shall not be named.

Slava:

The club that should not be named. Yes. So Tyler and the narrator quickly joined forces. Here's the thing. I I it's this, again, goes back to why I like Palanook and books like this.

Slava:

So the narrator discovers that consumerism is a horrible, destructive thing. He hates it. He hates his job. He's part of the machine, but then he becomes a person that is participating in it. You know, he might say ironically or as a way to buck against the system, but they begin a soap company where they use human fat and they sell it to fancy boutiques and designer stores, so they are participating in consumerism.

Slava:

And here we have Palanook almost emphasizing, like, its grotesque origins, consumerism that is destructive, what we discussed in the previous episode.

Jonathan:

Mhmm.

Slava:

But for the narrator, if we're gonna do an in world critique, the narrator is still participating in the thing he hates no matter what he his intent behind it is.

Jonathan:

He is, but I I think that there's an unspoken specifically because Project Mayhem is birthed out of this. There's an unspoken, like, cleansing that's about to come to consumerism because of them, but they need to fund it, and they're funding it by consumerism. Like, how do you kill the beast? You become the beast. Do you fight it from the outside?

Jonathan:

Or or do you get in the inside and then you destroy it?

Slava:

Double agents of consumerism.

Jonathan:

If we can. I mean, it's certainly not that obvious in the story, but I think that soap is a really fun symbol that is almost a side character that Chuck put in the book.

Slava:

Right. Right. There's a a note that I found on cliffnotes.com for those who are interested that they have a really good synopsis of the book. This is what they write, and I think it's fascinating. In Fight Club, soap serves as a reminder of the violence and cynicism underlying modern living.

Slava:

As a product, it's often associated with clinginess and beauty, but by detailing the crude and morbid process which the soap is made by these 2, the novel, Palanook, conversely associates the soap with ugliness and pain. So I thought that yeah. So when Tyler explains that the so first soap came from human sacrifices and discusses animal testing required to make soap, he shows the sadistic hidden nature of a product that people use every day, end quote. And in the book, they don't use animal products or anything. They use human product.

Slava:

They use human fat and sell it back to the humans.

Jonathan:

That had the fat removed from the product.

Slava:

They had the fat removed. In the movie, I think, Norton says, and we sell their fat asses back to them.

Jonathan:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the paper company well, the Paper Street Soap Company, if I can be a little more articulate, quickly grows. And this unless you wanted to take a quick detour about Tyler and Marla's sexual relationship.

Slava:

I wanna get into that, but let's finish the soap. Let's get clean and then get into the sex part.

Jonathan:

Great. Let's let's do it. Starts to build into Project Mayhem. They start to recruit people who are looking for purpose. And I believe last episode, we spoke somewhat in-depthly about part of the issue with masculinity today is not having purpose.

Jonathan:

This is a almost a bible version, not like the book the Bible, but like a an all inclusive, authoritative, directional book Bible, where it's like, yeah, you can literally give anybody any purpose. And as long as they believe in it, they will feel good about what they're doing. Whether it's in America or it's in a 3rd world country and someone's in tribes or if they are terrorists, if they believe in the purpose, they will move in that direction, and they will do it with smiles on their faces. So Project Mayhem, to me, it might start with soap, but it becomes a solution for people who are purposeless,

Slava:

which is the men. Right. I'm glad you said the thing about the terrorist because I was gonna chime in and say that whether it's the red pill movement, the white pill movement, there's all these pill movements in our society right now, and some of those movements taken to their logical conclusion are not any better and maybe even worse than the previous experience or the previous type of existence for these folks. And when you have disillusioned, purposeless men or anybody that are easily manipulated, when you give them something to live for, they will go down a path even if it's violent and it's brutal, and then that begs the question specifically here, are the Space Monkeys is the Space Monkeys' obedience to Tyler better or worse than their previous lives? And you could say it's better in some way, but the way forward let me say it this way.

Slava:

So they find this purpose given to them by Tyler slash narrator. Okay. Good. But the path forward after that, it's not that much better because the purpose that they have now is pushing the boundaries, not in it all in a good way.

Jonathan:

Well, it's pushing societal boundaries that are pre agreed upon. Like, don't walk into someone's house and murder them. Don't put a gun to someone's head, and we don't have to go down this rabbit hole. But there is an underlying moral fiber that exists in modern societies that we've sort of all agreed to. Where that comes from, I think that you and I probably more aligned on that than other people, which is why when you start to talk about moral topics, people are like, well, you can't do that.

Jonathan:

And it's like, well, that's a moral argument. And if you're gonna make a moral argument, you need to state where your morals are gonna come from, but that's not how people function. They function off of emotion, and so they feel like you shouldn't be able to kick someone's door down and murder them or tie a rubber band around their balls and threaten them. But the thing that we don't mix in with morality is that, like, power exists in the world. The king of the jungle is the lion.

Jonathan:

He doesn't care about your moral struggles. He's still the lion. So you can have your moral morality all day, but you need to also factor in, like, what does a healthy use of power look like? And I think that this is going back to your point of, like, are they better or worse? They are not better off because they are becoming that which they don't like, that which they're fighting against, this massive power structure, and it's like, well, now they've become the power structure.

Jonathan:

Does that make sense?

Slava:

That makes perfect sense, and it all comes down to worldview. I know I've said this a 1,005 times, but everything comes down to worldview. We are

Jonathan:

all worldview? Sorry. Keep going.

Slava:

Yes. I I like Marla.

Jonathan:

We can we can sidequest on that a minute. I just wanted to drop that line.

Slava:

So it all comes down to worldview. We're all given the same evidence. Every single person sees the same evidence, whether it's scientific evidence, metaphysical evidence, and I'm talking about something as mundane, and it's not really in the grand scheme of things mundane, but, like, the law of gravity, the scientific questions and answers to the speed of light or the universe, whatever. We are all given the same evidence. We're all in the same world, but our worldview, whether you're going back to the morality question, a strict materialist or a person who believes there's more than just matter in this world, we will look at that evidence and based on our presuppositions without really thinking about it to your point, have an opinion.

Slava:

And oftentimes, this is where the discussions in the marketplace of ideas become so heated because we all come with certain presuppositions and certain things that we believe are right and correct, and this is the way things go, we really don't think about where am I getting my morality from? Why do I think that kicking down doors or tying rubber bands around testicles is a bad thing? Why is murder bad? Why is tax evasion bad? As we're recording this, a CEO of a health insurance company was just shot in the street, and the amount of hate that is online is not surprising, but it's a plethora of people going, well, too bad.

Slava:

I I would care if he was a normal human being, and he's not because he's a CEO of a, you know, of a health insurance company. Yeah. And so the point is and we can get into Marla and the sexual relationship with Tyler slash narrator, but I think your point is valid. I'm glad you said it. We all come to the same evidence, and when we're critiquing something, and here, when Palynac is critiquing something, he is exposing that.

Slava:

This is what I'm getting at in my Slava talks in 7 arcs before he gets to the point kinda way. He is exposing that there are certain things that we just take for granted as right, wrong, or indifferent, and the world that these guys live in, it's almost arbitrary. Like, these rules, what I mentioned just a few minutes ago, some of these societal structures are almost arbitrary, and you're like, why? Why is this thing a thing? Why do we have to live like this?

Slava:

Why does corporate America have to be a soul sucking healthscape? Why can't we just go to work and do insurance claims and still come home and enjoy our lives, and we enjoy them because we've got a paycheck from the stupid job, and now we're doing whatever we're doing. We're eating dinner. We're taking the wife out to a show. Why does the the machine create these structures, these traditions, if you will?

Slava:

And there's no answer for it. So when a book comes like, this comes along and says, all this is horseshit. It's great because there's people like there like Palanuk that try to awaken something in us. Maybe he's not even thinking about it in such a grand scale, but I think it accomplishes it.

Jonathan:

Well, yeah, I don't think that he was and this is not a slight against him, but I don't think he was that intelligent when he was writing this. I think he was just angry. Emotion is a great way to well, writing is a great way to process emotion, and emotion process through writing can become something that kick starts your career like it did for him with Fight Club. It's incredible. So I don't have any more commentary on on those things.

Jonathan:

I know we wanted to move into Marla and Tyler's sexual relationship, so take it away, Bullwinkle.

Slava:

So if you're following along, we're currently in chapter 6 to 10. Fight Club has started soap making businesses in full swing, and we have Marla and Tyler developing a romantic well, well, romantic. Purely sexual relationship. I'm sure there's some romantic feelings, but they're a banging, and the narrator is jealous of Tyler.

Jonathan:

If paper if Paper Street Soap Company's a knockin', don't come a rockin'. Or if it's a rockin', don't come a knockin'. Never mind.

Slava:

Yeah. If there's if there's soap on our rope on the door handle, don't come a knockin'. If you know, you know.

Jonathan:

Whatever. Yeah. So Narrator's jealous of Tyler.

Slava:

Narrator's jealous of Tyler. I think this is just part of the narrator's process of processing

Jonathan:

his own bullcrap. It's his dissociation. Yeah. He wants to have a relationship with a woman, and I'll just say relationship because this one's purely sexual, but it's still a relationship. And then, you know, the story concludes where they're like, hey.

Jonathan:

Actually, I think I like you. I wanna protect you in a very Tyler sort of way. It's not bad to recognize that you want something. It's what you do with that recognition, and the narrator doesn't, well, he doesn't make the great choices in the early stages of the book.

Slava:

No. But Marla as a character, I I find her fascinating. She's obsessed with death. She is in this love triangle of sorts between the narrator and Tyler Durden for, well, for all intents and purposes, they're 2 different people.

Jonathan:

Correct.

Slava:

Tyler is Tyler, and the narrator is still he hasn't reached his full potential for lack for a better term.

Jonathan:

Sure. I mean, that's true.

Slava:

I I just I just find her as a person fascinating, and this is the disrupting part of her. She's disrupting the narrator's world in a lot of different ways with her coming to the support groups, And then when he doesn't really understand what's going on with her and Tyler, well, he apart from the sex, he's like, what the hell is going on? Why is Tyler with Marla? Marla's encroaching in a different part of my life, but she is there for the whole journey. That's why I asked the question, did Marla trigger Tyler, or was Tyler there and Marla latched onto Tyler because of whatever the hell her problems are?

Slava:

Tyler doesn't give a crap about anything. She finds that attractive, but then really it's the same damn person. Yeah. Or or maybe maybe it's the narrator because reviewing everything through his lens, he's the narrator of the book. Maybe Marla doesn't even see a difference between the narrator and Tyler because sometimes she talks to the narrator as he is Tyler because he was just with her as Tyler just a few hours ago.

Jonathan:

Yeah. I don't think she views him differently. I think she just views him as a normal man, quote, unquote, gaslighting her. That wasn't a term back then. But based on his back and forth, like, did we have sex?

Jonathan:

I knew you were gonna get like this. No. Did we did we have sex? And, like, Tyler's starting to uncover what he's been doing when he wasn't himself. But for her, they're the same erratic, single integrated person based on her responses.

Slava:

And what I find interesting is later when she can tell the difference, she chose to like, quote, unquote, the narrator instead of Tyler.

Jonathan:

Yeah. That is interesting. And we don't get, a whole lot of explanation on that.

Slava:

No. That just happens.

Jonathan:

Because it's it's all first person sort of or second person maybe, I guess, we could call it. 2nd person sounds funnier.

Slava:

And it's funny because she seems to have a better moral code or a stronger moral code than the narrator. The narrator's this empty shell in the beginning. Everything sucks, and woe is me, and my life is purposeless, and some of those things are real things that he's experiencing, so I'm not trying to diminish anything. But Marla is cynical. She's obsessed with death.

Slava:

She rejects at the same time Tyler's solutions, Tyler's methods to fixing the issues. She might even understand the narrator and sympathize and empathize and even have the same struggles, but she rejects Tyler. I think she calls the police after he murders somebody, so I find her fascinating because of these things. She's disruptive on so many levels. As she enters narrator's life, she's the how do I say this?

Slava:

I don't wanna wax too philosophical, but she's almost Jack's throbbing heart? Yes. She's Jack's throbbing heart. Exact exactly. But she as the disruptor, she actually might be better for the narrator than Tyler, and that might seem like an obvious statement, but Tyler is necessary for him to grow in world.

Slava:

Right? Tyler is necessary for him to grow, the narrator, but Marla is almost a better thing for him. Well, they're both catalysts

Jonathan:

for his life because, to quote you, he's a shell of a person. And this is the thing that, yeah, I mean, we kinda circle around with so many books. Catalysts are required for change. Catalysts are required for science. Catalysts are required for everything.

Jonathan:

Like, something has to occur for something else to occur. It seems silly to say that, but, like, nothing changes if nothing changes. And with where narrator was early in the book, he hated his job. He hated everything about his life. And then, like, 2 different entities came to him to be the catalysts for different things, like teaching him a version of masculinity and then teaching him what it's like to have a relationship with a woman.

Slava:

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. We're given a glimpse of how far Tyler has overtaken the narrator's life. In their work as banquet waiters, Tyler and the narrator corrupt various foods served to wealthy people.

Slava:

So they're again bucking against that system. Customers of the hotel they work at, they deem them out of touch and indoctrinated into the materialistic propaganda of modern society. It's almost like this is business. It's not personal. Right?

Slava:

They do these malicious things to humiliate these folks, but it's for the greater good. So they're peeing and coming and food and doing all sorts of disgusting things, but they seem to be doing it out of this, what what they see is the greater calling of destroying that which is

Jonathan:

It's the underdog narrative. We're being oppressed, so, therefore, we can do whatever we need to where it's like, well, when Braveheart does it, it's cool. But when I take a piss in the the Tom Kossoop, that's not okay.

Slava:

Right. So they they act out against with these wealthy individuals, which they see as representatives of the system that keeps them socially marginalized. But wouldn't you say that as the narrator does this, it's him actually marginalizing himself and degrading himself? He's not initiating any positive change. It's not like the people that, like Yeah.

Slava:

Consumed his piss during when he they ate the clam chotters, and I'm like, oh, okay. I'll stop being a bad consumer and a bad wealthy person.

Jonathan:

Right. The actions that the narrator takes are that of a child throwing a tantrum.

Slava:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Jonathan:

That's all that's happening. There's no positive change because there's no positive because and this is the thing that people don't don't get in is, like, you can react out of emotion, but emotion's not gonna change something until you have direction. And direction can't happen unless you have purpose, and purpose can't have happen unless you've spent time thinking.

Slava:

Yeah.

Jonathan:

Those things are all tied together. That is a chain of events or chain of, of thought that is required if you wanna really change things for the positive. But the thing is, narrator doesn't wanna change things for the positive. He just wants to tear something down, which is like the Joker, which is fine, but he's not a catalyst for positive change. He's a child throwing a tantrum.

Jonathan:

And so, yeah, let's assume that project let's, like, just pause the book for a second. Project Mayhem, Fight Club, they don't happen. He's just a waiter doing this. Cool. So then you're just a degenerate.

Jonathan:

That's all that you are, and you can go home and laugh with your buddies and whatever, but, like, you're just as bad as them, but you're poorer.

Slava:

Because you're not an agent of change in a way that is positive or constructive. You're just literally coming in somebody's soup.

Jonathan:

And and this gets to that, like, moral through line that we've brushed on a couple times. It's like, 2 negatives don't make a positive. That's not how this works in morality. 2 negatives are sometimes a negative. Now to quote Braveheart again, like, sometimes killing can provide, like, victory and liberation, but it's not a guarantee.

Jonathan:

Like, just because you did that doesn't mean that it it's equated to being right.

Slava:

And here's where I think Marla having a stronger moral code than the narrator is shown, and we're now in a moving into kind of the the next section, which is chapters 11 through 15. And all the the stuff that we've just discussed is happening. Them selling the fat to the rich people, soap made out of fat, peanut ejaculating into food, and Tyler starts sending Marla's mom her own fat as soap. And so Marla discovers this, and she loses her shit, understandably so, and she trashes the Paper Street house. And what I find ironic is the narrator seems to care very little for Tyler's house being destroyed, but when his own apartment was blown up, he tells the detective he felt like himself was blown up along with all his possessions.

Slava:

So there's this weird dichotomy or bifurcation, and it's literally a person with split personality, but it goes deeper than that. Right? This is supposed to be a social critique. So tying it back to your child comment, Tyler is there, and Tyler is acting out on behalf of the narrator. It's that pendulum swing.

Slava:

It's a person that is empty and broken and without purpose, so he does all these things that are, you know, turned up to 11, and they're destructive. And he's projecting, and he's rebelling, and he is attacking that which he thinks is marginalizing him, but he doesn't really care for anything. Like, he cares still at this moment in, you know, chapters 11 through 15. He still just cares for himself. He still is internally focused.

Slava:

Because even if Marla was Tyler's girlfriend and Marla kinda annoyed him, the fact that he doesn't care for her and then when she's destroying his house and Tyler's house, he kinda doesn't care about that, It seems to me that he's more than a child. He there's there's He's undeveloped. He's undeveloped. Yes. That is that is a good thank you.

Slava:

He's a child in the way he reacts, and even as a man who is, you know, supposedly has a job and can take care of himself and pay bills, he's still undeveloped.

Jonathan:

Yeah. But that that's and that's so we you know, Chuck wrote this similar to Robert who wrote Ball. I can't remember Robert's last name, but, like, they he wrote this out of frustration. And so, like, there's a cycle here of men being frustrated with the fact that society is, quote, unquote, oppressing them. And it's like, okay.

Jonathan:

I get it. I understand. But that doesn't change the fact that you have to develop to be able to navigate that issue of life. Like, that is a requirement. If you're going to sort through that which you feel is oppression, because I'm not gonna make commentary on that, because some of it is, some of it isn't.

Jonathan:

And to draw the lines is just too much for an episode like this. You have to develop to be able to handle it. Period. That's it. That's the thought.

Jonathan:

That's, like, required. It's why people are why some people just continue to smoke weed and and just, like, hang out and laze around or, like, have their their job and feel like they can never get ahead, or sometimes they don't smoke weed and they feel like they just can't get ahead. And it's like, okay. I get that. Life is hard, period.

Jonathan:

Also another fact. Regardless of the cards you were dealt, you have to develop to be able to navigate the waters that are in front of you. And if you don't develop, you can't navigate the waters, period. Kick against the goads as long as you want, fight against it, pee in someone's soup, but if you are not going to develop, and most people choose not to because they're lazy, in my opinion, and I guess I'll say this too. I've been one of these people.

Jonathan:

And if you've listened for a lot of episodes, you probably put that together, and I think I've said it before, but I've been one of these people who didn't change. But you know what? I still had to navigate life, and I always felt like the victim, and I was but, eventually, when you start picking up responsibility and start to craft and carve yourself the way that Michelangelo carved a block of marble, you start to have respect for yourself. When you have respect for yourself, you can go, oh, I actually can handle a whole lot. I I can navigate these waters.

Jonathan:

It doesn't mean you're gonna get a perfect life, but it's easier because you're able to carry the burden. You've grown in strength, and you have to get out of this mentality of, oh, woe is me. Nothing's ever gonna happen. It's never gonna happen for me. Blah blah blah.

Jonathan:

It's like, cool. Then it won't because you're actually not doing anything. Anyway, that's my little tirade against the philosophy of air and anarchy, which is what Fight Club is also about with Project Mayhem. That's why it always falls apart because we're buckling against the machine.

Slava:

It's a rage against the machine. Anarchy is the way to go, and then you get dudes coming in clam chowder. You're like, well, you're you're not doing what you think you're doing. But moving on towards the end of this section, the narrator returns to remaining men together meeting. He discovers that all these testicular cancer survivors are absorbed by Fight Club, so they are now celebrating their masculinity or trying to get in touch with their masculinity, which they thought they lost because of the loss of their testicles by physical pain and beating the crap out of each other.

Slava:

This almost negates the significant emotional work of the support group, and now they find meaning in beating the crap out of each other. So the the violence and degradation of Fight Club and being part of Project Mayhem, Tyler, the narrator, has pulled these guys into, into this world of his, this new world of his. Now the brushes with death are portrayed more attractive.

Jonathan:

They become heroic, if you will.

Slava:

Yeah. So now this is essential to my male experience rather than any emotional, psychological, philosophical, if you will, growth as we grapple with death and masculinity. And what does it mean? I don't have any testicles, but I'm still a man. Now what does it mean in this new reality that I find myself in?

Slava:

The narrator, instead of helping them, and he's an imposter. He's a tourist just like Marlon in this world, but instead of helping them in any way, and how can you if you're an imposter, he brings them into his world and doesn't help them at all. Correct. But Marla here, also at the end of this section, she has cancer. There's a legitimate possibility that she has cancer, and this is the closest that she's ever come to death apart from the sort of fake suicide attempt that she had.

Slava:

This is actually what she wants. She wants to experience death. She wants to get close to death because she thinks that'll make her feel alive or whatever, but instead of making her feel more alive, it just causes her sadness. She becomes melancholy. She says, well, I guess I don't wanna know if the lumps are malignant or benign because you know what?

Slava:

Whatever. I might die sometimes. I wish that I would die at any moment. Marla can't control this part of her life, but she seems to have a better response than the narrator does to the things he can't control because he responds by being a degenerate, like you said.

Jonathan:

Mhmm.

Slava:

Marla's response at the end of this section is much more

Jonathan:

It's nihilism. Developed. Yeah. It's also

Slava:

it was all of it's nihilism, but if you're gonna compare the 2 the 2 world views here, like, Marla's is more developed. At least she's kinda like, okay. Well, I guess I might die. I'm not gonna go beat somebody up or shit in somebody's souffle.

Jonathan:

I think I missed that line. I I don't remember reading that one. Seems a little more involved.

Slava:

Yeah. It's in the epilogue. Oh,

Jonathan:

okay. Got it.

Slava:

Which I'm writing in my opinion.

Jonathan:

There it is. That makes more sense.

Slava:

I'm actually Chuck Palahniuk. At night, I am Chuck Palahniuk.

Jonathan:

You don't look like the guy in the video you sent me. Gonna be honest. Catfished. Author catfishing. So I wanna get back to something that maybe was obvious for a bunch of other people, but, as we've been dissecting the book as I reread it and and, you know, watched the movie and have been thinking about it, The entire book is honestly a more developed version, I think, than what Robert tried to do with Ball where he was also angry.

Jonathan:

Right? So Robert and Chuck both wrote books because they were angry young men. Okay. Fine. Robert addressed just power.

Jonathan:

Right? We talked about that during the episodes with Ball. Zubair came on, talked to us about Ball in particular, which was kind of fun. And in this instance, Chuck is basically dissecting the elements of masculinity. It's having testicles.

Jonathan:

It's having a relationship with a woman. It's crafting yourself. It's taking hold of power. Right? Each of these different things, it's being entrepreneurial.

Jonathan:

And, you know, if you think I'm just reading into this, like, drop it in the comments. That's fine. But I think that he unconsciously or subconsciously actually was trying to just figure out what he was what it's like to be a man. Like, what does it mean to be a man? Is it your testicles?

Jonathan:

Is it that you got in a fight? And I think he explored it super well in the narrative that is Fight Club. But that only really that epiphany kind of only came to me in the last 3 minutes, if I can be honest, where it's like, there are all these things because the question is, like, well, what does it mean to be masculine? What does it mean to be a man? And there are a bunch of things that he explores in that.

Slava:

And in the next section here, chapter 16 to 20, all the efforts, if you wanna call them that, become focused outward. Project Mayhem, they're now intent on changing society. So no longer are they just doing this to feel alive or to find purpose or to feel like men. They're now and this is a natural evolution of groups like this. They now focus outward.

Slava:

Fight Club was meant to be a secret. It was something that this group of men did together, and it was very dependent on its members spilling a secret to increase its ranks is the irony. But it was inward focused, and now they are ready to fight the machine, ready to attack the powers that be, so it's no longer brawls and basements. This is the next logical step for them. They are now willing to inflict random violence even on unwilling outsiders of the public, even people who have nothing to do with the system.

Slava:

These people might be part of the system, but they're other cogs of the machine. In chapters 1 through 15 timeline in world wise, the the these people they're attacking are no different than them. They're in the same socioeconomic level, if you will. Right. Now they're attacking everybody who's not in project mayhem, who's not in fight club.

Slava:

This is not about coming back from rock bottom. It's about subservience to Tyler now.

Jonathan:

Yeah. And his personality became a ball of sorts. Right? Like

Slava:

Yep.

Jonathan:

And that's the thing about philosophies is they grow and then they spread. Sure. Some people are like, well, I just I'm gonna do me. Okay. Fine.

Jonathan:

But, eventually, if you're if you're a charismatic leader like Tyler is, your philosophy spreads, it grows, and then you try to inflict that philosophy on others, morality aside. But the thing is people are so primal that they always revert back to tribalism. And so the tribalism here is, well, you're either part of project mayhem or you're not, and if you're not, then you're the enemy. But project mayhem is not trying to do anything, and that's kind of what we've been harping on here was, like, with anarchy is, okay. Tear down the system, but, like, then you're gonna be left in the rubble of whatever you have left.

Jonathan:

Have you ever seen photos of Iran in 19 fifties? Yeah. It was beautiful. It was flourishing. It looked like the 19 fifties here.

Jonathan:

They were rolling in it, and I don't know the historical events, but I know what it looks like now. And it's rubble. It's the the the anarchy, the the the power rising, it took over, and it turned something that was beautiful into chaos and disorder. And what's the line, you know, I just wanted to destroy something beautiful? Yep.

Jonathan:

The angel faced guy? Mhmm.

Slava:

Exactly it.

Jonathan:

Yeah. That's all the anarchy and chaos wants to do is they just want to destroy. It never wants to build something new like the phoenix rising from the ashes. It just wants to destroy. Quick Sanderson note, because I'm I'm thinking about it in the in the book just released today, yesterday.

Jonathan:

He has these things called shards. They're these entities that only act out the essence of the entity itself, And one of them is called ruin, and its literal purpose is to decay. It tries to ruin and corrupt and destroy the things. That type of stuff left unbridled in our own lives does just that. And the thing is we feel like heroes.

Jonathan:

We feel like Braveheart in the midst of it because we think we have a purpose. We think we're doing something, quote, unquote, good. And it's like, no. You haven't even spent any time thinking about this issue. You're just acting out, but people don't realize that because they're so in the moment of emotion because people are not logical.

Jonathan:

They're just they're they're bags of emotion walking around, trying to find a tribe to belong to so that they have some sort of, like, acceptance, to quote Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And there's so much more to life than this, and and I'll agree with you. Like, Marla has more to live for than the narrator.

Slava:

Right. I'm glad you said that. So we're in chapter 16 to 20, and in 17 and Marla comes over and walks in the garden with the narrator. There seems to be some sort of evolution in their relationship, and the garden is well maintained. Everything looks pretty, but narrator sees a jawbone in the in the garden.

Slava:

He tries to hide it from Marla and is successful. She doesn't see the jawbone. But as this relationship between Marla and narrator involves, her attitude towards death shifts. And although at first, she liked being close to death, it was exciting. She felt safe knowing she was healthy, then this cancer comes along.

Slava:

So there's this thing where, you know, there's almost a teenage angst in Marla, but she is responding better than the narrator, and here's what I'm getting at. Her fascination with death slowly changes. And after she has a real brush with death, she has to carry that with her every day. She no longer wants to talk about death with the narrator after this. While on the other hand, Tyler, the narrator, the men of Fight Club, and Project Mayhem, they still romanticize death, but only is this abstract concept.

Slava:

They really are not doing anything because you can wax philosophical all day long, but if at the end of the day, I'm gonna repeat myself again. If your fight against the machine is pissing in somebody's chicken noodle soup, okay, you know, death, well, you know, destruction. So they feel secure in their beliefs, but they're not really growing. They're all the stuff that they're doing, these external things and taking Project Mayhem public, if you will, None of that is anything more than meaningless peacocking. Right?

Slava:

They're even their view of masculinity now has become tainted. It's not really them trying to discover masculinity in a world where masculinity maybe is looked upon with derision in some circles, they have now turned into the monsters that they think they're fighting. Or Marla here in 17, 18, she seems to grow as a character.

Jonathan:

That reminds me of the one line from The Dark Knight, I think it is. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Nice. I mean,

Slava:

it's not wrong. And listen, like, the goal of Project Mayhem is destruction. Its worldview is nihilism sprinkled with some anarchism. I'd probably reverse that, actually. It's anarchy sprinkled with nihilism.

Slava:

Well, potato, potato. We'll agree to disagree. Well, it's not potato, potato. Let me say they're different It's 2 different things. Really?

Jonathan:

Yeah. We'll disagree Potato, tomato.

Slava:

Potato, tomato. Goodness. Who's the chef here? I'm the chef.

Jonathan:

Yes, chef. You and your French brigade?

Slava:

So nothing. The I'll end that that's where I'll end 16 to 20 is there's the shift in Marla that's contrasted with the narrator's non shift. He's still the destructive child that he was, and the car accident, which he causes himself, doesn't inspire him to do anything. Everything that he does still leaves him in limbo. He's actually not progressing in the way that he wanted to.

Slava:

Maybe there's incremental changes here and there that get him to the end of the book, the arc of the end of the book. At this point, I don't see it, but I do see it in Marla.

Jonathan:

Mhmm.

Slava:

Why I find that interesting and fascinating is she came in as the disruptor to him, but if we take a look at her even through his eyes, and he's not particularly trustworthy, But the parts that we get of Marla from his perspective, we still see more growth in her than than him.

Jonathan:

Well, yeah, that's you know, you've kind of mentioned he his status, his state of being hasn't changed, and that's because he hasn't made a decision to change. Because it's always a decision. You might have a catalyst, but you can choose to stay the same by not doing it. What did I say last time? You can avoid the realities of life, but you can't avoid the consequences of avoiding the realities of life.

Jonathan:

And this is literally what he's walking out, and then there's this moment where he starts to confront, like, maybe Tyler's doing something bad. He he starts to make a choice. He's like, actually, anarchy is not the way, and this is chapters 21 through 25 ish. And he he starts to go, maybe I can stop it. But project mayhem is rolling downhill the way that Indiana Jones is running from that boulder in one of the, Temple of Doom.

Jonathan:

Right? Like, it's moving. You can't stop it. That's that's just not a thing. There's another book that's a fantasy book that I like to quote and reference.

Jonathan:

No. Not re not quote. That I like to reference regularly. But one of the characters talks about the idea that time is a boulder, and you can either be dumb and stand in front of it and try and stop it. You can stand next to it and shout, look what I did, or you can be smart enough to stand near the boulder and nudge it at the right time.

Jonathan:

The thing that Tyler doesn't understand is what he really should've done is try to nudge the boulder, but he instead tried to stand in front of it to stop it, which it was too it's too powerful. He couldn't

Slava:

do it. Perfect segue into my next question set up for you. So in the chapter with Raymond Hessel, I think that

Jonathan:

k. Hessel, what did you go to school for?

Slava:

Yeah. What is that? Like, 19, I think? Somewhere around there. So in that chapter, the narrator's intent is not to kill him or harm him.

Slava:

Right? But to engineer an experience that inspires Raymond to move and change his life.

Jonathan:

A catalyst moment. He wants to give Raymond a catalyst moment.

Slava:

Exactly. And this seems seems, I say that purposefully because this is from the perspective of the narrator, to echo Fights Club's original goal, which I don't believe the narrator on this, but it seems to, in world, to put men into a situation that can elicit pain and maybe a little bit of fear, but they come out on the other side aspired to achieve something more and new. So my question is well, let me let me back up. So this is what he's doing with Raymond Hessel. But I think in the eyes of Project Mayhem, taking their philosophy to its logical conclusion, Raymond becoming a veterinarian would still not be enough.

Jonathan:

No. No. No. No.

Slava:

Since that that new position that new position still exists within the confines of the old society, which they're bucking against. So great. He becomes a veterinarian. In in the movie, it was like 6 weeks. You better become a veterinarian or be on your way, or I'm gonna come back and kill you.

Slava:

Let's say that happens. In 6 weeks, he's enrolled. Project Mayhem would have no problems bombing that veterinarian, you know, school because of Tyler's new freaking, you know, women fancy about something veteran and they're oppressive to animals or something. I'm making that up. Right.

Slava:

But it still wouldn't fix Raymond's position from the perspective of Project Mayhem. Correct. Is still be part of the machine.

Jonathan:

Was there a question there? You it sounded like you wanted to start a question, and and I didn't hear one. I think I Answered the question yourself.

Slava:

No. You answered it, by interrupting me, which is fine. Because when I said that in the eyes of Project Mayhem, this wouldn't be enough for Raymond. He still exists in the previous old society that they buckled buck against, and you said in the affirmative. So I was gonna set you up for that, talk about it, but you agreed with me, so unless you wanna explore it a little bit more.

Jonathan:

No. No. I I it's it's exactly what you said. Honestly, that might be the kindest thing if we can pick, like, a thing that happened in this book. Yes.

Jonathan:

There's not a lot that's great. Killing your boss is not great. Blowing up buildings is not great. If there's one thing that happened, it's he inspired a person to go back and live their dreams, albeit the method was not great, perhaps even not justifiable. But let's get back to the the the boulder that's rolling downhill.

Slava:

Let's do it. Tell me about the boulder. Well, before we

Jonathan:

take that quick side quest, the boulder's rolling, and Tyler or narrator doesn't have the intelligence or capability of stopping the boulder, he tries to because he finally took a choice. He he he decided, hey. Maybe this isn't actually correct. And we see his house of cards that he's both built for himself and also not for himself because he built them for Tyler come crumbling down, now he's starting to have to confront like, oh, I'm Tyler Durden. I did this.

Slava:

I am

Jonathan:

I am responsible for all of this.

Slava:

Right. So the boulder, chapter 21 is where he realizes that the boulder is there. Because he's traveling around the country, and the narrator regularly goes to bars trying to find Tyler because Tyler hasn't been around for a while. And everywhere he goes, the narrator sees men with scars and bruises. Hey.

Slava:

They must have a fight club here. In a bar in Seattle, a bartender says, welcome back, sir, to the narrator, but the narrator has no memory of this ever happening. And this is where he's confused, suspicious, and starts to put things together and calls Marla, and this is where he asked Marla if they ever had sex. She confirms that indeed they have, and she also says that the narrator saved her life when she attempted suicide. The narrator is like, okay.

Slava:

Well, so what's my name? And she says, your name is Tyler Durden. Here is his realization that the boulder is right here, and he he's too late to stop it.

Jonathan:

Yeah. He started the boulder rolling downhill.

Slava:

He did. Yeah.

Jonathan:

And now he has to confront himself because he's realizing that he has to both take responsibility for the chaos that he's begun and choose what he's gonna do next. And he's finally he's finally forced to confront himself.

Slava:

And it takes Bob, Bob's death, and kinda Bob's even Bob's loss of his own individuality. He shapes his head. He burns off his fingertips. He receives the chemical burn kiss in the back of his hand. So that's him losing his individuality and becoming part of project mayhem instead of being a cog in the corporate machine.

Slava:

Irony again. And Bob eventually gets killed. So this is where the narrator finally realizes, oh, shit. I have started pull I've started a mayhem. I've caused mayhem with project mayhem.

Jonathan:

Mhmm.

Slava:

Yeah. Even him calling Bob bitch tits all the way up to this point and then giving him the kiss of the the burn kiss and then having Bob shaving his head and doing all those things, he's never treated Bob like a good person. Bob at first was a means to an end, and then he was part of his little space monkeys, calling them space monkeys even, just degrading, and here is where the narrator finally realizes that he is the destructive force in his own life, in the life of Marla, in the life of Bob, and the rest of project mayhem.

Jonathan:

Yeah. And then the story quickly moves toward where we began in chapter 1 where narrator's on the top of the roof with this iconic climax, and he's gonna shoot himself to kill Tyler and hope that the bombs go off. Well, Tyler hopes the bombs go off, but they don't like we talked about earlier because Tyler mixed it incorrectly.

Slava:

Yeah. And thank god for that because Tyler now takes control of the narrator in ways that we haven't seen before, and this is where he kills the narrator's boss, and then they go pick up the mechanic, and then this mechanic was supposed to maybe just a random guy, but he's also part of Fight Club, so you see the scope of the damage that the narrator has caused. It's more than just a few people here and there or fine Fight Club's in a different city now. It is affecting every aspect of the narrator's world. This is sort of where the novel reaches its kind of conclusion or arc because if you haven't guessed, we're in chapters 26 to 30.

Slava:

Tyler wants them to die in a spectacular way, so Project Mayhem will be viewed will always be remembered, and then them space monkeys can be viewed as martyrs, and this will elevate them to and Tyler said, I think, to a different type of status, a holy status if you will, and this will inspire future narrations of Fight Club and Project Mayhem to be even more deadly and productive, but as we already discussed it, that's just gonna create more chaos. None of the following iterations are gonna help anybody get in touch with their inner masculinism. Well, yeah, It's not gonna help them become better men. It's not gonna fix society. It's just another iteration of assholes peeing in soup and blowing shit up.

Jonathan:

Given enough time, project mayhem would fracture and become project anarchy and project mayhem because some people wouldn't be committed enough according to one group versus the other group, and then they become enemies. Like, it's just this stuff happens both in the real world. Well, I I can only say that in the real world because the book doesn't go that far. But if it did, that would be a logical conclusion of what would take place in terms of Project Mayhem splitting off and becoming a hydra instead of Many Honey Dragon.

Slava:

In chapter 26, we see the narrator finally trying to rid himself of Tyler. So he goes to a fight club and registers to fight all 50 guys, which, again, breaking the rules because 2 guys at a time. Right? And he gets his, yeah, he gets his ass beat up, and he wants to be dead so he can escape Tyler. So here, the boulder is too to continue your analogy, the boulder is too much for him, and he's now fighting Fight Club trying to kill Tyler.

Slava:

And as we get to the end of the book, I think finally, the narrator is starting to get a step closer to acceptance of the world around him, accepting his, if you will, his lot in life. We see the narrator slowly coming to a state of acceptance. He's, like, he's approaching Zen, if you will.

Jonathan:

That seems a little lofty, but okay.

Slava:

Like, well, if he's at peace of where he is. Right? He seems to be going, okay. Fine. This is where I am.

Slava:

That's the Zoloft talking? Zoloft, zen Zanoff. But he seems to be at peace as much as he can be, at least at some level of acceptance much greater than anything in previous chapters. And then we see this conversation he has with God where he's probably under the influence of a lot of heavy drugs at the at the hospital. He has this conversation with God, which almost is like a therapy session.

Slava:

He even bucks against God in this conversation, call him a liar.

Jonathan:

I mean, he's not fully integrating himself as a person. He's accepting some elements of reality, but not all of them.

Slava:

The god part also is important because Tyler once said in the book that your father is your model of god.

Jonathan:

Yeah. It happened it's I think he said it 2 or 3 times.

Slava:

Yeah.

Jonathan:

And then we get that his father was kind of, like, sort of giving him direction, but barely. His first fight was not just with himself, but fighting what does Tyler say? He he's fighting everything that he hates or something like that. Not himself. He He wasn't fighting Tyler.

Jonathan:

He was fighting everything that he hates,

Slava:

the emptiness. So as we wind down here, at the end of the book, we see that the narrator's final philosophical stance is neither, you know, optimistic or nihilistic or anarchist. He is one step closer to acceptance. We'll put it that way. He is approaching kind of fully accepting his lot in life and accepting the situation he finds himself in, at least versus how how he was in the previous chapter, but he's not there yet.

Slava:

And this conversation that he has with God, whether it was drug induced or sleep induced or, I mean, dream induced, whatever it was, he kinda buckles against God. Tyler has said in previous chapters that your father is your model of God, and now the narrator here finds that his therapist is stepping into this god rule. Instead of falling in step with the therapist and maybe moving forward some more, the narrator still holds on to his old beliefs, refusing to what one summary I read, quote, refusing to sacrifice himself for someone else's ideas, and there's this kind of melancholy state that he's in. And although he finds some joy in marvelous letters, the nurses slash angels are clear followers of project mayhem, and this deeply discomforts him. So the he's still not out of his out of the previous world.

Slava:

He still finds himself in the same place that he did, you know, in chapters 1 through 25. And here in the last chapters, there's very little change. And Tyler's not around, but the narrator still has this not desire, but this he still has the stance that he doesn't wanna go to the real world because the real world now is not a corporate hellscape, it's a Project Mayhem hellscape because everybody, at least to his eyes, everybody is now in Project Mayhem instead of the old society, and likely, he probably realizes this, he likely realizes that all the same social problems exist and even more exist because of what mayhem he has caused. They away for him outside the hospital, so nothing has changed, and he barely changes.

Jonathan:

Yeah. There's this ambiguity at the end here where the narrator has solved Tyler's influence in his own head, but not his influence in the world that he's created because Tyler created Project Mayhem. And Project Mayhem is now everywhere. But the narrator, to your point, like, does he get out? Does he choose to stay in there?

Jonathan:

Does he choose to wrestle with these questions? And it's, like, well, based on the conversation he has with quote, unquote, God, no. He has not accepted the questions. He's not willing to bend on that even though reality has said something completely different and has proven some of the questions. So it's a nice transgressive fiction ending because it's inconclusive.

Jonathan:

It leaves you hanging. It leaves you questioning. But, yeah, I mean, overall, 5 star book across the board.

Slava:

Heck, yeah. Same here. 5 across the board.

Jonathan:

Love it. Well, next episode, you will hear us recapping with one of our favorite guests, Jess, and I can't wait to hear what she has to say about this

Slava:

novel. But before you vanish back to reality, share this episode with your book loving friends. It keeps our quest alive and helps other book adventurers find their way here. We'll see you next time on

Jonathan:

SideQuest.