The Side Quest Book Club Podcast

Hey Adventurers! Today, we dive into Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Over three episodes, we will 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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(00:00) Intro
(01:11) Exploring Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club
(03:09) Background on Fight Club and Its Themes
(07:03) Chuck Palahniuk: Author's Journey and Influences
(12:23) The Genesis of Fight Club: Personal Struggles
(19:26) Cultural Context and Male Identity
(30:19) The Role of Mentorship in Male Development
(38:03) Exploring Transgressive Fiction
(51:05) The Real World of Fight Club
(01:00:15) Consumerism and Its Consequences
(01:05:50) Mortality and Human Connection & 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, that's how conversations work. Just as a reminder, Good evening, Slava.

Slava:

Hey there, Jonathan. How are you doing? I'm doing alright. How about yourself?

Jonathan:

I am doing okay. I could be better, but I'm, as Tyler Durden quotes us, I am embracing pain. I'm paraphrasing him. To experience real reality.

Slava:

Are you Tyler Durden's blown out kidneys?

Jonathan:

Tyler Durden's blown up back, actually. Kidneys are just a fun side effect.

Slava:

Excellent.

Jonathan:

Yeah. If you haven't guessed already, we are reading Chuck Palaniuk. Real? Palaniuk?

Slava:

I think it's Palaniuk. If I'm channeling my inner Ukrainian and this guy is a fellow Ukrainian, it's Palaniuk.

Jonathan:

Alright. I know we do this every time, but we are reading Chuck Palaniuk's classic book, Fight Club, written in 1996, which later, but not much later, became a hit movie in 1999 that blew the male population by storm. It was the original Barbie movie, if you will.

Slava:

But for men.

Jonathan:

But for men. Right. Yeah. I didn't think I had to say that twice, but thanks for clarifying. Thanks for clarifying that, Slava.

Slava:

You're welcome. That's what I'm here for. Yeah. I'm here as the narrator helping you along your journey to self discovery.

Jonathan:

You're side quest throbbing heart?

Slava:

Yes. I am Tyler Durden's side quest throbbing heart.

Jonathan:

No. No. No. Just side quest's throbbing heart. There you go.

Jonathan:

Yep. This Book.

Slava:

It's a book.

Jonathan:

Thank you. Thank you. I am aware that it's a book. I'm going through it right now, actually, in case that was unclear. This book arc will be 3 episodes.

Jonathan:

Episode 1, which you're listening to, is chapters 1 through 15. Episode 2 is chapter 16 through 30, and episode 3, per usual, will be our guest episode, and we will be having Jess on, the all familiar Chuck Palaniuk master extraordinaire.

Slava:

That she is. But only a quick correction. We won't get into the actual plot or any plot points in detail until part 2. And then with Jess, we'll do kind of just an overall reflection, or maybe we will just start talking and see where the episode with Jess goes. Part 2, next episode, is where we will get into the plot in more detail, but that's it.

Slava:

Anyway, as we set off in today's side quest, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. So Fight Club is the debut novel of American author Chuck Palahniuk. And as Jonathan mentioned earlier, 3 years later, American filmmaker David Fincher directed the film adaptation starring your one and only Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden and Edward Norton as the narrator and the beloved Helena Bonham Carter as Marla Singer. The Fight Club is a contemporary work of literary fiction that contends with masculinity, materialism, consumer culture, and modern disillusionment. Inspired partly by a fight he had on a camping trip, Palynuk Road Fight Club, partly in response to what he saw as an increasingly popular genre of female togetherness books and films.

Slava:

He wanted to write something similar about male affiliation. The novel follows the story of an unnamed narrator told largely in flashbacks. Struggling with insomnia, the narrator finds solace in attending support groups for terminal illness where he can cry and finally fall asleep. The piece is disrupted by Marla Singer, a fellow imposter, leading to his insomnia's return. Dissatisfied with his corporate life, he meets Tyler Durgin, kinda like we met, a charismatic man who introduces him to fight club, a secret group where men release their frustrations through physical fights.

Slava:

Their narrator and Tyler become close, but Tyler's relationship with Marla triggers jealousy in the narrator. Tyler's influence escalates to the creation of project mayhem, a movement of destructive and anarchist acts. As fight club and project mayhem grow, the narrator realizes that he and Tyler are the same person with Tyler emerging when the narrator sleeps. Determined to stop Tyler, the narrator confronts him atop a building rigged with explosives. He shoots himself to get rid of Tyler's control.

Slava:

Surviving the ordeal, the narrator awakens in a hospital when he converses with staff who suddenly reveal their loyalty to project mayhem, leaving the future ambiguous.

Jonathan:

Is that how we met Slava? We got in a fight? Fist fight?

Slava:

Oh, I was gonna say the nude beach, but sure.

Jonathan:

We got in we got in a fight. Fist fight on the nude beach. Nice. Have you ever been in a fight before Slava? Over the age of, let's say, 18.

Slava:

No. A couple under 18, but nothing over 18. Come close. Yeah. I've come close.

Jonathan:

I remember you mentioning to me a few times the it was actually probably during the IT episodes of being in fights with kids.

Slava:

Yeah. I have the advantage of being a smaller guy by stature and a loudmouth, so people assume I'm insane. It's the Joe Pesci effect.

Jonathan:

Mhmm. Mhmm. Don't mess with the short guy because he might cut off your balls?

Slava:

Yeah. It really works. It served me well. It's got me out of some hairy situations, but I can't say even those were more than a handful in my life because I'm just not a man prone to violence.

Jonathan:

You know, I think that would, surprise the viewers because of the, the angry outbursts, the regular angry outbursts on the show here.

Slava:

Oh, yeah. I rant and rave like a lunatic sometimes, but I've learned how to curve But it's controlled. I've learned how to control it. Exactly.

Jonathan:

Unlike Tyler.

Slava:

Unlike Tyler who blew up a building to destroy another building. She was overkill, but whatever.

Jonathan:

Something like that. A quick note about the author, Chuck Palaniuk was born in February of 1962. And like Salva said, he's an American author known for his transgression fiction, which we'll get into a little later if you're not familiar with the genre. He's currently published 19 novels, one of which is Fight Club, which we're talking about. Palaniuk worked as a diesel mechanic and a journalist before he was pursuing fiction writing in his thirties.

Jonathan:

And he was inspired by workshops led by Tom Spanbauer, I think that's how we say his name, whose minimalist style, writing style that is, shaped Palynuk's own. He also volunteered at homeless shelters and hospice centers, experiences that heavily influenced his storytelling. And I think we see some of those major themes come out not only in Fight Club, but also in, another previous book we did, which was Survivor.

Slava:

That's right. You wanna know a little background on how he started volunteering at homeless shelters?

Jonathan:

Lay it on me.

Slava:

Alright. So I saw an interview with him, and he was talking about a point in his life where he was really depressed, and things were just coming undone in his life. And somebody invited him to church, and he was at such a low point in his life. He's like, fine. I'll go to church.

Slava:

Normally, I wouldn't do this, but whatever. Here I am. And at church, this was around Christmas time, I think. This is where my memory gets fuzzy. It was either Christmas time or some other big event where he pulled off either an ornament or he pulled something out of a hat, and he had to do the thing that was on the card attached to the ornament or the card in the hat.

Slava:

Sorry, Chuck, if I'm butchering this part of the story. The point that stuck with me was the thing that he pulled out said, take a hospice person on a date. So a person who's about to die or is soon about to die, take him on a date or her. So he went to a hospital or wherever you find hospice folks, and he started hanging out with them. And most of them said, I don't wanna date.

Slava:

Don't take me to a restaurant. I don't need any movies. I'm in pain. I'm dying. Please drive me to my

Jonathan:

Appointment probably or something? Appointment

Slava:

help group support group. And so he would drive these folks to support groups, and people there assumed that he was also suffering from whatever the support group was trying to help the people, and he didn't have the heart to tell him, no. No. No. I'm just here with, Bob, you know, bitch tits over here.

Slava:

Yeah. I don't have the testicular cancer or whatever. Right? I'm pulling that out of a book, but it was another example he gave. Yeah.

Slava:

This book specifically. It was another example that he gave, but that definitely got pulled into the pulled into the story. That's how he got involved with hospice and homeless shelter folks.

Jonathan:

Church, I mean, that gives Survivor some some more context. You didn't mention that, when we did that episode.

Slava:

I didn't because it had nothing to do with Survivor. This was him telling telling people specifically how he ended up riding Fight Club, what kinda prompted it, was this event in his life where he was just broken and upset and at wit's end, you could say. Mhmm.

Jonathan:

He was

Slava:

at a really low place. Right? And then he started doing this hospice ministry alongside with some of the other stuff he'll get into and what you already mentioned, I think. That's what Fight Club came out of, and that's why it's so late in his career, even in his life, to to start writing. I mean, we we covered a couple of authors that did this where they didn't break out until they were 30, but that's a little, peek behind the curtain of mister, mix mister Palanuk here.

Jonathan:

That's interesting. I mean, you definitely do way more research than I do, so that that didn't come up when I was poking around.

Slava:

Yeah. No. I literally googled Chuck Palynuk, why he wrote Fight Club, and, like, yeah, 10 things.

Jonathan:

That makes my research sound so lame because if you literally researched that one sentence, it's like, well, what did he do then?

Slava:

Well and I found interviews. I don't I didn't go to, like, lame blogs. I'm accusing you of this. I didn't go to some lame blog or a Wikipedia page. Although, I used that too.

Jonathan:

Cool. Cool. Cool. But Not quoting anything that I looked up. Thanks, Slava.

Slava:

Yep. Yep. Yep. But I went to a YouTube video that had him talking. It was just his voice, him Sounds like fake news.

Slava:

CNN or the other one. I don't know. No. I'm kidding. I don't care.

Slava:

They all suck. Cable TV news is, a blight on humanity.

Jonathan:

PBS. He was on PBS talking about Fight Club Yeah. Telling you to donate to grandma's, you know, Sesame Street.

Slava:

It was that weird mister Rogers episode where he talked about transgressive fiction.

Jonathan:

Oh, yeah. I remember that one when

Slava:

I was growing up. Good lord. Alright. Well, let's bring us back here. What's the world on the where the train goes into mister Rogers?

Jonathan:

Oh, I'm oh, I I just think it's the neighborhood.

Slava:

Yeah. Okay. Neighborhood. That's where a lamb chop and the king got into a humongous fist fight with the owl to death.

Jonathan:

Oh my gosh. No kidding. You're ruining people's childhood one sentence at a time, just one after the other.

Slava:

But do you wanna explore a little bit more about the idea behind Fight Club? I do. We talked about the nucleus there, like, what sparked it, but a lot more work went into it.

Jonathan:

Yeah. Give me the give me the lowdown on that because somebody like Palaniuk who has, like I remember reading in some of your notes here, which I'm not spoiling it for everybody, but he, like, was so distraught and basically festering.

Slava:

Yeah.

Jonathan:

I mean that in a literal sense, festering in his own anger and despair. And from that, he wrote this. And that actually sounds similar to another book we read, which is Ball, where the guy was so fed up. Was it Peter, Paul?

Slava:

Robert McManon.

Jonathan:

Close 3rd. Peter, Paul, or Robert? Anyway, take it away.

Slava:

It was before they got married. Peter, Paul, and Robert. There we go. Oh, no. You're blocking it.

Jonathan:

Yeah. There we go. I'm

Slava:

sorry. Yeah. You're you're absolutely right that Palynuk was at a very low point in his life. He was miserable. He hated his job.

Slava:

He was struggling with post college isolation. He had college debts. He felt a disconnection from society at large, and he decided to write a novel that would explore existential despair as one does

Jonathan:

As one does.

Slava:

And the search for meaning. So he's going through this, and he wants to explore identity, masculinity, rebellion, and then he says, alright. So I have personal frustrations. I feel isolated. I see this support group world to which I am driving these folks that I'm supposed to be helping.

Slava:

I'm volunteering with them. He finds that, wow, being around others is comforting. And to him, by proxy, and especially to those who are confronting death, it gave them a sense of relief and gave him a sense of vitality. And this is what inspired the narrator's attendance at the support groups in the book. As he's writing all this and processing all this, he's like, oh, it's not just being around people, but we need physical altercations and physical contact and touch, and we need people to participate with us.

Slava:

It is supposed to be social reactions. This becomes such a strange part of the story, but it's so evident in the book. So after a personal fight, which you mentioned, during a camping trip left his face visibly battered, Palmyk observed how people avoided addressing him or his injuries. Like he said in that interview, even people will look at his navel or his Adam's apple. And as he reflected the discomfort, look at the vulnerability he felt during these confrontations, these little interactions, this began to inform the creation of Fight Club as a book, but in the book, it it's where he creates the space where physical altercations were normalized.

Slava:

So he normalized them, and he gave the narrator a cathartic release during narrator's bouts in the fight club.

Jonathan:

Mhmm.

Slava:

Having the debt, living alone, facing angst that he had with a dead end job, he started to rebel against consumerism, and that poured into the book. The book has been analyzed by 10,000 people, and almost all of them say that Palynuk has criticized consumer driven identity. And if you watch the movie, it's the IKEA furniture. And if you read the book, it's all the fancy high end stuff that he has, even like gadgets. And then he names them in the book just like American Psycho, Bateman.

Slava:

He does the same thing. And as that's coming together, he also is looking at the fact that there is a lack of male social narratives. He notes in this interview and a couple others the scarcity of stories addressing male bonding and emotional struggles. I like the abundance of narratives for women. So fight club for him became a counternarrative, providing space for male vulnerability, empowerment, and the quest for male identity.

Jonathan:

Not just him, though. I mean, this thing blew up in the 19 nineties It did. At early 2000, which I think should be not to, you know, derail us too much, but I think that that is a really telling thing that there's a large group of people, I e, the male population, who feels left out from, to quote you, the zeitgeist, if you will, of all the things going on, and I I I'm just kind of thankful that they're not all as angry as Robert and Chuck. He finds himself in this place,

Slava:

in the zeitgeist as we all do, but there's a disconnect. And he hears this is me paraphrasing him. He hears this cacophony from the society, and he's trying to structure it. He's trying to structure the chaos. That's why Tyler Durden is trying to seek structure through chaos.

Slava:

And so Palynik shapes Fight Club as a way for men with rigid, unfulfilling lives to experience temporary anarchy and freedom. Again, me paraphrasing him and some stuff I read about him. So he explores masculinity in his book. He explores secondary father figures, which Tyler Durden is to him, like a mentor offering guidance and empowerment, but Tyler is also offering chaos and destruction. But just like with Survivor, there's a critique of nihilism.

Slava:

He explores nihilism as an attractive, but ultimately flawed philosophy, especially for disillusioned men and youth. He kinda contrasts it with the need for growth and maturity, and we we kinda see that in the narrator, but we do not sure if he gets to the end. And finally finally, this is Palanik's way to reflect on the culture that he found himself in while he was writing his book. As you said, it blew up, and it resonated with a cultural need for consensual rough play, if you will. If we're gonna wax philosophical mentorship, psychological empowerment for men, it's him trying to address aspects of the male identity that were neglected in contemporary narratives, or young men didn't even experience it in any meaningful way.

Slava:

So the ultimately, Fight Club is born out of Palanik's struggles, his observations, the way he sees as societal gaps, and he wanted to create, again, me paraphrasing, a proactive narrative that challenged traditional norms. That's the transgressive part of it, but also sparked deeper conversations about male identity and purpose. For a short book, I think he packs in a lot of stuff.

Jonathan:

Just a quick reminder for listeners. Fight Club was his first published novel. Right? And so he hit product market fit, which is what I would call this, where he found some place in the in the market. The market is like a group of people.

Jonathan:

Right? So his product, Fight Club, found a market, Disenchanted Men, and the fit was, hey. This resonates with me. That's a big deal. Product market fit is a really hard thing to hit.

Jonathan:

It usually takes people a long time, but he had some sort of accelerant on this because he was feeling this thing that it turns out a lot of other people were feeling. Now I was pretty young in 99, and so I wouldn't read this or watch the movie until probably a decade later, give or take. But I would say that part of and this is, like, looking back, so I'm curious about your thoughts, Slava, from back then. But looking back, I would say that part of the issues that I've seen were that there's, to your point, a lack of mentorship. Fathers have continually been berated in every sort of mainstream media from Simpsons to Family Guy to whatever, where men are stupid.

Jonathan:

They don't do anything right. There's also no coming of age ceremonies anymore for men, and it's degraded into men are just here. We don't like them. We hate them. They're stupid.

Jonathan:

They can't do anything right, and men are sick of it. Now granted, Family Guy, I think, wasn't out in 99, but Simpsons and a few other episodes identify dinosaurs. Do you

Slava:

remember dinosaurs? I do.

Jonathan:

Not the mama. Right? Like, there's so many things that just say, alright. Men are stupid. They can't do anything right.

Jonathan:

They're just dumb blue collar workers, etcetera, etcetera. Chuck was clearly old enough to feel the pressure and weight of that, and he was like, this is awful.

Slava:

I wasn't even 20 when this movie came out, and I wanna say I watched it in the movies, in the movie theater, or just after it hit DVDs. I think it was just after it hit DVDs. So I watched it, and I could relate for the reasons you mentioned. But now the caveat here and it's not really a caveat. Gotta be some nuance.

Slava:

The nuance here is some guys are can't get rights. They are what is depicted on the television was depicted on television because that's the men that society brought up. Listen. I can't tie a tie. Like, I barely can tie a tie.

Slava:

Every time I tie a tie, which is once every decade,

Jonathan:

I need to watch a YouTube video. For the random weddings you get best mannered for?

Slava:

Right. But there is something about some men that I know and men in general out there that I don't know that they are kind of useless. Not in the sense that I'm judging their worth or values human beings, but this is the guy who's in his thirties, wears graphic tees, old New Balances, and cargo pants because, well, it's just dumb to, you know, put any care into what you think because that's what girls do. And I'm just a man. All I need is a beer and, you know, could change brakes on my car.

Slava:

Listen. I like beers. I also can change brakes on my car. I can do light construction work because I was in construction, so I can do light work around the house. So I can do, quote, unquote, manually things, but I feel like there's some men in society at large and in my life, they're just kinda just there.

Slava:

And, again, it's not a judgment of their value. I mean, there's some people, like I said, who are can't get right, so no matter what they give them, they'll never take anything and make anything out of it. But I think a lot of it has to do with the generation that raised them that created the world that that we're in.

Jonathan:

Yeah. I would agree, but the the tough thing about that is, like, we're in the present, and even though people are the product of society partly, to your point, they're also the product of their own choosing responsibility, choosing whether or not they're going to engage. And it's difficult because it's, like, yeah, you got handed a bad deck of cards. But you know what? That's literally what everyone get gets handed.

Jonathan:

Everyone gets handed a random deck of cards. That's it. You don't get to choose them. You gotta deal with it. I've, you know, I've talked about my birth defect on here a bunch of times.

Jonathan:

We literally had to push this episode because of it. You just don't get you don't get to pick. And to your point, we've lost the John Waynes. We've lost any sort of characters to look up to when we're growing up. All we have now are the Homer Simpsons, the, can't remember the dinosaur's name, the guy from Family Guy, whatever his name, Peter.

Slava:

Yep.

Jonathan:

That's it. Those are the people that we've looked up to growing up, and I know that you said this doesn't affect their their their value. That's objectively, but it does affect their value internally, which is a whole different animal.

Slava:

Yeah.

Jonathan:

And then it ruins, like, their motivation to want to do anything, which I understand because I've been one of those people, but eventually, you have to just nut up and go, cool. I'm gonna do this anyway, and people aren't gonna like it, and I just you have to stop caring. You just gotta live your life, and people are gonna critique you for everything you do even if it's the right thing. If I had a dollar every time I did the right thing, like, objectively, morally, objectively, we won't get into it, but, like, morally, objectively, the right thing. Helping someone across the street, stopping to, like, literally feed a homeless person on my last dollar.

Jonathan:

Like You'd have $4. Excuse me? Did you say I'd I would have $4? You jack off. I'd have, like, $400,000.

Jonathan:

Oh my gosh. Because I used to be one of those nice guys, which we don't have to get into that unless you want to, but, like, I would do nice things for people all the time, and I wouldn't tell people about it.

Slava:

Yeah. What do you mean by nice guys? Do you mean the guy that gets trampled by all the girls, like the stereotypical nice guys, or do you mean actually, like, a nice guy to

Jonathan:

Both.

Slava:

A fall I

Jonathan:

mean, both of those.

Slava:

Where you're just always trying to help somebody, always

Jonathan:

burning around. Those things.

Slava:

Okay.

Jonathan:

I got trampled on by women because I was trying to be nice, and I was always doing nice things for other people. And then eventually, literally had to just stop because I I wasn't doing anything for myself. I spent a decade doing that from, like, 18 to 28 and then looked at what I had left, and I was like, I literally have nothing. I've done everything for other people. I didn't do anything for myself.

Jonathan:

I was like, I have to put myself first now. I can't do this for other people. This isn't the life that I wanna live.

Slava:

Something you said just a second ago disconnected to a conversation I just had with my wife at dinner, and we were talking about a family member who's a can't get right. And she was just kind of not bemoaning it, but that's too strong of a word.

Jonathan:

Venting?

Slava:

She was just venting because she was sad about it, and she said, will this person ever learn? And I said, probably not because he is currently 42, and him licking his own wounds and blaming his parents, and they weren't great people at all. They really screwed up his life. But at this point in his life, it's as painful and destructive as it is. It's easier to lick his own wounds than to take the necessary steps to get out of the muck that he's in because it's gonna hurt.

Slava:

It's gonna feel unpleasant, to put it lightly. It's gonna probably force him into a few existential crises, but that is harder than sitting in his own field, to use a dramatic, you know, term there. Never adjusting or never taking the necessary steps to get out of the the rut because as painful as that is, it's easier than making the hard steps to do the right thing. And to bring it back to the book, a lot of the men young men at that point that I grew up with and even some older guys, like the guy who suggested Fight Club to me, it was now I remember it was a DVD that I rented to watch Fight Club. He was working the restaurant that I was working at, and he was talking about how, you know, he watched in the theater and it blew his mind and it was the greatest thing ever, and you should definitely watch it.

Slava:

I remember him going through, like, the motions, going through the plot and telling me the plot, and he didn't spoil it for me, but he was telling me kinda, like, the essence of the story without getting into it. He identified with what the movie was trying to say. Right? Yeah. The movie follows the book pretty well, so it's not

Jonathan:

Yeah. It does.

Slava:

It's not that far off.

Jonathan:

The ending is a little different, but for the most part, it's, like, 96% accurate.

Slava:

Right. So even at that time, somebody approaching his thirties felt that, and that's what Paliniuk was. Paliniuk was in his thirties when he wrote this, and so he hit that market segment. But when I watched it, I was like, oh, I feel this too. I understand what it is to be disillusioned and have a dead end job, not know what you're doing after high school, not having a father figure, kinda having to figure out things on your own, and I'm a cynic and absurdist at heart.

Slava:

You know? Shocked. Remember we talked about if we weren't Christians, we'd be

Jonathan:

Oh, yeah.

Slava:

Absurdists? So I was that. At that point, I was quasi agnostic, you know, looking at the horizon where atheism was just to, you know, just to beyond those mountains over there. And I know myself, and I couldn't articulate it then. I can articulate it now.

Slava:

I was definitely an absurdist at that point in my life without even knowing what that word meant. That's why I resonated with this book, the movie first.

Jonathan:

Yeah. I think the movie caught most people first because it's just easier for us to digest than committing to, like, you want me to sit down and read a book? I mean, it's it's got a cool name, Fight Club, but, like, why is there a picture of soap on it? I think that we got drawn into the movie first, a lot of us, and then hit the book afterward, like, oh, hey. Movies and books are usually different.

Jonathan:

Let me see what the differences are. But it's pretty close. Yeah. Pretty close. To end this note before we move on and get back into the book, what do you think is the remedy for this pressure and weight that men feel from society?

Slava:

I honestly think the biggest contributor to this problem is the lack of heroes and people we can live up to, those second fathers. Like, for me That's a good term. I didn't have a father, so I had a lot of second fathers. And another guy that worked at this restaurant, he was sorta like a big brother second father to me, and I had a few teachers throughout my life even as young as 2nd grade and definitely in 7th 8th grade, a history teacher because by that point, dad was dead, and then this guy at the restaurant and a few others since then that were older men, we hung out, we were friends, but they really acted like older brothers or second fathers to me the same way King did. I've mentioned this in previous episodes.

Slava:

King, through his writing, acted this way towards me without him even knowing that I existed, but his writings substituted another second father for me, if you will. And I think that is at the nucleus of the issue because you you always have crazy societal norms that people buck against, and this is why transgressive writing is so cool because it bucks against those norms and kinda shows the emperor that he doesn't have any clothes.

Jonathan:

And some

Slava:

of it is just garbage, like the consumerism where you fill your empty heart with whatever, IKEA products in a movie, but name your poison in real life. It doesn't matter, and that is what causes a lot of men to be disillusioned and not being able to function like men, because they don't have anybody to emulate, and this is sometimes an issue even in 2 parent homes, 2 incomes, everything is great, dad doesn't drink, mom doesn't beat you, whatever. As best of a situation in our broken world you can picture, even guys from those homes don't have the necessary input into their lives Mhmm. To make them, like, good men. Mhmm.

Jonathan:

And all

Slava:

that means and I'm not I'm not talking about some guy that can take out 17 Vietnamese with an Uzi and bench press £600. Like, that's movies. I'm talking about actual manliness, and that doesn't have to be the stereotypical stuff, and it shouldn't be because that's all silly nonsense because I've known book nerds and bookworms with glasses and suspenders that acted more like men than the the roided out jackasses at the gym.

Jonathan:

Yeah. The men that you're talking about, correct me if I'm wrong, is the men that we read in storybooks, like the heroes of old, the, I can't remember the guy from Scotland's name. What's the guy from Braveheart. Braveheart. Braveheart.

Jonathan:

What's his name? William Wallace. Thank you, William Wallace. Guys like him, King Arthur, King David, like Napoleon even. Like, not to say that these guys did no wrong, but when you fight for your country, when you have purpose, and this is my answer to this, is part of the and I and I think it ties really well with what you said where people don't have input anymore from older folks, like older brothers or second fathers.

Jonathan:

Part of having that input is those people help you figure out purpose and responsibility, and men without responsibility feel like the scum of the earth because they're, like, then why am I even here?

Slava:

Right.

Jonathan:

And they either do they they do one of 2 things to your point. They they become the the jagoffs at the gym, and they just, like, abuse women and whatever, or they become the can't, can't do rights. And everything is the society's fault. And both of those are dangerous. It's not a good thing.

Jonathan:

And so if you've got a man in your life that you and this is a bit of a side tangent, but that you have not told him that you appreciate him, whether you're a guy or a gal, whatever, whoever you are, go tell that person you appreciate them. I tell this to my wife all the time. I'm like, men never get compliments ever. And she's like, really? I was like, oh, yeah.

Jonathan:

We could probably list them on one hand the number of times we've gotten compliments in our lives. Right? Like, we just don't get them very often. Let's say 16 years of age and older. When you're a child, it's different.

Jonathan:

Oh, good job, Tommy. You did you know, you you you, you went to the bathroom correctly. Nice work. You know? Oh, you did your homework.

Jonathan:

Nice work. Like, that's different. Yeah.

Slava:

Yeah.

Jonathan:

But when you're quote, unquote a man, no. You're here to work, and if you're not working, you're worthless. So get out of here. And even if you are working, you're worthless.

Slava:

Right. Pretty much. And that's kinda near the narrator story too because he has a job. It's a dead end job.

Jonathan:

And All 17 of them.

Slava:

Oh, yeah. All 17 of them. But his real job in the corporate world, which buys him all the nice stuff, doesn't even fulfill him because he always has to manage his dumb boss who doesn't know anything about the product. He has to teach him, like, the sales pitch for the thing that they're selling, whatever the hell it was. Car returns.

Slava:

Yeah. There you go. Thank you.

Jonathan:

Insurance recalls.

Slava:

That's what it's called. Yep. And even his boss, who is supposed to be above middle management, at least the way I read it Yeah. Doesn't even know the product, doesn't even know what they're selling, so he feels worthless there.

Jonathan:

Man, the number of times that that's happened in my career, and I know yours, it's like, what am I doing wrong? And then the thing is I know what I'm doing wrong. It's I don't play politics games. Yeah.

Slava:

Well, to me, it's the meme. I see it all over the net recently. I think it's either younger millennials or Gen z who are putting out this meme. How can a guy or girl, how can a person who makes 3 times as much as me not understand how to attach a PDF to an email?

Jonathan:

Can you print this web page for me? Okay. Well, I don't wanna derail this. Please finish your point.

Slava:

It's the second father. I've seen those second fathers in my life help me tremendously

Jonathan:

Same.

Slava:

Where I was able to

Jonathan:

Same.

Slava:

Get out of my rut. And despite having, at times, meaningless jobs, difficult situations that I had to face, even existentially, I've mentioned this less times, in 2014, my world kind of imploded, and I had to figure out my identity, a new career, what am I doing. A lot of work went into me becoming a professor, and I was on that track. And when my world fell apart, I was applying to the local liquor store to stock shelves for 6:15 hour because everything fell apart. And now come full circle, there's kind of some, you know, call it grace, call it divine providence.

Slava:

I am now an adjunct professor in the field that I ended up going into post that explosion. So as that world came apart, I was given a chance to do digital media, and I excelled at it. And now since since then, it's been 10 years of me doing digital media professionally. I've been I've been doing this for 15, but professionally, 10 years of doing digital media strategy, social media optimization, I am now teaching that as a professor at a college. So things turned around for me.

Slava:

For a lot of guys, it doesn't. To wrap it up, it goes back to society at large. Yes. It's screwed with both men and women, but since we're talking about young men here, is those second fathers that are just missing because they either died off or they're not playing ball anymore. They're like, I'm out.

Jonathan:

Well, they're also not in the same circles. You can't find them anywhere. They haven't gone away because there are some still around, but you don't run into them at the gym or the wherever because we don't talk to each other in society anymore. So No. That's a whole that's a whole different rabbit hole.

Jonathan:

If you're enjoying today's side quest, do us a favor and rate the show real quick so that others know what to expect on side quest. Let's build this casual book club together. Now moving on here, you keep referencing this idea of transgression or transgressive fiction. And for those who aren't familiar, because we should have said this earlier, the genre of transgressive fiction focuses on characters who break societal norms, challenge traditional boundaries of morality, law, cultural expectations, and often explore taboo subjects that delve into the themes of rebellion and identity and existentialism, which FICO does to a t Mhmm. Or should I say f?

Jonathan:

Can you give us the lowdown, the the Slava's dissertation, but keep it short, of why you love transgressive fiction, how it applies to Fight Club, the things that you see, and then the benefit of transgressive fiction to society.

Slava:

Well, the term transgressive fiction began gaining traction in the late 20th century. I wanna say, like, the sixties where it start popping up as a thing that people use a label. It starts popping up as a label, and it's used to describe books, like you said, that depict a taboo subject, but also sought to critique and destabilize societal norms, and that's what I love about it. For me, the challenge to traditional boundaries as it relates specifically to cultural expectations is why I love transgressive fiction. When the themes of identity and existentialism come up, that's where I am in my zone.

Slava:

I love that kind of fiction. Because where it tries to challenge boundaries or morality as someone who has my worldview, I think there's objective truth, which means there's objective morality. That doesn't make me a prude, and I'm not offended by transgressive fiction where it pushes those boundaries or critiques religion. I'm okay with that, but where I am enticed by this genre is the cultural expectations, identity, and existentialism as it's as it's explored. That's where it gets me.

Slava:

I I I love it. Back to the definition. There's a woman who I found in my research. Her name is Coco de Haunt, and she is an independent scholar from the UK. She does PhD level work on transgressive fiction.

Slava:

So she's done an expose, if you will, a dissertation on Marilyn Manson, which was more like a a journal article, not really a a dissertation, but she has a book that's called extreme states, the evolution of American transgressive fiction 1960 to 2000. And the first, like, 30 pages of it, and that's all I read, has to do with chart Palanook Palanook and his book, Fight Club. And for her, Palinook is a face or was a face of transgressive fiction because the he kind of has mentioned in some interviews where he thinks it's dead already. Just like avant garde art is dead because now everything's avant garde. And if you talk to some people who really love avant garde, they say when Andy Warhol kinda went commercial, that's when avant garde died because then everything, everybody followed suit and everything fell apart.

Slava:

But for her, when she was writing this book, which was probably a few years after 2000, she saw Palaniuk as the face of transgressive fiction, and her quoting him, she says that this genre is what he's most famous for. He has defined transgressive fiction as fiction in which characters misbehave and act badly, commit crimes or pranks as either a way of feeling alive or as political acts of disobedience. Characterizing his own, this is her describing Palanuk, his own of viewer as fiction that uses antisocial behavior to interrogate sociopolitical norms. Palahniuk, according to De Haunte, also said that this type of writing is no longer accessible or easily accepted or even welcomed after 911. So there's this conversation going on that this type of stuff is either dead because it's been done so much, where I don't wanna put words in Palanik's mind or mouth, or it's because 9:11 kind of killed the vibe, if you will.

Slava:

If somebody in the audience knows more than me about this, correct me in the comments. So she understands the genre, this is DeHant, as a historically evolving type of fiction that takes on specific form and level of importance during specific historical periods, changing along with the extra textual sociopolitical shifts that it explores. So things kinda happen in tandem. She argues that transgressive fiction isn't just text that shocks or has socially unacceptable behavior for the hell of it, but it develops social ideologies and crosses between boundaries. Her view, however, still considers transgressive texts as simply reflecting society.

Slava:

The haunt thinks it has the potential to disrupt seemingly stable ideas, norms, and conventions. There's, like, 2 or 3 streams of thought going on at the same time when people talk about transgressive fiction post 911. But at the end, the bluff, if you will, the bottom line upfront, transgressive fiction explores the violation of moral, social, and cultural boundaries to interrogate and reflect China Mirror to the naked king on the ideological structures of its time And the characteristics that she puts forth for the genre is its boundary crossing content, critical and reflective purpose, like, the inherent purpose of it. It's dynamic. It's ideological interrogation as she puts it.

Slava:

There's a specific narrative style to it. There's specific aesthetic to it. Transgressive fiction employs stylistic techniques such as grotesque imagery, repetition, destabilizing narratives to amplify its themes. And, again, the key feature is antisocial behaviors, this rebellion. It focuses on marginalized people.

Slava:

The gore comes into it again, the use of violated bodies as metaphors. The definitions I read both by and others that keep repeating this cultural reflection are are words coming up all the time in my research. It's supposed to serve as a mirror, and it's critical. It engages the culture critically as a critic. Rather than offering clear solutions, it opens space for readers to question and analyze the cultural norms and critiques, the power dynamics critiques, and leaves the ending of its narratives ambiguous.

Slava:

And all those things I like, but I like them because of what they are attempting to do, and it's challenging traditional cultural expectations. And how they do that is by exploring identity and existentialism. And to me, I think it does it so well. And because it's ambiguous, it opens itself up to conversations like we're having, although you and I probably will agree on 98% of things that we discuss. But even if I'm talking to somebody who's far more right than me or far more left than me, but all 3 of us, let's say, for this hypothetical, enjoy this type of literature for the reasons that I enjoy or similar reasons, it opens up for such great conversations.

Slava:

That's that's why I love this stuff.

Jonathan:

It does certainly open a lot of conversations, and I'm glad that you touched on antisocial behavior because that's pretty much what we were talking about earlier in the 2 different groups of people that we said were dangerous, which was the men who are the can't do rights and the ones who just become misogynistic.

Slava:

Yeah. The self appointed alpha males, which you're not alpha. Did you an alpha doesn't need to tell you that they're alpha, so you're not alpha. Stop talking.

Jonathan:

Correct. Correct. I I always love this line from, Game of Thrones, where Joffrey, who's king, and he's, like, 11 or something like that. He's, like, oh, I'm the king. And his his uncle, who's really pulling the strings, he's, like, no king who's really the king has to tell people they're the king.

Jonathan:

Exactly. It's he says it more eloquently. He's like, if you have to tell people the king, you aren't. It's wild. It's a good line.

Jonathan:

There's one point that you made me think of a quote. You said a lot of things, so I I will try to keep this brief. But the quote that I thought of was you can avoid reality, but you can't avoid the consequences of avoiding reality, which I believe was Ayn Rand. And it's a quote that I think about a lot because I've been the can't do right for a while. I told you earlier, like, I spent a decade trying to help other people and realized I was in the squalor with them and didn't have to be.

Jonathan:

That doesn't mean that I'm better than them, but it does mean that I how do I say this? Oh, this is how I say it to people. So if you say, Jonathan, I need a $100, and I go, yeah. Sure. I'd love to I'll give you a $100, and then I look at my bank account, and I don't have a $100.

Jonathan:

You know what I can't give you? $100. Same thing applies to peace, joy, direction, purpose, responsibility, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The people that you were talking about, these second fathers, the brothers, this external group of people who are meant to influence you because we're meant to be a community, not individuals, which, I mean, we're tiptoeing closer to that, which maybe we will dive into in the next episode. But those people who had that thing that we needed that were able to influence us and plant seeds of, like, hey.

Jonathan:

There's hope. You know, I can't tell you how many guys that were big brothers or second fathers, even in just little things where it's like, oh, maybe I can get a job that pays properly if I do a couple different things than if I, you know, swallow my pride. You're gonna have stupid people that you work with all the time. It's just that's just part of it. Anyway, I wanna keep that short to add on to your your note about transgression fiction where, you know, this quote, you can avoid reality, but you can't avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

Jonathan:

And I think it's something that we need to remember because today's choices, regardless of even if it's that I choose not to do something, is a choice, and it does have consequences, and you will have to pay those consequences every time.

Slava:

Unless anybody think better of me than I deserve. I was a king. Right? For a long time.

Jonathan:

We don't.

Slava:

Thank you. And most of my teens and part of my twenties, I was a king yet. Right? Now it got a lot better in my twenties because I had jobs, although they were menial, labor jobs. They did provide money and friendships and some purpose.

Slava:

So seeing the fruits of my labor, for lack of better term, I was like, oh. So if I continue in my construction work, I could do this, this, and this, and these guys make good money if you get into a union. And I really like this part of my construction. So if I continue on this path, it will lead me to a better life. And then I went to college, and I kinda cut the academic bug.

Slava:

And then I got into seminary, and I got bitten by the academic bug even more. And then I was put on this track to teach church history eventually or some sort of systematic theology courses, and so I was I went to grad school, and then the whole 2014 happened. But it was all because of the second fathers and the brothers I mentioned and finding community, finding friendships, finding purpose in closed environments with other men. That kinda got me out of the can't get right attitude and lifestyle I was living up until then. So

Jonathan:

yeah. It's true. It's all true. Moving on, though, let's rewind this book to the beginning where we get the setting of the book super strongly at the beginning where, we're actually at the end of the book, and we trust the narrator. We are shown that dehumanization happens through corporate work, empty materialism to what you've touched on, and a side of human despair for us to really dig our hands into as we learn about the world of Fight Club.

Jonathan:

But what were some moments for you in that opening segment, like, not even just the first chapter necessarily, but, like, the first couple chapters that made the world become believable to you?

Slava:

That's a good question. The fact that it's set in the real world and the way Palanuk opens up and you're in the middle of this fight. No pun intended. I was gonna

Jonathan:

say pun intended?

Slava:

So you have this guy who stands in the edge of a skyscraper. We didn't know his name, but he's with a man named Tyler Durden. And Tyler has stuck a gun in his mouth. And what does Tyler say? He goes, oh, this is really isn't death.

Slava:

K? So you're in a skyscraper. You got a gun in your mouth. You're on the 100 and 92nd floor, so it's a pretty big skyscraper, and their narrator knows that the building will be destroyed in 10 minutes by explosives that are planted around the foundation of the columns by an entity, if you will, called Project Mayhem. Mhmm.

Slava:

And right away, you see that something is amiss. The narrator has intimate knowledge of how to make explosives, and the way it's written, you're not sure why he knows this, and I think you're not sure if he's sure why he knows this, but he tells us, well, it's because Tyler knows this. So there's some kinda relationship between Tyler and the narrator, and if you read the book twice, then you're like, oh, okay. This is the same guy. But he and Tyler sees these space monkeys, as they call them or as the narrator calls them, from Project Mayhem pushing furniture out of the windows onto the people below, and the narrator knows this well, knows knows the following statement because Tyler knows this, that their real goal is to topple this building, which is called the Parker Morris Building, onto a nearby museum.

Slava:

The narrator thinks that this is really about a woman named Marla, and you get a sense that Marla's part of some kinda love triangle with the narrator and Tyler. So right away from the beginning, when novel sets up Tyler as this extreme violent person who perpetuates extreme violent acts as a response, and this is me analyzing the book, you we wouldn't get this as on the first read through, I don't think, unless you're some super professor, as a response to the narrator's inability to his can get rightness because it seems like he's giving the narrator, you know, a a chance to come to Jesus, you know, a come to Jesus moment kinda here. And the narrator, well, you find out in the first opening pages, he is emasculated by modern life. He's unable to have a relationship with Marla. There are other problems in his life where he can't get ahead of his job, and he feels enslaved to consumerism.

Slava:

And so these frustrations are thrown in your face right away, but these frustrations are kind of in this whirlwind of death and destruction that's happening. And you you understand as the reader, even the first time, this is the end of the story, and the narrator is gonna tell you how he got here. It's something that is, thrown at you right away, and you're right in the middle of it. That's what made it feel real.

Jonathan:

I I agree with you about the being set in the real world because I've worked for a corporation. I've worked for a bunch of them. I've been at the bottom. I've been in the middle. I've never been at the top.

Jonathan:

And the, man, the the the quenching, life draining, sucking soul soul sucking life draining, soul sucking reality of having to show up to that and be treated like garbage by people who are literally dumber than you and don't have any shred of decency and think that they've made it because they are middle management when really they could change the way that the work is being done, and you could have fun at work with people that you work with. And you don't have to be family like people say today, which is stupid. Like, thanks so much. You don't fire family. It's not possible.

Jonathan:

You don't do that. So let's not let's stop calling that family. But it felt real to me when he was describing the corporate world. Right? That's the thing got me.

Slava:

Yeah. And they're also I'm not trying to be punny or any of that or pull a pun out of here, but as you're viewing this opening scene, Tyler and the narrator are trying to find the real by feeling pain and coming closer to death. But even here where they're really close to death, it seems, at least in a second read through, it's not as authentic as they hoped that it would be or as authentic as the narrator thought it would be. He has a gun in his mouth. He's standing in the side of a building.

Slava:

It's about to explode, but this guy named Tyler says, even this isn't really death. So their feelings now how do I say this? Their feeling that this experience isn't real maybe suggests that their strategy that got him here, which is obviously violent, was a way to find this real thing, but it's ultimately flawed. And this is the the scenario that you get thrown in in the opening pages. Yeah.

Slava:

Chapter 1.

Jonathan:

I'll tell you. This is up there for me. I know that I went off a long time ago during Warbreaker about the hook of a book, and this one did it. This one really drew me in, and I think that no. I don't think.

Jonathan:

Palanuk knew what he was doing. He's like, this is what's going on. Like, this is what this type of being who's been beat down and is frustrated and is finally doing something about it does. To to reference something you mentioned earlier where it's like, we don't really see this type of work anymore put out. I never would have connected that to 911, but that makes sense.

Jonathan:

Even I feel like we see less die hards today, you know, where it's like, hey. There was a building blown up because America did take a real hit. But, honestly, I think that we need to have more work like transgressive fiction put out on the store shelves, whether that's movies, books, video games, whatever, because it speaks to things that people feel like they're going through, and it also kinda puts the checks and balances in place. Right? Where you're challenging ideas, and if we're gonna be this, quote, unquote, progressive nation, right, whatever that's defined as, where we continue to adapt and grow, then we need to challenge all the ideas that we already have.

Jonathan:

And I'm trying to remember which which philosophers talk about this idea of pain where pain is reality. It's a couple of them. I don't remember which ones. I wanna say it's Nietzsche a little bit and maybe John Locke.

Slava:

Well, according to Cambridge University Press, it's Arthur Schopenhauer that's most closely associated with the idea that pain is reality.

Jonathan:

Mhmm. Okay.

Slava:

His philosophy supposedly emphasizes the concept of suffering as a fundamental aspect of human experience. Sounds like Jonathan, but it's kinda true. Essentially, he viewed life as inherently filled with pain and struggle.

Jonathan:

The pain and struggle part, not necessarily inherently filled, honestly reminds me of Viktor Frankl as well who survived 4 Holocaust camps.

Slava:

Yeah. But Nietzsche also talked about this, but his was more as a critique about religions and metaphysical systems. And I think if I'm remembering Nietzsche from my associate's

Jonathan:

It's been a while. Yeah.

Slava:

Yeah. I read Nietzsche when I was in the my associate's program. I think his critique was that religion doesn't offer any valuable insights or solutions to the problem of suffering.

Jonathan:

Lewis talks about it too. He's got a whole book called The Problem of Pain. No. But, anyway

Slava:

Well, let's move on to some themes. There are a few of them that are in this book. I'll throw out there, and maybe you can talk to it, but I know it's, it's one that I think is central to the book, and everybody else who's read it and analyzed it says the same thing. So I think Palanuk was writing about this. Is this consumerism and the modern life and how it can be soul sucking, specifically how modern society is obsessed with consumerism?

Jonathan:

Yeah. That's so we're recording this just shortly after Black Friday. And when I was a kid, Black Friday was what you did. It was fun. You got in line.

Jonathan:

You saved up your money all year to go buy the latest graphics card or video game or whatever at the steeply discounted rate, supposedly. And now yeah. Supposedly. Well, honestly, I think back in the day, they were discounted. Not anymore, but I think that they were previously.

Jonathan:

At least that's what I wanna believe with my hard earned $45 or whatever it was. But it's honestly sad, and there's times where I ask myself the question, am am I trapped in consumerism? Because, like, I just upgraded my computer. Are there ways that I probably could've gotten around that? Yeah.

Jonathan:

But as a business person, it's like, I wanna have the best tool for the job because, man, if you add up all the time it takes for my computer to load and whatever, that's time that I could be working. So I wonder and maybe I'll throw this back at you is, like, what's the line between buying really nice stuff. Right? You know, whether that's a brand new Tesla Cybertruck or it's the brand new Mac computer that I just bought. Where's the line of consumerism?

Jonathan:

And I have an answer for this, but I I I don't wanna taint your thoughts on it. Yeah. So where's the line, I guess, is the is the question.

Slava:

Yes. That's a good question. Well, let me answer your question less directly, and I think I'll

Jonathan:

get to the point. Question?

Slava:

And I'll try to be brief. So what you did was you bought a tool for your work. That that's different than buying something just because the new MacBook came out with the new chip, and you're trading at trading at a 6 month old Mac because the new one has a better graphics card.

Jonathan:

Mhmm.

Slava:

There is also something else in the same vein where I like style. I like stylish clothes. I have a particular style I like. I have a disposable income to buy clothes whenever I want, and there's been times when I bought stuff on impulse because I'm like, oh, I really like that jacket, and so I just buy it because I can afford it. And I like it because I like it.

Slava:

Right? The I like it the way I look. I like the way I feel, and I'm gonna buy this jacket. It doesn't give me any self worth. Now if I bought a jacket a week because I couldn't help myself or it filled some deep crevice within my soul and momentarily gave me a, you know, a dopamine hit or some sort of feeling of being in the in crowd, that's when consumerism has overtaken.

Slava:

That's when you are slaved out to consumerism. And the consumeristic culture which we live in pushes that at you all the time. Oh, you deserve this. Treat yourself. Slay.

Slava:

Get yourself a latte. Get yourself a new pair of shoes. Whatever the heck it is, that's the consumeristic part of our culture, and people will get entrapped by that. And they do think that they would never say this about themselves, but they're sometimes like the narrator who's obsessed with furnishing his condo. Yeah.

Slava:

But then it's it's empty, and so consumeristic culture dehumanizes people. It treats them like objects and leads to a loss of real human connection. Because instead of hanging out with your buddies at a bar or your coworkers at a bar or, like, going to a ballgame or whatever, an event, an opera, instead of hanging out with people and enjoying the world, you try to fill your car, your your house, your garage with things. And then the day, sure, maybe you're not $40,000 in debt, and maybe you can afford all this stuff because you have an exorbitant amount of disposable income. And then the day, you will need more and more and more stuff to feel less fulfilled, and that's where it is destructive.

Jonathan:

Can you say that last sentence again? The feel more and more

Slava:

Yeah.

Jonathan:

Or buy more and more stuff to feel less fulfilled?

Slava:

You buy more and more stuff for supposedly a quick hit of dopamine. You momentarily feel what you wanted to feel or what you need to feel, but after a while, the effects don't last as long. At the end of the day, you feel just as crappy when you're alone on a Sunday afternoon as you did the previous week when you bought the other thing that gave you a momentary relief, but didn't really feel that need, the human need that you have.

Jonathan:

Yeah. Exactly. I I think it's important that we and I've said this on, man, probably half our episodes. You gotta be starkly honest with yourself. Just call yourself out.

Jonathan:

No one else is gonna do it unless you have real friends, which that's a whole another can of worms, having real friends versus not. The treat yourself thing is huge. Huge, huge, huge today. I mean, I do it. I get it.

Jonathan:

I understand. Yeah. But Everybody's doesn't it doesn't mean it's good for us. Like, what happened to waiting for the gratification? Working really hard when you're a kid because you can only make a dollar a week, and you need to save up $12.

Jonathan:

And so it's 3 months to really get the thing that you want. And instead now it's, you know, well, I have a paycheck and I have a credit card, so I'll just do whatever I want. And you just you wonder where all the time goes. The stuff doesn't fill you because it's a quick hit of dopamine, and then you wonder what you gotta buy next. It's the worst.

Jonathan:

It's awful. Anyway, the one that I'd like to pick as we're winding down here is mortality and human connection. You kinda touched on this a minute ago where consumerism turns people into things. Right? That doesn't directly tie with mortality, but I think it quickly leads to it because if people are just things and you use them, then what if someone uses someone who's a family member of yours that you care deeply about, but they're just doing what you do to other people?

Jonathan:

Right? And I think it's also some play something that we need to look deeply in the mirror on and go, hey. We're all gonna die one day, and it would be really great if we lived with urgency. And you you set forth to really try and achieve whatever you wanted to do with this life. And if you don't know yet, then first question is just figuring out what you wanna do, which is fine, but you are gonna die one day.

Jonathan:

It's something that we see inspiring stories written about. Like, oh, so and so got cancer. They started they quit their job. They did this thing, or someone lost their leg, and then they did this really great thing because they were struck in the face with their own mortality. And it's when we have that, we start living different.

Jonathan:

And if we wanna see this really deep, rich, holy, authentic world that we all, like, theorize about, then you need to think about mortality daily. You could die tomorrow. Let that sink in. Tomorrow, you're dead. That's it.

Jonathan:

Is your life well lived? Forget religion for a second. Like, if we took a book of your entire life, was it well lived? Because if the answer is no, then you need to sit down and have a conversation with yourself. Do you wanna be a jack off?

Jonathan:

And if you do, then you know what? Go for it. I don't think you should. You won't feel better about it. You're chasing dopamine hits.

Jonathan:

But if you wanna be a jack off, be a jack off. Fine. But, like, address your mortality.

Slava:

And that's the thing. Like, you have to live a life towards something or for something. And I wanna caveat this. We're not saying that you all should be William Wallace or Bonhoeffer or Victor Frankl. You could live a simple life in middle America, work a blue collar job, pump out kids, have a white picket fence, a dog, and 2 cars, but if that life, whatever it looks like, it has to be lived well.

Slava:

It has to be lived for something outside yourself. Otherwise, you will feel insignificant, and you will try to suppress the feelings, the thoughts of your conscience, of your soul, pointing out your ins insignificance and mortality. You will try to suffocate that. But if you have a life that's well lived as a plumber in Ohio or as Bonhoeffer in in Germany, whatever it is, William Wallace, pick your hero, You can live that life, a peaceful life or a turbulent life. If it's lived well, when you do face mortality, whether it's at night in your bed as you're falling asleep or on a battlefield, you can face it well.

Jonathan:

Yeah. And I that is a really good caveat because you don't have to be the next Brad Pitt. It's not a pun, but I thought it'd be a good example. But you you can be authentic and real and embrace your own mortality and live a really wholesome and beneficial life for your community being simple, honestly, and some people might call me a haughty for this, I wish I was more simple. I just can't be.

Jonathan:

It's just not how I was knit together. I I think too much. I read too much. I have to know things. It's probably once a week that I think, man, I really wish I was simpler.

Jonathan:

And And that doesn't mean dumber because some of these people are actually brilliant if you talk to them, if you slow down far long enough to have a coffee with them, but I'm not. I gotta think about a 1000000 different things, and it's just how I'm how I'm put together. But, man, I'm super jealous of these people sometimes. I've met people who are janitors, and they're the happiest people in the world. They're like, oh, yep.

Jonathan:

Plunge in the next toilet. You know how it goes. And they're just happy. They're content, which is a better word to use. And they, like, don't make a lot of money, but they love their family, and they have good relationships.

Jonathan:

And it's like, man, that's like what we as the larger society are, quote, unquote, working toward, and they haven't. But they're, you know, literally shoveling shit that you put in the toilet at your corporate job. So

Slava:

Exactly. I think simple is still a good word because we're not talking about simple minded. We're just talking about simple lives. Yeah. And I guarantee you, the plumber from Ohio has a much simpler

Jonathan:

have the latest MacBook.

Slava:

Right. He doesn't

Jonathan:

have the latest Tesla.

Slava:

But he has a normal, peaceful, simple life. And every every life and every person has ups and downs. Family members die. You struggle with cancer. And we mentioned this in one of our previous episodes where, yeah, if you have a $1,000,000 in a bank account at 4.4%, that cancer is easier to deal with than if you're making $47,000 a year.

Slava:

Sure.

Jonathan:

Mhmm.

Slava:

But you could have the $1,000,000 at 4% and still be unfulfilled and a damaged broken individual, or you could have $47,000 with a family that loves you. And when you come home, you find peace despite the fact that you lost your mother the previous week or despite the fact that your wife might be struggling with the said cancer, you can still have more peace than the guy who has all the money in the world to pay for every chemo treatment that, you know, you could possibly imagine that you would need. It's nuanced. It's a life is complicated. It's not a simple answer, but it's definite the answer is definitely not a new MacBook Thanks, Slava.

Slava:

Or a new jacket for Slava.

Jonathan:

Little taste of our own medicine is what you're telling

Slava:

me? Yeah.

Jonathan:

That's fun. Well, let's, let's call this episode a wrap with one more side quest before we go. I'll let you take your pick. So we've just talked about pain and suffering and the difficulty of life. We can either stay real or we can stay fun.

Jonathan:

So I'm gonna read both these options, and you pick one. The first is when Tyler burns the narrator's hand with lie, and he wants him to wake up to reality. Is there a painful experience or difficult experience in your life that ended up waking you and teaching you something? And I know there's a handful of them because we talked about some of them during It. Or the other side quest we could take is soap slogan where if you were gonna run this soap company that is in the book, what would the company's tagline be if you had to sell soap with a bizarre or ironic twist like Tyler's?

Slava:

Well, let's go with the fun one for two reasons. We've talked about some heavy stuff, so let's end on a lighter note. That's a good idea. And number 2, we really want to dissect the plot more in the episodes as we go forward in our little endeavor called side quest because I feel like that's where we fail the audience on some of these books where we talk about the plot tangently or only talk about 1 or 2 things that stood out. So this was a great setup for the book, the genre, the themes that explores, and explore the plot in a deeper way next time and come back to maybe some of the themes again as we do that, but let's end it on something fun.

Jonathan:

That sounds great. So what would your soap company's tagline be if you had to sell soap with a bizarre or ironic twist like Tyler's? Nice soap, asshole. Okay. Locke, literally covered this a couple episodes ago when I said that that's who you'd be.

Jonathan:

You'd be Locke.

Slava:

Yep. So I I took the lazy man lazy way out, and I told Chad GPT, everything you know about me, I like Norm McDonald. I like George Carlin, and I like Tom Segura. Write me a a name for a soap company inspired by Fight Club, and write me a silly slogan. And so full disclosure, this is AI generated, but it's kinda fun.

Slava:

It's kinda silly, and I think it's fun only because it's so what was the word I'm looking for? You know those memes are that have no meaning and like, you know, meaningless meme is meaningless? This is what this is. So the soap name is lip service soap, and the slogan is for a clean break from the dirty truth.

Jonathan:

Mhmm.

Slava:

What'd you come up with? I take it you didn't take the lazy man's way out.

Jonathan:

Well, originally, I didn't, and then I thought about it for a minute and decided to do the same thing because I work at an AI first company, so I'm, like, almost exclusively working out of multiple AI tools at once in my 9 to 5. So my soap company is called Rebel Suds. Alright. Laugh it up. Jag off.

Jonathan:

Well, lather it up. Clean the slate and break the rules. Alright. Alright. Feels like it lines up.

Slava:

It lines up. Mine is more non sequitur. It doesn't mean anything, but okay.

Jonathan:

Although, I do like lip service soap, especially where they were getting the the fat and they were talking about, Marla Singer's collagen that she got from her mom. Yeah. So that one does feel like it hits better than Rebel suds.

Slava:

There you go.

Jonathan:

So lip service soap. Clean the slate. Break the rules. We'll slap them together just like Space Monkey.

Slava:

Yeah. Well and it's a good Space Monkey, so we have to go to bed. So we're ready for some mayhem for next episode. Thank you guys for joining us today on this journey, and next time, Fight Club part 2, where we will, and I'm gonna hold us to it, discuss the plot at some length.

Jonathan:

Before you vanish back to reality, share this episode with your book loved friends. It keeps the quest alive and helps other book adventurers find their way. See you next time on SideQuest.