Fight Club vs. The Great Gatsby: Was Palahniuk's Novel a Modern Update — theculturetrip.com

The first rule of Fight Club is ‘You do not talk about Fight Club'... yet nearly two decades after its release, in a time of cultural bi-polar and high turnover of ‘startling new voices’, people are still talking about it. Few debut novels of the time have had as much impact as Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. Hailed by the likes of Brett Easton Ellis and Ali Smith, Palahniuk’s award winning novel polarised opinion on its initial release. David Fincher’s film adaptation three years later also invited heated debate and fierce media criticism. So what is it that so many people find appealing about this controversial novel? Is it the text’s political or philosophical explorations? Or perhaps could the lure be seen as primordial? A subversive modern day tale of men with Freudian issues perhaps? Or is it simpler than that? Palahniuk says the novel is an old classic updated. Maybe the book’s appeal then is like that of the classic novel, which is itself currently experiencing a revival; perhaps Fight Club captures the zeitgeist.

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