Fiction for real
By Louis B. Hobson
Calgary Sun, October 10, 1999
When Chuck Palahniuk wrote The Fight Club, he created a monster that continues to plague him.
"There are no such things as fight clubs. I made up the whole idea for the novel, but people won't believe me," explains Palahniuk.
"Reporters call me up and ask me how to get in touch with a fight club member in their community. At every book signing, at least one guy hangs around and them asks me where he can go to join up.
"Now I'm even getting calls and letters from women asking if there is a female version."
The clubs in Palahniuk's story are secret organizations where men can go to get in touch with their emotions by acting out their aggressions.
They pummel another member until one of them cries uncle.
The bloodied participants hug and thank one another for the experience.
"All my male friends were feeling failed by their fathers. They felt they'd been forced to give up a great deal of their masculinity.
"When they kept saying they were no longer fighters and hunters, I came up with this idea of a club that would help them get in touch with that ancient spirit of combat."
Palahniuk insists the theory behind his fight clubs is not that much different from "what drives mosh pits at rock concerts and the heightened trashing behavior at revival meetings."
Last month, a friend drew Palahniuk's attention to a story on the Internet which said that fight clubs were being formed in several American and British cities.
"That breaks my heart that people are making something real out of my attempts at satire.
"They're turning fantasy into reality."
In the film version, Brad Pitt plays the charismatic stranger who orchestrates the creation of these underground fight clubs.
"When I was writing the novel, I had Bruce Dern in mind," says Palahniuk. "He was the charismatic psycho of the 1960s.
"I think that Brad Pitt has that same quality today. He's charismatic and good looking, but there's also something dangerous about him."
Palahniuk admits his novel contains homo-erotic overtones and adds that director David Fincher "purposely pushed that envelope.
"He told me The Fight Club was going to be the most homo-erotic mainstream American film ever made. He said it's all part of the plan to make the audience as uncomfortable as possible so that all the shocks and twists-and-turns of the movie will take them by surprise."
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