“Human beings don’t cultivate ideas. On the contrary… ideas cultivate us.”
— Dr. Wrong, Fight Club 2
The years haven’t been kind to Sebastian, aka The Narrator, aka the co-founder of Fight Club. Having traded his position as leader of Project Mayhem — an underground organization inspired by the Cacophony Society and its precursor the Suicide Club — for all the trappings of the American dream, Sebastian now has a 9 to 5 job, a wife, a home and a kid, and is the father he vowed he’d never become. Trapped in the mundanity of this seemingly cookie-cutter life, Sebastian seeks solace in his psychiatrist, Dr. Wrong, and the prescription pills he pedals. Meanwhile, Tyler Durden, Sebastian’s stalwartly subversive alter-ego, has been biding his time, plotting his comeback to wreak havoc on a society that is, for the most part, populated by sheep in need of a shepherd, or a surrogate father as writer, mythologist and philosopher Joseph Campbell might say. And thus, a new installment of junior-arsonist-turned-adult-novelist Chuck Palahniuk’s iconic Fight Club begins.
Taking comic book form, the long-awaited and much-anticipated sequel to the original 1996 Fight Club novel (on which David Fincher's 1999 movie was based) first hit stores in May, 2015. The ten-part series paired Palahniuk’s dialog and plot with art by Cameron Stewart (whose credits include Batman, Batgirl, Catwoman, Assassin's Creed and SuicideGirls' own comic series, to name but a few). This sequel was something that Palahniuk resisted for many years. However, ideas sometimes have a life of their own, and this one was pulling Palahniuk back to Project Mayhem's home on Paper Street. Now, as the series is being collected and bound together as a hardcover graphic novel (out June 28 via Dark Horse Comics), Palahnuik is working on the third installment of an idea, which like Tyler Durden, refuses to die. We caught up with Palahniuk by phone to find out more…
Nicole Powers: It’s been 20 years since the original Fight Club novel came out, why did you decide to revisit it now?
Chuck Palahniuk: Three big reasons. The first was that I had no idea the story would last in the culture this long. And that I would grow this old and I could not blame everything in my life on my father for the rest of my life. So I thought, it was only responsible to write a follow-up story in which the narrator had become a father himself. So, that’s one reason.
The second reason is, I was invited to a dinner party with a lot of famous comic book people, and they swore to support me and teach me this new storytelling method. So I had the opportunity and I had all the social support to do it.
And the third one was that I had finished this story collection, Make Something Up. It was written over the last 20 years, and so for the first time in my writing career, I had over a year to devote to writing this new form, this Fight Club 2. So I had time, I had the support, and I felt like I had the responsibility to follow the story up 20 years later.
NP: Modern psychiatry blames so much of what we do on our parents. But there does come a time when you have to say I’m an adult and I’m responsible for my own behavior.
CP: Exactly. Or you look the victim your entire life and then you die. So, at some point, you have to seize the reigns.
NP: Fight Club is a beast that you’ve unleashed into the wild. I know there’s lots of nods to that in Fight Club 2, because it’s a monster that’s taken on a life of its own. Everywhere you turn, there’s a Fight Club reference. That must be a bit of a double-edged sword for you, something that you can’t escape.
CP: It is. It is really affirming to see that it’s had an effect on the culture. But, for the rest of my work, it’s a very dark shadow to bring out any other book underneath.
NP: I look at my own life; I work for SuicideGirls, the name of which obviously comes from a reference in one of your books, which in turn goes back to the Suicide Club, which predates the Cacophony Society and Burning Man. And I look at all of the things that have happened over the past 20 years that have been influenced by that clique. You look at Occupy, which was inspired by the flashmob tactics of the Cacophony Society, you look at Anonymous, which has rules inspired by Fight Club [See “Rules of The Internet”], even reading the Fight Club novel with the benefit of hindsight, we’re now in an era where the anti-capitalist ideas that are ensconced in the original book have been embraced by a presidential candidate. It seems that some of the ideas that you explored in Fight Club 20 years ago have become incredibly mainstream now.
CP: Well, in a way too, taking it back even further, the Suicide Club in San Francisco in the early 1970s was based on a Rudyard Kipling story from 100 years previous called The Suicide Club. So in a way, what we’re seeing is a cycle of history that’s just coming back around. And we just kind of anticipated that cycle, and maybe these priorities are so changed because younger people have seen their parents spend their lives consuming, and trying to attain happiness in a certain way, and yet, still not being happy. And so these children are rejecting that consumer idea of happiness. The parents just don’t demonstrate it very well.
NP: I guess maybe that’s why Mad Men resonated so much, because we’re the generation that was brought up by the Mad Men generation, the advertising generation who thought you could buy your way to happiness.
CP: Exactly. And, in a way, the new generation is looking more for experiential happiness, that’s not based on possession, that’s based on what they have accomplished, what their potential is.
NP: Getting back to the Fight Club 2 comic series, I guess the form almost chose itself because it was people like Cameron Stewart that were encouraging you to revisit it, is that the case?
CP: It is. And what you’re seeing with the finished product is four or five different drafts from the original. The original was so talky, it really was a novel. I had to gradually learn how to make everything into images that suggested motion. And I had to learn to cut out almost all of my dialogue. This has been the most wordless thing I’ve ever written.
NP: How much of the plot was plotted out in advance? Did you work on one installment and then the next and the next? Or did you know where you were going from the outset?
CP: I knew the entire plot. I didn’t want to submit it to Cameron before I knew the general story arc. I wanted him to know what characters to prioritize, because those characters would be coming back repeatedly. So right from the get-go, I wanted him to know what would be the reoccurring characters, images, settings, so he could really focus on making those special.
NP: There’s a section of the comic book story where you not only break the fourth wall, you also break the fifth and the sixth. You bring yourself in, then conversations between you and Cameron, and then with your agent. Was that something that was intended or was that an expression of real world exasperation?
CP: In a way we wanted to give a nod to the picture and how Fincher had used the mechanics of filmmaking to break that fourth wall and demonstrate a meta element to the movie. So we looked at what would be the mechanics of printing and of our process, so that we could change the register and screw up the panels and burn the ink and do things like that that would mimic what Fincher had done with the movie.
NP: Fincher changed the ending in the movie, so you had two different endings to work with. Was there any point where you were tempted to spring off the film ending rather the book ending?
CP: I was always going to step on the book ending, remind people of the book ending, but then, at the same time, tweak it. Because in the free Comic Book Day book, we see the man in the mental hospital receiving electroshock therapy and the barrel of the gun turns out to be the bite piece that he is holding in his mouth during the electroshock. So, in a way, it was providing a lot of different versions for the ending to keep it ambiguous. Because ambiguous, undetermined things always carry more power. People can argue among themselves about them.
NP: Part of the appeal of Fight Club is the central character, Tyler Durden. There’s a Tyler Durden in all of us. We all have that inner voice and that internal conversation with the devil on our shoulder who wants us to blow the proverbial building up, wants us to stick our finger up at our boss, wants us to quit our job, wants us to metaphorically burn down the house. What does your inner voice tell you? What does your inner Tyler tell you to do?
CP: Hmm… [pauses] My inner Tyler tells me to write exactly what I shouldn’t write. When I hear a story from someone that is shocking and wonderful and funny and heartbreaking, it’s just not the kind of story that people tell, but I know I have to tell it. Because only books have that intimate nature of consumption, where they don’t have to be shown on a giant screen to a lot of people who might not want to see them. Or, they might be shown to children. Only books can tell those really edgy, upsetting, challenging stories. So I think, if I’m going to be a writer, I’m always going to go to the stories only books can tell at this point — my Tyler does that.
NP: Many novelists, they have one novel and it does well, and then they just churn out more and more and more of the same, because that’s what people want. You’re a very brave writer; every novel that you’ve written is not only very distinct in terms of its story and its characters, but also, you’ve chosen a different style for every single novel that you’ve written. I almost think that that’s your way of appeasing your inner Tyler, of burning the building down and starting from scratch.
CP: And also keeping it fun. You know, there’s a great deal of fun in burning the building down itself. I love things burning down. I love the footage of controlled demolition of buildings. There is something so joyous and wonderful in watching the destruction of the thing. So I like that every book is an experiment in style — not just in telling a story, but in how to tell the story, and finding a method that is unique and totally appropriate to that specific story.
NP: In this book, you blow the building up and then you pull the pieces together and take Fight Club in a new direction. At the end of the first novel, you were left asking who is Tyler Durden? At the end of the comic book, you’re left asking what is he? Which is a great set-up for Fight Club 3, I would imagine, to go in a whole new area.
CP: I’ve already gotten most of it done. It is going to be a hundred times more upsetting and challenging. Because with Fight Club 2 I really felt like I had to pull some punches. Because it was a new medium, I wasn’t sure how much I could get away with. I really did not want to come out on stage screaming. But in Fight Club 3, I’ve think I’ve got the safety to really, really be outrageous.
NP: Plot-wise you’ve released Tyler into a whole new realm by the end of the second book, so I’m really excited to see what you do in the third. There’s an intriguing line that one of the characters says: “Human beings don’t cultivate ideas, ideas cultivate us.” Do you believe that?
CP: I kind of do. I really wonder if the ideas are the things that exist across time and that we ourselves die, and, in a way, we are just the vehicles that extend the lifespan of these ideas. If you think about it that way, the ideas seem much more important than we ourselves.
NP: I guess that comes full circle to what we were talking about earlier with the idea for the Suicide Club coming 100-plus years ago from a Kipling novel.
CP: Right, exactly… That a great idea finds a way of always finding a host, infecting a host, perpetuating itself, and then being introduced by that host to a new host, and perpetually finding another person to carry it into the future.
NP: Which is the essence of that which is Tyler Durden, no?
CP: Or, Santa Claus, or so many things. We carry them and then we die, which is kind of sad… And really, Tyler is just a relabeling of the trickster character which occurs across all time and all cultures. Whether it’s Loki in Norse culture, or whether it’s Hermes, or whether it’s Coyote in Native American culture.
NP: At the heart of every artist is someone that doesn’t want to die. And, in our current form, the only way that we can remain truly immortal is through art.
CP: Well, that’s Heidegger. Heidegger said it was through art or through offspring or through our spirituality, that those are three ways that we seek immortality. And I’m not going to have kids, and I’m not a very religious person, so this is me.
Further Reading
