"masculinity"

1996 · Chuck Palahniuk · 208 pages · Fiction

Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 debut novel about an insomniac office worker who starts an underground fighting ring with a charismatic stranger remains a sharp, uncomfortable piece of transgressive fiction. The prose style is hypnotic and the satire of consumer culture lands with force. The twist recontextualizes everything, and Palahniuk's examination of masculinity in crisis has only become more relevant. The novel's nihilism can feel like a pose rather than a position, and the final act rushes toward chaos in a way that sacrifices some of the control Palahniuk maintained earlier. But as a snapshot of millennial male disillusionment written before anyone had a name for it, Fight Club still hits hard.