Initially this story didn’t really grab my attention (sorry comment on the state of the world, eh?) but, as with so many things, a bizarre tie-in to writing and literature drew me in.
On May 25, a teenager set off a mostly harmless homemade bomb in a Starbucks on 92nd Street. They recently arrested the kid, and when they did so they found out a score of unsettling details, most notably, that he was basically trying to incite chaos à la Project Mayhem. That’s right. The bomber was a huge fan of Fight Club. He actually had a copy of the film on him at the time of his arrest. Unreal.
The book– and to an even greater extent, the film– certainly makes destruction look glamorous at times. Think of the final scene of David Fincher’s film: the buildings tumble to the ground and Jack and Marla hold hands while the Pixies shimmer and squall in the background. But what one commenter on Gawker pointed out remains true: the film as a whole does not stand behind the idea of chaos and bringing down the world order. Sure, it makes some incredible points about the siren song of consumerism, the soul-hollowing potential of corporate life, the negative consequences of the sublimation of instinct and selfhood… I could go on and on. But it ultimately rejects the notion that the way to go about combating these things is to fuck with the man. The answer that Jack’s character was looking for did not and could not come through external manifestations of revolution; it had to happen internally. He has to pull the trigger on the gun in his mouth (killing his split personality). It reminds me of Beckett or Dante’s Belacqua. More
