Chuck Palahniuk Spills 'Fight Club' Sequel Details
Chuck Palahniuk is finally ready to break the first rule and talk about his sequel to Fight Club. Wait, wait, pitchforks down, it's cool, this isn't a movie. It isn't even a traditional novel; it will be a graphic novel. In fact, there might be more than one.
Whatever form it takes, how do you follow a savage skewering of masculine ideas? Turns out, it's all about the protagonist of the original story inheriting some of the stuff he railed against when we first got to know him.
Palahniuk talked to Hustler, of all places, which we found via JoBlo. He laid out the general approach:
So much of FIGHT CLUB was a rant against fathers. At the time every man I knew was complaining about how little he'd learned from his father. Even my own father felt bitter and let down by his father. Rather than continue in that vein, I wanted to revist the protagonist once he himself had become a father. Not coincidentally, my parents are both dead now, and I think that will force my story and I accept more responsibility.
Want more details? He's got them at the ready.
The sequel will be told from the– at first– submerged perspective of Tyler Durden as he observes the day-to-day tedium of the narrator's life. Because 20th Century-Fox created the convention of calling the protagonist Jack, I'm calling him Cornelius. He's living a compromised life with a failing marriage, unsure about his passion for his wife. The typical midlife bullshit. Likewise, Marla is unsatisfied and dreams of accessing the wild man she'd once fallen in love with. She tampers with the small pharmacy of drugs that her husband needs to suppress Tyler, and– go figure– Tyler reemerges to terrorize their lives.
This leads to a lot of ideas, but it's way too early to know how this will all work out. The culture of reliance on prescriptions has been knocked by Palahniuk before, but it could play into this story based on that paragraph above. I'm also curious to know more about the "compromised life" of Jack/Cornelius, but we'll have to wait for that. 2015 is the speculated timeframe for release.