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Popular Culture Review
during the height of their respective existential dilemmas; yet in both cases, the
two support systems merely temporarily mask the protagonists’ angst, largely
because they are only “tourists.”
As a result, despite the early promise that the support groups provide the
protagonist, they, too, are short-lasting. As he states in the beginning, “the gun,
the anarchy, the explosion is really about Marla Singer” (14). And it’s precisely
Marla’s presence at the support group meetings that give rise to the protagonist’s
own lies and eventual relapse into insomnia. He must now look elsewhere for
the mental and emotional respite that Bob and the support groups briefly
provided him. Enter Tyler Durden. The protagonist’s first encounter with Tyler
occurs after waking up on the beach, which, unlike the “single-serving” friends
he had previously met while in the air, directly connects him to the ground. This
encounter brings him back down to Earth, both literally and figuratively. As the
protagonist wakes up,
Tyler was pulling driftwood logs out of the surf and dragging
them up the beach. [. ..] There were four logs, and when I
woke up, I watched Tyler pull a fifth log up the beach. Tyler
dug a hole under one end of the log, then lifted the other end
until the log slid into the hole and stood there at a slight angle.
(32)
Tyler’s chef-d’oeuvre, which creates the shadow of a giant hand “perfect for only
one minute” (33), further reinforces the protagonist’s attachment, providing an
intriguing parallel to Sartre’s chestnut tree in Nausea. In both cases, the
protagonists find themselves in front of an arboreal mass, which eventually leads
to a redefinition of their existence.
His condo in flames, the protagonist eventually goes to live with Tyler in a
dilapidated building on Paper Street, on one condition as Tyler says, “I want you
to hit me as hard as you can” (46). The initial blows that the two trade give way
to the creation of Fight Club, a different type of support group whose release is
not crying but fighting. Fight Club reinforces the loss of self and anonymity that
the protagonist first encounters at the support groups. At Remaining Men
Together, for instance, the protagonist describes seeing the impression of his
face on Bob’s shirt: “[W]hen I stepped away from his soft chest, the front of
Bob’s shirt was a wet mask of how I looked crying” (22). Similarly, at Fight
Club: “[M]y eye was swollen shut and was bleeding, and after I said, stop, I
could look down and there was a print of half my face in blood on the floor”
(51).
The creation of such an exclusive club or movement is certainly not new to
existentialism, as many existentialists, Sartre included, have advocated a total
self-commitment— Vengagement total in Sartre’s native tongue—to alleviate
existential angst. As Sartre outlines in Existentialism is a Humanism: “What
matters is the total commitment, but there is no one particular situation or action