Timed with the release of Choke opening in theaters and nearing the 10-year mark since the movie Fight Club originally premiered, Read Mercer Schuchardt, an associate professor at Marymount Manhattan College has compiled You Do Not Talk About Fight Club: I am Jack’s Completely Unauthorized Essay Collection. The collection offers various takes on the memorable book/movie.

I’m intrigued.

Extracting the truth or uncovering some hidden meaning from a movie or book is not always the easiest thing to do. I hate to be a hater, but when you’re in the business of writing reviews it happens. This collection of essays is quite frankly sophomoric; filled with far-reaching musings by what I picture in my head to be a group of film undergraduates wearing horn-rimmed glasses. References to Lord of the Rings and The Matrix are abundant. One writer waxes on about their theory on the motif of soap. Others attempt to analyze Palahniuk as a writer. Again and again I kept reading summarizations of the plot to a numbing degree.

I thought what better way to talk about this collection than to contribute my own essay on the book/movie. To save you guys from what you probably already know, I’m not going to summarize the plot. If you’re interested, you can read the plot synopsis at the IMDB.

What is the appeal of Fight Club? Why almost ten years after the release of the movie and almost 15 years after the book came out are people still talking about it? Why was I intrigued about this collection of essays to begin with?

In talking with some friends in Seattle about this piece I was working on they had a few anecdotes to share of their own. One guy said when he was in high school around the release of the movie and a kid in his class had a Fight Club themed graduation party. The invitations all said something like “You do not talk about Bobby’s graduation party.”

The same guy who is working on his masters in atmospheric sciences told me one of his peers is starting a group for aspiring scientists to learn and practice the art of arguing because “scientists don’t have these skills” and naming said group “Fight Club.”

So again — what’s the appeal?

It’s edgy. The one part of the collection I actually really enjoyed with the foreword written by Mr. Palahniuk himself — “The Future is in the Fringe.” I know it sounds like a cheesy title, but in it he writes that about how the appeal of this is all because the characters in Fight Club and their antics are outside of societal norms.

I believe that these characters offer us an escape. They are about living outside of our everyday selves but not in a completely fantastical Lord of the Rings fantasy-world kind of way. It’s more feasible. Just on the brink of being possible. These are the characters that push boundaries and are where we often daydream our lives to be. Who doesn’t wish that they had a little Tyler Durdin in their step? That’s the appeal. That’s why we’re all so into it. The idea of freeing yourself from your everyday self is a nice thought to have.

Despite how great (or not so great) the essays within the collection are You Don’t Talk About Fight Club are, it’s still noteworthy because people are obviously still talking; and that’s saying something.