That was a great post, brndyalexandr.
Originally Posted by brndyalexandr
Palahniuk, too, was a man raised by his mother after his parent's divorce and his father's (later) murder
Mmmmmhmmmmm.... here we go again with the gay man with no father.
Originally Posted by mrtylerdurden
If you're saying that the narrator creates Tyler because he's gay and attracted to him, then that means that you're saying the narrator is attracted to himself in a way. The narrator creates Tyler because that is what he wants to be, and Tyler gets the woman (Marla) so that is obviously what the narrator wants.
Often gay men like men who look like themselves. Not always, but often. Bears go for bears, twinks go for twinks, muscle men go for muscle men, etc.
I personally think the majority, if not all, gay men are searching for masculinity. When I heard Chuck Palahniuk was gay, it made sense. Of course he's gonna blend his own life into the stories. I read
Invisible Monsters and it was also good. Haven't read any of his other stuff.
What could be happening is the Narrator was looking to become straight. Or felt the pressures of being straight in our world. Heterosexuality, as the norm, could have been like everything else
Fight Club was against -- Ikea furniture, designer jeans, a house with a picket fence and a family with two kids, good paying job, security, money, comfort, etc. The idea of the Fight Club was the homosexual underworld, a place where boys could be boys -- forever. The escape from the norm. The escape from wives, girlfriends, families, responsibilities, things you have to do, things you have to buy, etc.
Tyler Durden may have been a projection of what he found sexually exciting -- but as happens so often with gay men, what they find sexually exciting is also what they want to look like. Why? Because if you can look like someone you find sexually exciting, you can attract another man who looks that way, too. That's often the best route for getting the sexual partner you want if you're gay. Gay men are usually quite effeminate, but they have to butch up if they wanna get any action that they desire. You'll see lots of gay men with buff, hot, super masculine bodies, but the minute they open their mouths and speak, the Queen has arrived.
It's possible that the Narrator was at war with his homosexuality and was trying to defeat it. The end of the story seems to be saying that he might have. He defeats his Tyler self and gets together with Marla as his real self. OR is it his real self?
We are getting a sequel to
Fight Club as a comic book series soon and I am not surprised. I always thought there could be more to the story. I'm also not surprised by the storyline -- now the Narrator will have a son with Marla. It's also supposed to be about the Narrator trying to get back into Fight Club. This will be very, very interesting to see -- to see what new "gay" material you could take from it. What will Palahniuk say about the father/son/family dynamic? Will the Narrator ditch Marla and the son and get lost in the world of Fight Club forever (the world of homosexuality)? Is there going to be a sequel because that was meant to happen? The story isn't over. Those buildings collapsing to the ground at the end of
Fight Club while the Narrator and Marla held hands -- that flash of the penis from the X-rated movie -- were signs that the story was definitely not over. That there's more gayness to come. That Tyler has not been totally defeated.
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