wakarahen / ganbaresugi

“FIGHT CLUB is hip-hop for white men. (Although hip-hop is hip-hop for white men, but I digress…). Dick lit is fantasy fulfillment. It’s the ridiculous idea that even if you’ve been a sheltered, pampered, entitled prick for most of your life — a month doing sit ups and you can turn into Chuck Lidell. These books convince soft-natured fellas that they have a boxer’s pain threshold, an animal’s savagery, and a gladiator’s soul. Just like rap music convinces every black kid that being black somehow makes you inherently more badass than everyone else (it doesn’t), these books convince yuppies that they’re not fragile.

And just like black kids who watch Scarface and miss the fact that Tony Montana dies in a hail of gunfire, alone, addicted to cocaine and insane — the “man fans” miss the fact that FIGHT CLUB is about a narrator who is so shit-scared of asking out Marla Singer that he invents another personality in order to fuck her.

FIGHT CLUB isn’t about a world without women. FIGHT CLUB is about a sub-culture created because of a woman. It’s not about empowerment. It’s an essay about how men can’t escape emasculation.

When men find motivations separate from their relationships with women, that’s when we get our balls back.”

“Our current crop of young male writers — through no fault of their own (because, you live in the world as you find it) — have nothing to match (Raymond Chandler). Mostly, they’re just clever lads who enjoy a way with words. They don’t have any real stories to tell. Hold on, I take that back. They do have stories to tell but they’re all of a type: the 30-something suburban man-child who cheats on his wife to feel ‘alive’. The 20-something suburban man-child who’s unlucky in love (‘unlucky’ meaning, he gets laid a lot by Anne Hathaway look and sound-alikes, but scratches his head in puzzlement at their romcom antics). The 20-something who longs to be like Hemingway and so, moves to Spain…where he gets tangled up with a Penélope Cruz look and sound alike. Bottles of Amontillado are smashed, hair is tousled. Self consciously sensitive feelings are recorded. The tough talking lout who isn’t really tough — that is, ruthless like Robespierre (who dressed as a dandy but moved with the deliberateness of a python) — but just another douchebag waving a gun around. And on and on.”

“There is no secret to creativity besides possessing a habitual work ethic. But damn. Sometimes, it’s just hard as hell. Here we are, fortunate enough to possess hands that can harness magic to turn nothing in to something. We have ears pointed towards the muses. But the only voice I’m hearing is Alan Alda’s, and I’m waiting to see what kind of hijinx he and Honeycutt have gotten themselves in to on this MASH rerun.”