Is he a parody of the narrator erected into some sort of comical ubermensch who cannot be held responsible for anything since not even the narrator knows exactly where he is?
When I first encountered Tyler way back around 1999 (when the film came out) he reminded me of the odd fictional experiment of my own. He was done in a different way (discontinuous rather than my own rather stodgier continuous narrative) but the attack on melodrama was clear. And to me, valuable. (Another thing: Tyler's voice has quote-marks; the narrator's doesn't. Tyler is direct speech; the narrator is indirect. This is clever. Tyler is clear and distinct. The narrator is evasive. This structures the anti-melodrama so the narrator ever actually acquires an identity and climbs on top. Tyler is the only identity the book needs. Somehow Fincher got to make this work in the film, too, though obviously not with the name orthographic device.)
Is the Tyler/narrator relationship homosexual? Well it's not sexual, but what sort of narrational form would that lead to? Melodrama? Statements of sexual identity turned into comfort zones? Right -- that's the very opposite of Tyler. But the issue does arise. It arises because the nice neat comfortable relationships between people are in the crosshairs of the novel all the way through, and they are all repudiated. (Or when they are not repudiated, in my opinion, this particular book fails.) This means that sexual relationships never blossom, but it also means that social relationships also never blossom (or that "homosocial" relationships are effortlessly thwarted in favour of something bigger). What does blossom is a sense that the moment you (the narrator) stop thinking, stop moving forward, stop being a shark, you are down a deep hole.
Kenneth Clark in his Civilization series made the point about Michelangelo's David that it was "the enemy of happiness". Happiness is for the proles. Happiness is for the happily married people. Happiness is for the consummated. Happiness is not for sharks. Who can live without happiness? Well that, it seems to me, is what the novel is about. (If I have a real, deep, vital complaint about the Spectator Australia, it is its prevalent STYLE -- it is the style of losers, of whingers, of the outraged and frustrated, and indeed of the happily-married but completely clueless, lost in a hostile world. This style wants happiness even more desperately than they want it on the ABC -- and gosh, what losers THEY are, on the ABC!) Everything in the modern age should be telling us how perilous it is to want happiness, and Tyler Durden is one of the few places where the alternative route is mapped.
So, this is what I think about Tyler Durden, and why I'm glad you brought it up.
Fantastic insight as always Jim! Thank you for this comment - your frequent musings are almost like a required appendix to my work - though only for those of true literary grit! Haha, I like the way you managed to get in a dig at the good old Speccie. You do make a good point though about happiness and sharks. I think it goes to the heart of what I have spoken about before in the context of another contentious character (Andrew Tate) and how the hero's journey must be mostly about suffering - not happiness.
Really? You're having me on Jim! Though sometimes it's hard to tell with you. I'm no fan of big spiders, though I have grown to love the peaceful little fellas that inhabit the corners of my house and eat the damned mosquitos. Those guys are always welcome in my home.
Little harsh on pigshit JJ, at least it has a use - to the pig and to the farmer.
The Peter principle disguises the elevation of go-along clowns so that the passed over can feel good about the fact that they are still in a useful stratum. But it ignores the likelihood that the over promoted are not in reality over-promoted, but are instead selected for specific faults and venality. And I would suggest the stupidity we are considering is among those who consider themselves to be at a higher level, at the level of those making the selections. After all who in their right mind would select Bill Gates or GW Bush, or our own Turnbulls, Morrisons and Abalones?
Watching corporate hierarchy and seeing how they behaved was more like appreciating that they were as slick as pig shit and in place to grease everyone else’s wheels in a way which would derail them.
They were fast tracked for stupidity by people who failed to identify it. Real fuckwits.
Koalas and tarantulas notwithstanding the aim of a hijacked public policy is, as you suggest, designed solely to subvert the interests of anyone other than a very narrow band of assholes who think they have a right to dictate the way the world organises itself. That’s for their benefit, but they don’t seem to notice that a world destroyed for the few of us they plan to leave around to clean their shoes etc is a world destroyed for them too. They’re not very bright these people, and should certainly not be allowed to form and write our history.
“Sustainable energy is not the endgame. The endgame is an impoverished and subservient underclass of modern day peasants…” that’s about the size of it.
Stephan Molineux provides an interesting breakdown of the timeline for “sustainability” if these people were serious. Even if we didn’t know from looking at their proposals and the fantasies they cite that this is fantasyland, and deliberately so, then Molineux’ numbers should provide a clue even to the most clueless enthusiast for saving the planet by reduction of a nonsensical carbon footprint.
Agreed. In fact it's interesting you raise this point, as if I were to pinpoint the very first inkling I had that all was not right with the world; the moment I started to become disenchanted and ask difficult questions, it was when I realised all the people elevated to senior positions in the organisation I was working for at the the time were thick as pig shit. You are correct mate - they are not very bright, these people.
Koalas are all very well, but in the coming Final Conflict, I'd rather have something on my side a bit more substantial than a few soft toys. That's why I'm training up a raft of tarantulas (or if you like, funnel webs, whose lethality in this case not even Australians can play down). In hoplite formation. With little tiny darts dabbed with curare. Admittedly as they go charging around the house taking bits out of the guests I have to play the Stern Father (or throw them a bit of medium-rare Albanese) but I'm sure it'll all pay off in the end.
In the back garden the koalas play around like a bunch of fucking Eloi, without the slightest idea it's all for them. A bit like Australians (did I already say that?) really.
It would be interesting to know how these people (the specklies) are going to save Western Civ using a forced diet of interminable cliche and large-scale meetings in gentlemen's clubs. Gotta say, I'm not really up on the etiquette of the Liberal Party, but, you know, the Irishman was probably right, "I wouldn't start from here".
The problem is probably broadcasting. What can you possibly say to all your subscribers that might likely extend over the whole frame of the earth without losing all your subscribers in one fell swoop? Occasionally I venture beyond the subscription myself, to some televised thing they've (the specklies) got up, and I can see the whites of their eyes. Not exactly Brad Pitt, are they?
And supposing Brad were to wander into Rowan's office one day, and start nattering on about, oh I dunno, lipids. I myself wandered (metaphorically speaking) into Rowan's office one day years ago, with a copy of Emmanuelle (the joke was about Emmanuel) and funny thing, I think even with Brad Rowan would have to dash off, leaving the security detail to deal with it.
Which brings us to Tyler Durden.
Is he a parody of the narrator erected into some sort of comical ubermensch who cannot be held responsible for anything since not even the narrator knows exactly where he is?
When I first encountered Tyler way back around 1999 (when the film came out) he reminded me of the odd fictional experiment of my own. He was done in a different way (discontinuous rather than my own rather stodgier continuous narrative) but the attack on melodrama was clear. And to me, valuable. (Another thing: Tyler's voice has quote-marks; the narrator's doesn't. Tyler is direct speech; the narrator is indirect. This is clever. Tyler is clear and distinct. The narrator is evasive. This structures the anti-melodrama so the narrator ever actually acquires an identity and climbs on top. Tyler is the only identity the book needs. Somehow Fincher got to make this work in the film, too, though obviously not with the name orthographic device.)
Is the Tyler/narrator relationship homosexual? Well it's not sexual, but what sort of narrational form would that lead to? Melodrama? Statements of sexual identity turned into comfort zones? Right -- that's the very opposite of Tyler. But the issue does arise. It arises because the nice neat comfortable relationships between people are in the crosshairs of the novel all the way through, and they are all repudiated. (Or when they are not repudiated, in my opinion, this particular book fails.) This means that sexual relationships never blossom, but it also means that social relationships also never blossom (or that "homosocial" relationships are effortlessly thwarted in favour of something bigger). What does blossom is a sense that the moment you (the narrator) stop thinking, stop moving forward, stop being a shark, you are down a deep hole.
Kenneth Clark in his Civilization series made the point about Michelangelo's David that it was "the enemy of happiness". Happiness is for the proles. Happiness is for the happily married people. Happiness is for the consummated. Happiness is not for sharks. Who can live without happiness? Well that, it seems to me, is what the novel is about. (If I have a real, deep, vital complaint about the Spectator Australia, it is its prevalent STYLE -- it is the style of losers, of whingers, of the outraged and frustrated, and indeed of the happily-married but completely clueless, lost in a hostile world. This style wants happiness even more desperately than they want it on the ABC -- and gosh, what losers THEY are, on the ABC!) Everything in the modern age should be telling us how perilous it is to want happiness, and Tyler Durden is one of the few places where the alternative route is mapped.
So, this is what I think about Tyler Durden, and why I'm glad you brought it up.
Fantastic insight as always Jim! Thank you for this comment - your frequent musings are almost like a required appendix to my work - though only for those of true literary grit! Haha, I like the way you managed to get in a dig at the good old Speccie. You do make a good point though about happiness and sharks. I think it goes to the heart of what I have spoken about before in the context of another contentious character (Andrew Tate) and how the hero's journey must be mostly about suffering - not happiness.
The only known natural predator of the funnel-web is, you guessed it, the koala.
They're particularly partial to fried funnel-web on single gum-leaf.
Really? You're having me on Jim! Though sometimes it's hard to tell with you. I'm no fan of big spiders, though I have grown to love the peaceful little fellas that inhabit the corners of my house and eat the damned mosquitos. Those guys are always welcome in my home.
Little harsh on pigshit JJ, at least it has a use - to the pig and to the farmer.
The Peter principle disguises the elevation of go-along clowns so that the passed over can feel good about the fact that they are still in a useful stratum. But it ignores the likelihood that the over promoted are not in reality over-promoted, but are instead selected for specific faults and venality. And I would suggest the stupidity we are considering is among those who consider themselves to be at a higher level, at the level of those making the selections. After all who in their right mind would select Bill Gates or GW Bush, or our own Turnbulls, Morrisons and Abalones?
Watching corporate hierarchy and seeing how they behaved was more like appreciating that they were as slick as pig shit and in place to grease everyone else’s wheels in a way which would derail them.
They were fast tracked for stupidity by people who failed to identify it. Real fuckwits.
An absolutely sublime retort my friend. You are indeed correct - such is the savage irony, and indeed the harsh reality of the paradigm we inhabit.
Koalas and tarantulas notwithstanding the aim of a hijacked public policy is, as you suggest, designed solely to subvert the interests of anyone other than a very narrow band of assholes who think they have a right to dictate the way the world organises itself. That’s for their benefit, but they don’t seem to notice that a world destroyed for the few of us they plan to leave around to clean their shoes etc is a world destroyed for them too. They’re not very bright these people, and should certainly not be allowed to form and write our history.
“Sustainable energy is not the endgame. The endgame is an impoverished and subservient underclass of modern day peasants…” that’s about the size of it.
Stephan Molineux provides an interesting breakdown of the timeline for “sustainability” if these people were serious. Even if we didn’t know from looking at their proposals and the fantasies they cite that this is fantasyland, and deliberately so, then Molineux’ numbers should provide a clue even to the most clueless enthusiast for saving the planet by reduction of a nonsensical carbon footprint.
Agreed. In fact it's interesting you raise this point, as if I were to pinpoint the very first inkling I had that all was not right with the world; the moment I started to become disenchanted and ask difficult questions, it was when I realised all the people elevated to senior positions in the organisation I was working for at the the time were thick as pig shit. You are correct mate - they are not very bright, these people.
Koalas are all very well, but in the coming Final Conflict, I'd rather have something on my side a bit more substantial than a few soft toys. That's why I'm training up a raft of tarantulas (or if you like, funnel webs, whose lethality in this case not even Australians can play down). In hoplite formation. With little tiny darts dabbed with curare. Admittedly as they go charging around the house taking bits out of the guests I have to play the Stern Father (or throw them a bit of medium-rare Albanese) but I'm sure it'll all pay off in the end.
In the back garden the koalas play around like a bunch of fucking Eloi, without the slightest idea it's all for them. A bit like Australians (did I already say that?) really.
I will think twice before coming to a dinner party at your house Jim!
It would be interesting to know how these people (the specklies) are going to save Western Civ using a forced diet of interminable cliche and large-scale meetings in gentlemen's clubs. Gotta say, I'm not really up on the etiquette of the Liberal Party, but, you know, the Irishman was probably right, "I wouldn't start from here".
The problem is probably broadcasting. What can you possibly say to all your subscribers that might likely extend over the whole frame of the earth without losing all your subscribers in one fell swoop? Occasionally I venture beyond the subscription myself, to some televised thing they've (the specklies) got up, and I can see the whites of their eyes. Not exactly Brad Pitt, are they?
And supposing Brad were to wander into Rowan's office one day, and start nattering on about, oh I dunno, lipids. I myself wandered (metaphorically speaking) into Rowan's office one day years ago, with a copy of Emmanuelle (the joke was about Emmanuel) and funny thing, I think even with Brad Rowan would have to dash off, leaving the security detail to deal with it.
Merry Christmas!
J.