Long before Fight Club became one of the most talked-about twist endings in movie history, it started as a side project for a guy punching a clock at a truck factory.
Chuck Palahniuk spent 13 years working as a diesel mechanic for Freightliner in Portland, Oregon, doing everything from assembly-line work to writing vehicle repair manuals. In his off hours, he was part of a local writers’ workshop, where he shared the short pieces that would eventually become his debut novel, published in 1996 for a modest $6,000 advance, all while he was still clocking in at Freightliner.
The novel follows an unnamed, insomniac narrator stuck in a soul-crushing office job who falls in with Tyler Durden, a charismatic soap salesman who pulls him into underground fight clubs and, eventually, a sprawling anti-consumerist plot called Project Mayhem…