Presence: Fight Club

The end of Presence, in which the protagonist finds themselves unwittingly contributing to terrorism, was a deliberate invocation of Fight Club in which our guy, Jack (Edward Norton) sees that he has created a terrorist cell. One of the podcasts I listen to, Blank Check, had recently done a Fincher season so this was weighing on my mind. Personally, I don't love Fight Club as a movie. But, again, this is me being more inspired by cinema than literature. Although I would say, the central message of Fight Club is that capitalism leads to terrorism whereas the central message of my book is, daringly, that performance activism doesn't work, terrorism does. Of course, this is debatable as we don't see Chris Starkweather succeed and, quite possibly, he could never succeed -- his plan is ludicrous. It's just a book, folks. But the dilemma he poses to Carrie is one that finally causes her veneer of performance activism to break, not the threat of starving or freezing to death, but the idea that this is what real CHANGE looks like -- incredible, criminal violence.

This is the central message behind one of my favourite books, Phillip Roth's American Pastoral, that the liberal professor at the heart of the book has to contend with that his slyly, subtly anti-establishment teachings have led to his daughter becoming far more radical. I loved how the book's undercurrent suggested any anti-establishment teachings eventually lead to domestic terrorism, no matter how intentional or not. Just in case you think these are my politics, I have to say -- these are far from my politics. I have liberal, pro-establishment politics that don't really go far outside the centrist mainstream. Hence, I turn my nose up at both Carrie's performance activism and, obviously, Chris Starkweather's terrorism.