The company of men

Still, the audience watching the screening of Fincher's film, which was interrupted by a Q&A session with Palahniuk himself, is a mixed bag of 21st century types. Among the attendees, mostly in their 20s, are obvious devotees of the self-destructive heroine of "Fight Club," Marla Singer -- goth girls in faded prom dresses, black boots or pink hair. One Marla, clad in leather, eyes blackened by mascara rather than barroom blows, is taping every word the auto mechanic-turned-author says. "You have to see my microphones," she says to another fan with a digital recorder. "They cost a thousand dollars."

Obsessive documentation seems to be the order of the day -- there are at least four video cameras, numerous digital audio recorders and all manner of photo amateurs, uploaders and cellphone junkies. The crew from Chuck Palahniuk.net is even filming a documentary. Beside the Marlas sit the emulators of Tyler Durden, the gleefully violent antihero of "Fight Club": college boys with pompadours or goatees, uniformly clad in brown leather jackets.

Sitting in front of me are two Tylers whom I recognize from the check-in line at the appropriately run-down and ant-infested Edinboro Ramada Inn. During the screening, I can hear them whispering along with Tyler as he states his masculinist philosophy. "We're a generation of men raised by women," they both mouth, and I get the impression they might break out in high-fives at any moment. "I'm not sure another woman is what we need."

But mixed in with the Tylers and Marlas are people who look more like graduate students, as well as writers and literature buffs who've driven and flown from as far away as Arizona, Oklahoma, Michigan and Long Island, N.Y., to take part in a 48-hour celebration and discussion of an author whose work, many of them feel, will one day take its place on the classics shelf.

"I see ['Fight Club'] as a cultural marker for the 1990s and this decade," says Kinch, whose appreciation of Palahniuk's fiction was an impetus for the conference. "The conflicts it brings up -- we're not talking about outcasts of society, trying to see how they can fit into society. We're seeing mainstream 'normal' folks, who look normal, and have normal jobs, being so desperately unhappy. They're living lives not only of quiet desperation -- they're not even living! And I think that's how 'Fight Club' really resonates with all of us."

"This work is ... very entertaining -- a lot of people from our age group really relate to this material, and to this kind of humor," says McKinney. "Plus, it's very fresh -- this isn't an author who's been dead for 100 years, this is an opportunity to discuss this work for the first time and not rely on criticism that's been handed down like dogma."

Some of the weekend's presentations seem only tangentially connected to Palahniuk and his work. "The big lesson of stage combat," says a theater student demonstrating some techniques, "is that groin kicks are very, very popular." Then there's the roundtable discussion on coping mechanisms ("Because I Can't Hit Bottom, I Can't Be Saved"), the interpretive dance series performed by a group of Mercyhurst College students and several other "creative works." The performances aren't as off-base though, as they might at first seem. Many conference-goers like Palahniuk's fiction because he excels at depicting characters who are drawn from the auditorium of consumer culture and into real life.

Next Page: An unsatisfied craving for violence

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