Cross-eyed and painless, I'm like many who had read this book after loving the film, only to love the author and his outrageous and overblown themes. The brilliant and jarring cross-fertilization of ideas is what really got me going, although the dialog and characterizations were what rooted me to the tale. 
 Sure, this is a story of hyper-masculinity, but it is also a story of the Everyman's disenfranchisement and redemption in the world. There are too many quotes to do the novel justice, but I'll keep it simple and tell you that I was changed after reading the novel. I hadn't read anything like it, nor had any other work speak to me in the same way. Sure, there are classics that come close, but you still have to put yourself in a different time and place in order to sink into the story and let it overwhelm you. Not so for me at this time for this novel. It was so messed up that it became a screaming neon sign of self-help for many of us who had lost meaning in our lives. I don't want to sound flippant. Even the really oddball aspects of the novel like stealing Marla's mom's fat fit perfectly into the times and how people of my generation silently screamed out for a release from all of this proscribed nonsense we call society; and we didn't care anymore about how we were told to care. 
 Coming from the absolute bullshit of the PC world; the complete marketing of thoughts and behaviors that were sold to us at premium cost; the deep-seated realization that nothing we do even matters in this time and place all point to an attachment to this book as a life-raft in a moral sea of void. 
 Ok, sure, I've read the great nihilists of the past, and got thoroughly mind-fucked by them, so perhaps I was a little prepped for this little masterpiece of fiction. Then again, I also got so many belly-laughs and hope for mankind after reading it that I suppose it all harmonized a bit.