We, the readers, are inside the narrator’s mind with him. Palahniuk’s style can be called ‘stream of consciousness,’ though in the case of this particular narrator, it is less of a stream and more of a hailstorm. The narrator’s inner monologue provides the reader with the narrative and perspective needed to interpret the setting and to put it within the Marxist framework that Palahniuk intended.
The book was published in 1996. The Soviet Union’s collapse had ushered capitalism and free trade to the forefront of the world stage, and the narrator’s ‘Anycity, USA’ seems a fair parody of the social strata of the time.
From his condo – “a filing cabinet for retirees and young professionals,” to Marla’s pseudo-permanent residence within the roach-infested Regent Hotel, all the way to the house on Paper Street where the narrator lives and works with Tyler Durden after his condo explodes, we are practically bombarded with example after example of a city in which social polarization has left the poor (proletariat) getting poorer and the rich (bourgeoisie) getting richer.
It feels too familiar, though – and that’s what Chuck Palahniuk wanted. He was a diesel mechanic. I’m a waiter. Maybe you work for a cable network or the Home Depot or Target. It doesn’t really matter – what matters is that we, as in you and I and the rest of the world that has to work to support ourselves, are able to imagine that Tyler is talking to us. That when we read the words, we’re truly there in the basement with him, circled by our equals, raising our fist for something right. Palahniuk writes the setting ambiguously for a reason – so that when we look in the mirror, we see a champion, pure and victorious enough to be a Space Monkey; so when we sit down for a moment and actually evaluate the consumer culture that we exist within, we understand that the hotel in the book is called the Pressman because its’ guests are the ones who opPress the working Man.
Fight Club Manifesto 