I love the way Palahniuk handles time here. Of course, the opening chapter, with the narrator with a gun in his mouth and a building about to blow leaves us hanging at three minutes to explosion. Therefore, it becomes obvious without any explanation that the next chapter is backstory.
Palahniuk creates almost a leit motif out of time reference:
And this is how we met. (pg. 33)
This is how I met Marla Sanger. (pg. 17)
This is how I met Tyler Durden. (pg. 25)
This is how I met Marla. (pg. 39)
This is how Tyler meets Marla. (pg. 56)
In between, we get some details and scenarios that explain to a certain degree how these characters interact, and more, how the narrator has come to this place in his life.
Chapter 6 starts out with this:
Two screens into my demo to Microsoft, I taste blood and have to start swallowing. (pg. 47)
And so the narrator reveals how the fight club came to be. But Palahniuk leaves each chapter with an opening for the next, as was this ending of Chapter 5:
There, drunk in a bar where no one was watching and no one would care, I asked Tyler what he wanted me to do.
Tyler said, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.” (pg. 46)
Palaniuk’s style of structure is truly amazing. He gives us details out of context and yet it all falls together without no need to stop and think, no need to flip back a page or two. It’s about the closest I’ve seen to the real way a story is verbalized. Nothing comes out in straight linear fashion but instead is laid out as thoughts occur to the storyteller. It seems to me, that one can learn how to structure a hypertext narrative from Palaniuk’s skillful play of time.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology