"Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years," writes George Orwell in a 1942 essay on the author of The Jungle Book and "Mandalay." "During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there." A similar truth holds for Fight Club, David Fincher's film adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel, which over the past twenty years to the day since its wide release has outlasted all the serious, intelligent, and indeed enlightened critiques mounted against it.. .