An inspiration for ‘Fight Club’

Vladimir Nabokov, in his writing on Stevenson, relates the writer's moment of death to his work and points out Stevenson's words, which he whispered to his wife as the wine bottle slipped from his hands just before he died of cerebral hemorrhage: "What happened, what is this weird feeling, is there a change on my face?" He died gripped by the fear of the metamorphosis and corruption of the human being that had provided such abundant material for his writing. As if to make his fears come true, a group of university students in San Francisco came together to establish a Suicide club in 1977. But instead of committing suicide, they played practical jokes, deceiving people and getting on the metros naked, thus creating an outrage in the society.