I have got to disagree with Arion Berger’s rather shallow review of Fight Club (“Broken Heartland,” 10/22)—a very good film. It’s smart, sardonic, and explosive: American Beauty with dynamite.

It’s clear where Fincher is going. The age of sensitivity is over. Men challenge, lust, command, fight, and relish the smell of their balls. What burns without consequence is truly inconsequential. The boy with the most toys is just that. Men are elemental, pure in their own state. They exist without.

For the controlling boomers, something buried in the psyche—a rash—untested by war’s evasion, surfaces. Scarcely noticed at first, it deepens and spreads, until the desire to quench heat with fire overwhelms. But realization comes too late; the comforts are too dear. A younger generation disgusted with the passivity of its elders fantasizes the destruction of that they have erected. History repeats. The aged’s edifices smolder. For the protagonists, Immolation = Life.

Stop being so literal.

Georgetown