Fight Club and Manalive...

“I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.”

As the frightened clerk flees, Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) remarks: “Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel’s life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.” The second work of fiction is Manalive, written in 1912 by G.K. Chesterton. Accused of murder, an eccentric named Innocent Smith is charged with repeated attempts of murder. The first of these attempts is of a pessimistic professor, Dr. Eames, who in a discussion with Smith likens the sorry state of life to a puppy that should be put down. Even though he struggles, says Dr. Eames, the act of killing the beast would be an act of mercy. “Dr. Eames had turned his tired but still talkative head over his shoulder, and had found himself looking into a small round black hole, rimmed by a six-sided circlet of steel, with a sort of spike standing up on the top. It fixed him like an iron eye. Through those eternal instants during which the reason is stunned he did not even know what it was. Then he saw behind it the chambered barrel and cocked hammer of a revolver, and behind that the flushed and rather heavy face of Smith, apparently quite unchanged, or even more mild than before. `I’ll help you out of your hole, old man,’ said Smith, with rough tenderness. `I’ll put the puppy out of his pain.’”

This modern age stands badly in need of such a "shot" to the system--as Alfred Delp knew.