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Chuck Palahnuik, Rant

by Lacey Hatchett
10/20/2007

If you’re looking for a bit of light reading, Chuck Palahniuk’s new book Rant: An Oral Biography Of Buster Casey isn’t it. Far from being a typical biography, this novel is told in bits and pieces by Buster “Rant” Casey’s friends, foes, and family members.

Some of the people that help tell his story include his grandmother, whom he may or may not have killed as a child, Casey’s crippled girlfriend and his disillusioned mother.

Casey’s story, set in the near future, begins in his hometown of Middleton. There he contracts rabies by allowing himself to be bitten repeatedly by poisonous creatures. Casey then moves to the big city, taking only a suitcase full of money and his virus with him.

The urban lifestyle leads to trouble for Rant, and he involves himself in “Party Crashing.” This nocturnal activity, much like an inner-city bumper cars, involves participants willingly wrecking their cars in order to gain points.

During this time Casey’s rabies mutates and begins an epidemic, killing hundreds of people and he becomes a cult-like hero. Eventually he is presumed to be dead as a result of Party Crashing gone wrong.

The chronology of the story gets muddled when the reader realizes that some sort of time travel has occurred. It is not obvious until the end, though, exactly who travels and to what time period they go.

This book may initially seem like a departure from Palahniuk’s typical writing style, characterized by books such as Fight Club
and Survivor. Casey’s story involves little of the gore and sexual perversions to which readers may be accustomed.

However, once readers get past the initial confusion due to the third person narrative, they will see the typically-Palahniuk story unfold.

The complex way that Palahniuk ties the voices of 53 different storytellers together to make one cohesive product shows that he has matured as an author. Rant is not a departure for his previous writing style but rather an evolution.

UGA students may recall Palahniuk’s lecture last September in Georgia Hall, where he read aloud his short story “Guts.” The narrative, detailing disturbing acts of masturbation gone wrong, is part of a compilation of short stories called Haunted, another of Palahniuk’s books.

Rant is not an easy read, but the plot twists and turns, as well as the surprise ending, make it worth your time.

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