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Loading... Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Caseyby Chuck Palahniuk
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Started this one and couldn't get into it, which is a shame. His books used to really hook easily. I really liked CP's first few books, but I feel that he really lost it later on. Maybe will try again someday, but not after I finish reading all Douglas Coupland, William Gibson, and selected Philip K. Dick titles. (  ) JFDR | Aug 14, 2009 |  It took me a while to get into the narrative style--the whole book is told in a series of first-person accounts and anecdotes--none of which are the main character, Rant. As always, a lot of fun, imaginative ideas from Chuck. The end was a bit of a stretch, though. (  ) francomega | Jul 18, 2009 | WTF? I think this was my first Chuck book. I'm debating whether or not it will be my last. Interesting take on the serial killer genre for sure, this story was such a mishmash of things. For a while I felt like I was dumped right in the middle of an encyclopedia--yammering on and on about rabies, coin collecting, demolition derby (which are all key elements to the story but didn't need to be beat to death). Thank God I listened to this on CD as the varied voice artists really kept me engaged in the story. The writing was unbelievably sharp mechanics-wise. A+ on the wow factor with his very descriptive voice; but the story was too disjointed. I did like the differing viewpoints each of the characters brought to the table about the same person or incident. But, if you are wanting a smooth flowing story that makes sense all along the way, this may not be the book for you. Sometimes things don't make sense until many CD's later --which translates to many, many pages later. For those of you having trouble with this one, the unabridged CD may be just the thing to help you through. Kudos to all the readers--they did a super job. Okay. I've decided I'm going to try Chuck again. Maybe this wasn't the right story for me at this time to appreciate his interesting style. I don't mind the odd and quirky--and I'm not squeamish--in fact, I love when a creative person challenges and pushes boundaries. This just rang the boring bell for me too early in and I couldn't get re-engaged. I'm giving him 2 1/2 stars for the way he painted his word pictures. Vivid, sharp and in your face. But, again, the story? I wish I would have contracted rabies before I listened to it--it would probably have been much more interesting had I been mad, drooling and a bit bitey. ( ) DanaJean | Jul 14, 2009 | The fact that Chuck Palahniuk has quite a sick fantasy was revealed in 'Fight Club' erkennen. 'Rant' isn't any less disturbing and passages of it are breathtakingly well written, but the longer it goes on the more tension and suspense is lost. Still the different and differentiated points of view that the insinuatedly oral accounts the story is made up of make it a fascinating read. (  ) DieterBoehm | Jun 4, 2009 | I'm listening to it on audio and so far so good. It's wierd but chuck palahniuk always is. He's an acquired taste I suppose. (  ) toxictoast96 | Jun 1, 2009 | 
 At its best, Palahniuk’s prose has the rat-a-tat immediacy of a bravura spoken word performance. When he misses, which he does often in “Rant,” it’s just overcooked and indulgent.  An altogether more complex novel than that earlier faux-Nietzschean call to arms, this ‘Rant’ is anything but. His latest novel, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey, is even more ambitious, but here Palahniuk's swirl of characters and plotlines never gels, and the story lurches dangerously toward incoherence.  Reading the latest Chuck Palahniuk novel is an invariably gripping, always disturbing, and -- more and more often -- ultimately disappointing experience.  There is no question that Palahniuk is an important writer, with a huge popular following. But as his conceits grow ever more ludicrous, his books become more like art-statements than novels. The plot of Rant is so overheated it approaches self-parody, and occasionally trivialises what are clearly serious concerns.
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| Book description |
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“Like most people I didn’t meet Rant Casey until after he was dead. That’s how it works for most celebrities: After they croak, their circle of friends just explodes.…”
Rant is the mind-bending new novel from Chuck Palahniuk, the literary provocateur responsible for such books as the generation-defining classic Fight Club and the pedal-to-the-metal horrorfest Haunted. It takes the form of an oral history of one Buster “Rant” Casey, who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of our time.
“What ‘Typhoid Mary’ Mallon was to typhoid, what Gaetan Dugas was to AIDS, and Liu Jian-lun was to SARS, Buster Casey would become for rabies.”
A high school rebel who always wins (and a childhood murderer?), Rant Casey escapes from his small hometown of Middleton for the big city. He becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. On appointed nights participants recognize one another by such designated car markings as “Just Married” toothpaste graffiti and then stalk and crash into each other. Rant Casey will die a spectacular highway death, after which his friends gather testimony needed to build an oral history of his short, violent life. Their collected anecdotes explore the possibility that his saliva caused a silent urban plague of rabies and that he found a way to escape the prison house of linear time.…
“The future you have, tomorrow, won’t be the same future you had, yesterday.”
—Rant Casey
Expect hilarity, horror, and blazing insight into the desperate and surreal contemporary human condition as only Chuck Palahniuk can deliver it. He's the postmillennial Jonathan Swift, the visionary to watch to learn what's —uh-oh—coming next.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:10 -0400)
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