Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey

After finishing this book, I am unable to determine whether I should attempt to find meaning in that gonzo world view and series of events or if I should just rinse my mouth and double check that my pets have their vaccinations up to date. I can’t tell if I’ve just handled violence and depravity in the words and images of an auteur or a master of pulp. So the rating reflects that.

I’m a little unsettled in thinking that the book is baiting me to search for meaning to distract me from the recognition that I did enjoy the book for what it was. The details about rabies, about rare coins, about urban demolition derby, about foreign objects in food, about snakes and vermin and feral dogs and poisonous spiders all seem so oddly specific show more that they must stand for things like virality and control culture, desensitization and the search for authentic experience, fear of the unknown and unseen, or a human psychological obsession with self-destruction. But does it all mean that or is it, as Freud is wrongly thought to have said, that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?

I suppose that the safe ground here is to examine the book as a book and appreciate the narrative structure of an oral history. That’s not new of course, and after having read oral histories before, I would say that this book isn’t even really a good example of an oral history. Even if it were, I’m not sure why the subject of the book calls for narrative type. Studs Terkel chose oral history to capture WWII and the Great Depression because (I think) those events are so enormous and multifaceted that no one or limited set of perspectives captures them. So what is that structure doing here, capturing a wacky story about grotesquery, sexual violence, and time travel? And here I am … back looking at a narrative device that has me thinking, surely the author wants me to see something in this story. show less

I've never read Palahniuk before, and although everyone raves about Fight Club, in particular, I wasn't really sure his famously oddball style would be 'my kind of thing'. Happily, Rant turned out to be EXACTLY my kind of thing, which is why this review has taken so long to write. It's always hardest to review the books we've loved most, isn't it?

I won't say too much about the plot, partly because there isn't one per se, and partly because I think this is really one those books that needs to be read WITHOUT knowing everything about it. That way the reader can work things out for themselves and be swept along by the narrative without any preconceptions and erroneous ideas ruining the fun. On the surface this is just what the name show more suggests: a fictional oral biography of a strange young man called Rant Casey, who has odd abilities, bizarre habits, and dangerous vices that include 'Party Crashing' - driving around at night in a kind of giant crazy game of dodgems - and being bitten by all kinds of venomous and diseased creatures.

But although Rant is at the centre of the novel, and everything ultimately returns to him, this is an incredibly reductive view of Palahniuk's vision. It is also very much about the way society works and about the people in Rant's life over the years. It is only as the book unfolds that you come to realise that Rant's America isn't the same as ours; it's a futuristic place with advanced media technology, and a society segregated into Daytimers and Nighttimers in an attempt to deal with overpopulation and road congestion. As these things are explained by the various 'contributors' to Rant's biography, the book becomes almost like a fascinating non-fiction at times, kept manageable and well-paced by the broken-up oral-biography format.

This really is an incredible book. It has the energy of a Baz Lurhmann movie and the no-nonsense brutality of Quentin Tarantino's finest, all rolled into one. I don't think I've ever read a book that feels so immediate and ALIVE. It bristles with energy, like electricity sparking off the page. As I turned the pages, I felt like I was in the hands of an expert manipulator; the building clues about Rant, about the new society, were all there, but I felt like I was working things out and getting little light-bulb moments EXACTLY when Palahniuk wanted me to. Whatever he wanted me to feel - nauseated, tender, intrigued, repulsed - I did. Even when I wasn't sure what was happening or where things were going, I felt 'safe' enough to accept it and carry on. Like the Nighttimers' Party Crashing culture, I just held on tight and went along for the ride - and what a ride it was!

Rant definitely isn't going to be for everyone - there are some pretty extreme and unsettling moments thrown in along the way - but if you dare to dive in and go with it, you will find a novel that is simultaneously philosophical, amusing, disgusting, exciting, thoughtful, sensual, perplexing, shocking, stimulating and utterly brilliant. Palahniuk throws out a continuous stream of ideas and observations, skewed through the different characters that make up the 'biography' and through the vaguely dystopian perspective. I'm still thinking about it now, a couple of weeks later, asking questions and trying to work it out in my mind all over again. Needless to say, I won't hesitate to read more Palahniuk now I've started. show less

Is Chuck Palahniuk a genius, a literary stylist, a pop culture icon, the next J.G. Ballard, or a gross-out artist extraordinaire?

At times none of the above, at times all, there is one thing he is definitely not: boring.

From his first novel Fight Club onward, the cult author has careened through the grotesque underbelly of literature, spilling forth tale after tale of the disenfranchised, the violent, and the bizarre, with decidedly mixed results. While Diary displayed an author in firm control of his material, his last effort Haunted was spectacularly uneven, a set of stories that sacrificed his talent on an altar of stomach-churning imagery.

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey finds Palahniuk revisiting a favourite theme; the quest show more for spiritual meaning through the manipulation of violence. Along the way, he tosses in science-fiction themes, deformities, conspiracy theories, spider attacks, car crashes, the Tooth Fairy, possible zombies, and messianic complexes, to keep things from getting dull.

Presented as the memories of friends, enemies, and various intellectuals, Rant covers the short life of the legendary Buster ‘Rant’ Casey, pieced together, as one friend puts it, “out of the details we each had to dig up from the basement of the basement of the basement of our brains.”

Depending on whom you talk to, Buster was either a futuristic Huckleberry Finn, “the worst Patient Zero in the history of disease,” the most successful “naturopathic serial killer” ever, or various epithets unsuitable for public consumption. As Buster himself says, “You’re a different human being to everyone your meet.”

After a childhood that consists of intentionally courting death through rabies, Buster moves to the city, a futuristic urban nightmare where the population has been severed into a form of “segregation by time,” where people are either function at night or day, but not both. There, he participates in “Party Crashing,” a form of urban demolition derby that “rejects the idea that driving time is something to be suffered in order to achieve more useful and fulfilling activity.”

Buster seems content at first to revel in his twisted nature, working as an exterminator, collecting specimens of spiders, and quickly contaminating all around him with his unique strain of rabies. But inside the contradicting recollections of his monstrous deeds, there is a hint that Buster has transcended humanity, and a myth of biblical proportions may be taking shape.

Palahniuk gets a tremendous amount of mileage from sprinkling pop-cultural references throughout his outlandish plot. Alongside a liberal helping of William S. Burroughs and Philip K. Dick, Ballard’s controversial Crash (concerning sexual fetishists of car accidents) is the most obvious homage. Yet just when the plot finally appears to be straightening out, Palahniuk throws in thematic references reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s film eXistenZ and Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko.

The result is a plot that never stops, multiple points of view, shifting perspectives, contradictory information, nauseating side trips, truly dark wit, and a skewed take on humanity so warped that the effect on the reader verges on the vertiginous. It doesn’t make a lot of surface sense, but there is an intriguing undercurrent of logic that drives Rant’s increasingly preposterous events.

It can be best to look at Rant as a carnival, chock full of roller coasters, hucksters, human oddities, and fast food. It may not be to everyone’s tastes, and many will look upon its thrills as cheap and unworthy of discussion. But Palahniuk, acquired taste though he may be, knows his audience, and mixes the highbrow and lowbrow with aplomb and vigour. Like a carnival, you may feel queasy afterward, but you sure won’t forget that you visited. show less

this is my new favorite palahniuks novel, and probably the most sci-fi-ish one (i mean, hes always writing about our consumer driven society, but here hes for once literally depicting a plausible dystopian near future). it has everything i love about his particular kind of transgressional fiction: anti-social self-destructive characters, weird spurious data and urban myths, bodily fluids, surprising twists, religion, phylosophy and true love and, of course, bullet-sized wisdom-filled one-liners. but, in this case, it has also (warning: mild spoiler) time traveling! my fave topic ever! whats not to like?

Great book. It's confusing and kind of prickly, introduces cartloads of weird but strangely convincing ideas, changes pace and shape at every other corner and turns out to be something completely different from what it seemed to be. I really liked it. It was full of weirdness and urgency, and flashes of slightly manic humour, it pinpointed society issues and pried apart (I want to say dissected) all those nice little pretensions and duct-taped ideas people keep up to keep things tidy and sane. It wasn't a gross-out fest like haunted, nor did it annoy me like Diary; for me it's up there with Lullaby and Fight Club. Highly recommended to everyone who knows what they're getting into with Mr. Palahniuk, and to anyone else who likes reading show more something a little off from time to time. Also: pay attention. It'll help hugely if you don't want to end up with your brain in a knot. show less

E' farsi prendere per mano da una persona in apparenza mite e interessante, e trovarsi di colpo in un delirio pervasivo e illuminante. Poi ti volti indietro, e non ricordi piu' la strada che hai fatto per arrivare fin li'. Sai che il tuo futuro di oggi non sara' piu' uguale al futuro che avevi ieri, e non è solo una citazione. E' oltre. L'immaginazione di P. è oltre ogni ragionevole limite, come la sua bravura e capacità nel redigere un romanzo orale. Ma questo è il meno. P. è un creatore di universi: l'ha gia' fatto con Fight club, con Ninna Nanna, con Survivor. Questo è il suo ultimo universo, ma sembra quasi che ci sia stato e sia tornato indietro, per raccontarcelo cosi' bene - e si parla di scansioni temporali, non [solo] di show more stati d'animo. show less

This is a strange, strange book. I'm not exactly sure what it's about - You get time travel, Party Crashing (Demo Derby on the streets), "night" and "day" people, and Rabies - all told in a style of people being "interviewed" about the main, character, "Rant".

This is one of those books that I think you will feel strongly about. The writing was spot on - but it is so difficult to figure out what was happening. Also, the dichotomy of the city vs the rural small town was difficult to figure out. Based on the first part of the book, I made the assumption that it was set in the 1960's or 70's. But, the way the city was set up - a bit of dystopian city vibe going, with the residents in the city divided into classes who can only move during show more night or day, to keep crowds manageable - it was very odd.

The secondary story about Rabies - I really don't get it. Maybe there isn't anything to get. I just don't know. But the book is complete, all is explained, and it ends in a way that makes, sense kind of.

So - Did I like it? I'm not sure. I found it intriguing - but also found it distasteful. A bit uncomfortable. I won't be reading it again - but I will keep an eye out for this author. show less