RANT: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey
Chuck Palahniuk
Doubleday
Fiction
ISBN-10: 0385517874
ISBN-13: 9780385517874

How would you cope with a society where it is more and more difficult to find meaning and happiness? How would you rebel against a society that segregates its population? Would you plug a cord into the back of your head and consume the experiences of others? Would you dress up in costume and crash your car on purpose? Would you let rabid animals bite you for the high that comes from the pain and the resulting disease? Would you experiment with time travel to change your own history, to become god-like or even to ensure you had never been born?

Sure, these questions sound extreme or bizarre, but it's all to say that Chuck Palahniuk is back with another twisted parable on modern life.

RANT, written (as the subtitle suggests) in the form of an oral biography, is the latest novel from Palahniuk, Gen-X literary master and object of cult-like fascination.  It follows the short and intense life of Buster "Rant" Casey from the small American town of Middleton, where residents are always in danger of boredom and attacks from semi-feral dogs. Buster grows up with a father who seems distant and a mother who hides things like pins and paper clips in food. He takes to allowing bugs, spiders and (later) larger animals to bite him and at some point contracts rabies. He proceeds to spread a new strain of rabies through sexual contact to many of the girls in his school (and subsequently is known as a "super-spreader" of a rabies epidemic on scale with AIDS).

The charming and odd Buster is confined by rural life in Middleton and leaves for the big city where he meets up with a group of "Party Crashers." Party Crashers are a loose network (think of a Fight Club) of people who, on designated nights, drive around stalking each other and eventually crash their cars into one another. Party Crashing is a social event involving elaborate rituals, but it may have had a darker origin and a more outrageous goal than most participants realize. One night, while Party Crashing, Buster is killed in a fiery accident...or was he?

After his death, those who knew Buster --- whether from Party Crashing or his childhood in Middleton, and a host of others like his boss, landlord and even people who never met him at all --- are interviewed for this oral biography. Their portraits of Buster are strange and often contradictory. 

Like Tyler Durden from Palahniuk's most successful book, FIGHT CLUB, Buster Casey is a compelling anti-hero with a cult following even in death. In considering Buster's life, the interviewees also contemplate on a culture that emphasizes consumerism over substance, passivity over experience, and appearance over character. And, because this is a Chuck Palahniuk novel, there is also sex, violence and meditations on religion and mythology (not to mention explorations of linear time, drugs, life and death).

The style of RANT is choppy; we learn Buster's story as, paragraph by paragraph, various interviewees chime in. Characters are rarely heard from in more than two consecutive paragraphs, which makes for rough reading at the start. (To legitimize this unconventional style, Palahniuk refers us to actual nonfiction oral biographies such as EDIE by Jean Stein.) However, as the story unfolds, his rhythm strengthens and readers are soon swept up into the crazy and insightful tale.

RANT is one of Palahniuk's strongest novels, not quite as good as FIGHT CLUB or CHOKE, but far better than the recent HAUNTED. He doesn't really do anything new; the book follows his formula quite predictably. The exception to that is his examination of time travel as an event powerful enough to...well, I won't give that away! Diehard fans will find RANT a fun and interesting read from a most inventive and exciting writer. Those new to Palahniuk may be grossed out by his many references to boogers, body fluid, mass vomiting and used feminine hygiene products. Sometimes they get in the way of the story he is trying to tell, which, despite the gross-out factor, is worth telling.

   --- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

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