Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

Rant is very impressive. Palahniuk has already establuished himself as one of the greatest authors of our time, and now it feels as though he is showing off. This book is by far one of his best works. It is unpredictable, has amazing ideas and themes, and is a great story. A definate read, both for new fans and for the hardcore Palahniuk lovers.

Buster "Rant" Casey just may be the most efficient serial killer of our time. A high school rebel, Rant Casey escapes from his small town home for the big city where he becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. Rant Casey will die a spectacular highway death, after which his friends gather the testimony needed to build an oral history of his short, violent life. With hilarity, horror, and blazing insight, Rant is a mind-bending vision of the future, as only Chuck Palahniuk could ever imagine.

I'm in shock at the negative reviews of this one. I found it to be mind-exploding in only the way that great authors can achieve. What starts off as a simple story of a "serial" killer soon morphs into a great sci-fi satire with enough bends and twists to keep even the most literate guessing. Immediately finishing, I went back to the beginning to read again, find out what I missed the first time. Not for the light reader, this one really shines in Palahniuk library. Time travel, religion, rabies, population control, it's all tackled here! A close second to Invisible Monsters.

RANT: An Oral Bigraphy of Buster Casey is another wild Chuck Palahniuk E-ticket ride. Warning: You must be at least "this tall" and "this twisted" to stomach it. Buster "RANT" Casey can be best described as RABID--an adjective that means: 1. Irrationally extreme in opinion or practice 2. Furious, raging or violently intense 3. Affected with or pertaining to rabies 4. Mad--as in "crazy" Synonyms of the word RABID include: Berserk, bitten, corybantic, crazed, deranged, extreme, fanatical, fever-pitched, frantic, freaky, frenetic, furious, insane, mad, maniacal, obsessed, overboard, poisoned, radical, raging, sick, twisted, ultraist, violent, virulent and wild. Palahniuk delivers all this and more in his long-awaited novel "RANT." Not only is Rant Casey bitten, corybantic and violent... the entire story--and how it's told--is twisted, freaky and fever-pitched from start to finish. Palahniuk is known for writing outside-box-box, not just content but also literary style. In "HAUNTED" he tells 23 unique short stories by carefully threading them into the framework of a single larger story--23 strangers attening a writer's workshop. Palahniuk wrote "RANT" as an oral biography. The entire novel is a carefully arranged rotational chronology of short takes on Rant's life, from birth to death, as told by members of Rant's family, friends, radio DJ's, medical experts, law enforcement, priests, and the dozens of people that have never met him but swear on their life that they intimately know him. Rant's no hero, but Palahniuk twists him into some sort of an iconoclast. The interview-like format reads a lot like a documentary. And like "CHOKE" and "SURVIVOR," Palahniuk peppers the storyline with medical ramblings. Are they medical facts or just part of Palahniuk's fiction? I'm not sure. I've come to wonder if Palahniuk actually knows what he's talking about or if he's just a master at playing his readers. I'll just assume medical descriptions are factual-which beats constantly putting the book down mid-sentence to look up stuff on Wikipedia. "RANT" comes close to being one of my favorite Palahniuk books. It's definitely in the top three with "CHOKE" and "INVISIBLE MONSTERS."

This book didn't really totally kick in (for me) until about 1/2 way through. Then I was blown away completely by the complexity and thematic richness. Amazing stuff!