Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

Rant sheds light on yet another sick subculture of impossibilities... the story was raw, completely unpredictable, and very unsettling. It was beyond Chuck. I've never written a review about a book before, but I feel I'm compelled to because it got an overall 3.5 stars. Apparently only us "nighttimers" tried to bring this experience some justice.

CP is the man. A fantastic look at character and time, linear or othewise. A joy to read from start to finish. And the first part of a trilogy. CP is a literary hero to me, and I look forward to more of his work.

The style this book is written in is very original.
The story is side crackingly hilarious, with the usual striking Palahniuk imagery. The way he constructs sentences is unbelievable. The poetic power of some of the writing in Rant takes your breath away. There is typically mind bending Palahniuk story structure, true to his ever-excellent form.
Also, there's a fair bit of sex. You obviously can't go wrong.
There is also a cameo from Clive Warren and Rebecca De Mornay, where they actually take a select hemisphere from each of their own brains, and combine it to make a beast brain that is completely irrational, based totally on emotion and intuition, because alas, they each selected the right hemisphere of their brain when forming the combination monster brain.

What has happened to one of the most promising authors of recent times? He appears to have decided that the success of his books lies in how many bodily fluids he can fling into inappropriate places. Sex and violence are great in service of a story, but when you start hanging semen-filled condoms on barbed wire fences for no reason except the grossness of it, I would suggest rethinking your approach. "Rant" reads more like someone who is trying to imitate Palahniuk's style - and failing -- than a novel by the man himself.

Whatever your favorite title by this author may be, I doubt any of you will champion this new submission by Mr. Palahniuk as your favorite.

In it there's a reiteration of a few thoughts touched upon in his books `Stranger Than Fiction' and `Haunted,' intermingled with what appears to be a strong influence by J.G. Ballard's apocalyptic fetishes ( The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard ) written in the style of Capote.

This may be a personal problem, but I find that his writing technique doesn't much lend itself to long-term memory. Be it his interspersing of the narrative in small bits in every chapter, it's difficult for me, even a few days after finishing one of his novels to recall the plot flow.
Which is a shame, because I can RECall laughing out loud at points, but stumble for words when trying to relay it to someone else.

What's worrisome to me in this book is its consistent references to `Fight Club.' I can't put my finger quite on it, but referencing a pop culture phenomenon that you yourself created while simultaneously trying to create another seems a bit `hack-ish' - for lack of a better word.
He goes so far as to spend nearly 3 chapters outlining the rules of this new car-rendition of `fight club,' in which obvious care and consideration was put towards the safety of his readers whom I expect he hopes will mimic said game, as we have his others.

But something sad happens when you obediently follow an author through the course of their career (I have all of his first editions signed.) It dawns on you; that perhaps to begin with they had wonderful things to say and you were glad to hear them, but you see a very strong equation to their story telling.
With Palahniuk it's simply this:

1. Anti-hero is at odds with environment.
2. Anti-hero then participates in seemingly masochistic acts (sometimes nudged along by a guru that is somehow blood related) to achieve an enlightenment fitting to environment.

He does try something slightly different in this book, towards the end, which I won't mention details - I don't like getting into plot - he deals with some scientific theories through these characters telling the story. It seems a little last minute, usually he leaves the gurus wisdom up for interpretation, but here he attempts to explain, and really does a poor job. I really don't know if philosophical and scientific explanations will ever be his strong point.

Of course its entertaining, and well written, and funny, but there's not much to walk away with here.

As usual, Palahniuk delivers some truly strange and twisted characters and plot lines. Tooth Fairies, Egyptian tomb bats, spider bite boners, rare coins, droolers and Easter eggs. This one is a tale of Rant Casey, told thru multiple personal stories from his friends and acquaintances. Odd and engaging. Almost lost me at about the 75% mark, but I stuck with it and it pulled back together. Palahnuik can definitely write and his work is quite frustrating, entertaining and brilliant and nonsense (in a good way), all at the same time. Dude is not right in the head. 4 Stars.

WTF?!? Holy ****!! Yup, Rant is quintessential Palahniuk. Shout “birth certificate” in a crowded theater of conspiracy theorists. Drop 10,000 bloody syringes on a hypochondriac convention. Rant is chaos built to exacting standards and the tightest tolerances: “Listen to that door close, sir. Ka-thunk. That’s what you want to hear.” Begin with dueling banjos and finish with a DeLorean parked in the handicapped spot at the Parthenon. It’s like deploying a spike strip in front of Tebow, filling fire extinguishers with napalm and eating a jar of mayonnaise for real (not the vanilla pudding trick). Chuck Palahniuk leaves no stone unturned, no orifice unplumbed, no excretion unapplied. Self-righteous amorality? I think so, but I honestly can’t tell for sure. Here, you take a look; just don’t touch anything. Did I wash my hands? Can’t remember if I washed my hands. I’ll be right back: going to wash my hands. He makes Nero look like Danny Thomas. It’s like watching that cup video at Baskin Robbins. Or like combining “To Catch A Predator” with “Let’s Make A Deal.” Holy **** .

Rant isn't my favorite Palahniuk novel, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's a very mixed bag, and Palahniuk is still one of the best weird writers out there, so you're in good hands. It's the story of Rant Casey, a strange kid from a bumpkin town who enjoys rebelling against the small-minded status quo in weird and gross ways. Rant extorts his way out of town and heads to the city, where he joins up with a secret society of young anarchistic rebels. There's nothing terribly new about all that. It sounds like Palahniuk's regular modus operandi, right?

Except it sort of takes place in a science fiction world. The city Rant arrives in is segregated by a curfew, so the upper class lives during the day and the lower class during the night. Also, there are no TVs or books, as everyone in this future can download experiences and entertainment through ports in their skulls. As a child, Rant loved infecting himself with all manner of venoms and viruses, and as an adult he becomes the patient zero of a rabies epidemic. Some people become zombie-like "droolers", but the real problem is that the rabies affects people's brain-ports, which opens their minds to a phenomenon that the Illuminati-like "Historians" don't want them to know about. Only that's not completely vital to Rant's motivations. He has an obsession with gross things, and he relishes in breaking down the boundaries society puts up, but it's not the world he's rebelling against. It's himself.

Confused yet? It gets weirder. The main twist to Rant is the oral biography form. Palahniuk uses the points-of-view of many different people with different opinions of who Rant was. These people sometimes give conflicting stories. As Rant's backstory becomes more complex, it becomes harder to tell what's really going on with our protagonist. I get the choice of style, but it becomes more of a hindrance when paired with such a complex plot. Time travel is a hard enough subject to deal with. It's convoluted and hard to organize, then pair that with elements of Fight Club (a secret society of misfits) and Choke (a modern outsider being a real-life messiah/superman), and the whole thing becomes a little confusing. Rant is a good enough story, but with so many clashing ideas and an experimental structure, the plot never quite meshes into a whole.

Chuck Palahniuk has long since battled the sway of tricky writing infused with gimmicky story-telling devices that hamper what is otherwise spot-on social criticism. Indeed, his recent outings Snuff and Pygmy are essentially painfully-constructed plot devices, with very little in the way of originality. Pure style over substance. Other earlier works, such as Diary (a epistolary coma account) succumbed to this same tactic of attempting to garner support from readers simply searching for the next avant-garde, easily digestible...well, Rant. The book Rant, while it is an oral biography comprised of about twenty or so POV's, manages to provide an interesting story along with the structural tomfoolery.
The story centers on Rant Casey, a small-town freak boy who gets his kicks shoving his hands into spider holes to intentionally get infected with venom. We watch Rant grow up, terrorizing his neighborhood and possibly committing crimes as serious as murder. Apart from the gruesome goings-on, the multiple narrator scheme works to keep things interesting. Consistently flopping back and forth between unreliable people, we as readers are left wondering who is giving us the straight truth- if anyone is at all.
Aside from the fascination with poison-secreting creatures, Rant develops other talents as well. He can, for example, tell what a woman ate for breakfast by going down on her. This and other animal abilities bring him into the national forefront; not to mention he incites a plague of rabies, the victims of which Palahniuk delights in calling "werewolves." There are several scenes of bloody mayhem during this outbreak that are delivered with wit and come off as pretty amusing. As does the emerging plot of midnight car crashes resulting in some very strange, Vonnegut-on-meth plot developments.
This is a bloody, unsettling ride with one of the most graphic, undeniably warped rape scenes I've ever encountered in mainstream literature. There are disaffected characters intrigued by the idea of transcending their futile existences, often by the most extreme means possible. There is humor, but only of the darkest ilk. The book is, in other words, quintessential Palahniuk. While it may be lighter on social commentary than say Survivor or the indelible Fight Club, it still packs an emotional wallop, in some sense aided by its kaleidoscopic delivery. For those thrill-seekers jaded perhaps by trudging through one of Palahniuk's recent aforementioned travesties, this one might just keep you in his briny, blood-scarred boat a little longer, clinging to the pages and hoping not to capsize.

Look, if you are one of those people who consider themselves "fans" of an author's work so long as it is constantly the same, then forget all about this one. Don't read it expecting Fight Club. In fact, don't read any book by Palahniuk expecting Fight Club but Fight Club. He is a talented writer, with more to offer than the same book reprinted fifty-thousand times. Most of the reviews so far written for this book seem to have been written by the above-mentioned sort of fan. If these same people had opened their minds a bit, they might have noticed that "RANT" is one of Palahniuk's best books. The style is interesting--it is written in the "Oral Biography" tradition, which if you are unfamiliar with, has been done by many authors and is incredibly hard to do--and the story itself is complex and well done. Chuck does a great job of fleshing out the characters and giving them unique voices that seem authentic and remain consistent throughout the book. Anyone paying attention should have no trouble realizing who is who without having to reference the names over and over again. Sure, some of the stuff in the book is a little gross, but is that really a reason to give it a bad review? If you don't like gross stuff in your fiction, don't read ANYTHING by this author. But going on the store and saying a book sucks because it grossed you out is about as smart as saying television sucks because it offends you. You don't have to read this book, or watch television. Nobody will twist your arm. That said, I reccomend this book to anyone who likes to see a great author stretching his arms and experimenting a bit. The end result is definietely worth the price.

How many reviews start out "I really wanted to like this?" I love Fight Club: A Novel,Survivor: A Novel,Choke and Survivor: A Novel. I really like Invisible Monsters and thought the Haunted, while weaker was still okay. So that's where I stand on the Palahniuk spectrum.

Rant is just too much of the same. Now admittedly, all authors have their favorite themes and topics. Some, such as Tolstoy, even employ strikingly similar characters. But if you are going to employ the same themes repeatedly, they must be developed over each novel. For example, many of the topics Joyce addresses in Finnegan's Wake can be found in Dubliners. But the Wake has refined those ideas. Rant is just a retelling of Palahniuk's other novels.

I guess I'm just disappointed there isn't more meat on these bones. His earlier works were brilliant and this one seems a pale reflection.

It is a pretty quick and easy read, and features all the dark humor and macabre that is prominently featured in Palahniuk's other work. If that is what you are looking for, enjoy.

Just like most folks reading this review I was introduced to Chuck via the movie Fight Club and subsequently read the book. Such an amazing and unique book leaves you wanting for more quality fiction from the author. Unfortunately, many of Chuck's post-Fight Club novels fell flat. After reading Invisible Monsters and Survivor I gave up on Palahniuk. Those novels were both just re-hashes of the same atmosphere and perspective on the world that was displayed so masterfully in Fight Club.

So I picked up Rant on a whim, not expecting much. I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, this is another Palahniuk book. You can expect all of the same tricks you've found in his earlier works: Graphic descriptions of violence, extreme social deviance, the whole deal.

But there are a few new tricks that overcome the standard Palahniuk monotony and make this book worth reading. The Oral Biography format is a very interesting approach to writing. It allows Chuck to jump around from scene to scene, unveiling new plot pieces in a roundabout way so that every few chapters there is a moment of realization where you stop and think "Oh! Now I get what happened there! Cool!"

Something else that I never caught on to until about halfway through the book is that this is a Sci-Fi novel. I didn't really expect that from Palahniuk. It's set in a not-so-distant future with a few pieces of new technology and a fairly extreme political climate in America.

My biggest criticism about the unusual writing style is that it got very repetitive at times. Every quote from a different person seemed to have the same lead in. I can't count how many times I read "Promise you won't tell, but..." or "Would you believe this? ..." I don't really understand why he had to begin every quote with a throwaway sentence.

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It was different enough from Chuck's other works to be interesting, while similar enough to give that dose of Palahniuk's style that we all enjoy.

Oh, Chuck, is there any cluster of circumstances that you can't craft into a confusing collection with a barely recognizable storyline? Rant is a historical account of the protagonist's life told by those around him, friends, parents, lovers...etc. Throughout the first half of the book the narrative revolves around Rant's childhood and his various oddities that serve him in the future of the book. As a child, he starts by stuffing his arms any hole in the ground where it appears that an animal might live. Cramming his arm into the dark spaces and petting the soft dark fur, or the smooth scaled skin until he feels the teeth sink into his wrist. In these endeavors he contracts rabies, but also experiences his first adrenaline rushes. The bites and venom become a drug for him. Of course he invariably contracts rabies, and becomes a carrier.

In the second portion of the book, the narrative switches to the future and the story takes a drastic and confusing turn. In the future he lives in a segregated society consisting of daytime dwellers and the working class night time dwellers. Rant meets fellow night dweller Echo Lawrence and learns how to find joy and a new adrenaline rush. The nighttimers partake in an activity called Party Crashing, or the intentional act of roadway demolition derby. Party Crashing is a lifestyle, and Chuck teaches us all of its nuanced rules. We ride along in cars with Christmas trees glued to the roofs, and Just Married cars packed with Party Crashers wearing thrift store tuxedos and wedding dresses. Like any animal suitors in the wild, the more elaborate the car design, the more Crashers it seems to attract.

In yet a third turn, Rant spreads rabies as though it is a venereal disease and the whole book takes a twist into time travel. Perhaps the oddest and most interesting hypothesis posed in the book comes when Rant discovers that if he can travel back in time (of course by Party Crashing in a blaze of fireball glory) and stop a former version of himself from having less than honorable relations with his mother, then he can prevent his birth and therefore become a God without a beginning or an end. An odd way to attain a supernatural existence and a distinct turn on the usual concept of, if you go back in time and accidentally kill your grandfather then you will have never been born and will disappear on the spot.

What I liked: Party Crashing. Reading about it totally made me want to be a part of this non-existent lifestyle, akin to the way that reading Fight Club made me want to find an underground fighting league. Chuck has an amazing way of creating these little collectives of people that are odd in their own right, but also amazingly free spirits that you just want to be a part of.

What I didn't like: Ok, so the way this book was formatted was confusing to say the least. Each section of the story was told by accounts or recollections of various characters. While this was at first confusing, once you get the hang of it, it really seems to work. Also, the storylines...oh the storyline..., just trying to recount what happened in this book, I left out a few arcs. There was just too much here...it seemed like about five books instead of one.

Last word: This book is good. While it is no Fight Club, no Choke, no Diary, not really even a good Invisible Monsters, it is all in itself supremely odd and unapologetically Chuck.

Reviewed by Scott

Rant is mind blowing with graphically gruesome imagery. The completely in-your-face no-holding-back down-and-dirty tone of the novel brings an naked authenticity to an otherwise unrealistic premise.

The story of Rant is told in a kind of multi-person interview format that manages to show many sides of the "narrators" without distracting from the main focus of the plot. I loved the way the book was laid out and found it very easy to read and follow.

Rant is fascinating. Just, wow. It's filled with so many shocking reveals that I was constantly trying to figure out what I knew and how everything fit together as each piece of he puzzle was added.

Rant covers a multitude of disturbing topics (the rape scene being the most memorable in my mind) and will not appeal to all readers. Rant is raw. There is nothing fluffy or flowery here. I am in awe of this perfectly creepy, disgusting yet engrossing book.

A tragic-comic thriller ride, Rant is about Buster "Rant" Casey and is filled with author Palahniuk's dark, blacker-than-night humor, cynical and withering social commentary, as well as stomach-churning, diarrheic-inducing details. Every odd ball he ever encountered is interviewed to display their own moral ineptitudes as well as what they thought about Rant.

The name Rant comes from the sound kids make vomiting and Casey will always be remembered with that nickname even after he ends his life with a blaze of glory in a stupendous car accident. Palahniuk proved himself with Fight Club and six other novels. His social commentary is witty and intelligent, as the car dealer says, "...but every person is obsessed with himself. You are your own favorite hobby. You're an expert on you." Palahniuk is always on the money with his societal observances.

There is a divided culture described here, those of the Daytimers and those of Nighttimers and Rant's group, the Party Crashers. The Crashers are a group of wild-living crazy men and women who challenge authority, look out for police and are reckless beyond belief, which is probably what Rant got in their car handing over an 1887 gold coin for gas money. His token to getting the inside scoop on the fast-paced, dangerous life that a serial killer would be quite at home with and welcome. Yes, Rant is a serial killer. After his death many are shocked, but one thing is for certain: he was headed that way long before he hit adulthood.

Armchair Interviews says: It takes a certain countenance to deal with Palahniuk's writing, if you have the stomach for grossness, you'll love this book.

Unfortunately Rant reminds me a lot of a casserole one makes of various leftovers they have in their fridge, each having nothing to do with one another and not being enough to make a meal on their own, but combined in a pot and baked make for a tasty casserole. Well, this one is kinda half baked. Perhaps I need to read it again. I just felt as though there were WAY too many elements that seemed tossed in, rather than properly integrated and fleshed out. The book is quite ambitious and mostly succeeds, but it still just fell a bit flat for me.

I have to admit that I have a much higher standard for Chuck Palahniuk's novels, because I love them all. When I read one of his stories I feel like I read an epic. Something happened. People went through an ordeal and were changed by it. And that fits this book as well... its just... something seemed missing. I still thoroughly enjoyed the book, and still recommend reading it.

A charismatic man reviled as insane goes back in time and ends up raising himself and changing history.

RANT is a great character study created by a choir of voices. There is raucous humor here (soaked in bodily effluvia) and wrenching intimate moments. Black comedy and bleaker tragedy co-exist. Thanks to the structure (an oral history), the tale loops and swoops and turns in on itself so that we can pick and choose our perspective. Still, this is a fascinating story wrapped around a truth-telling character.

Rant is a peculiar book, and the first thing that will hit you when you first read it is the structure. Palahniuk uses an oral biography structure, with a few dozen characters giving testimonies to an unseen biographer...in this area, Palahniuk does a great job, weaving characters' stories together into a coherent plot, along with throwing in a few non sequiturs in the mix. This structure keeps the story interesting and makes it a very fast read.

Palahniuk deals with a lot of sci-fi concepts here, something he hasn't really approached in his previous works. For the first two thirds of the book, he builds up these concepts, leading the reader to believe there will be a huge mind blowing finale in store at the end of the book. The thing is, the book never delivers the big moment, and the concepts that Palahniuk brought to the table so well are soon dropped in favor of thinly veiled political diatribes and loose ends. Everything about time travel, about rabies, about Rant's unique breeding habits, it all gets dropped by the end. It honestly feels like Palahniuk really tried to put together an incredible story, but then he rushed the last sixty pages of the book.

Chuck is back! I can happily and unreservedly recommend "Rant" -- to fans of Palahniuk, that is.

After "Haunted", which had many interesting moments, but which otherwise failed to really come together for me, "Rant" is a satisfying, interesting, challenging read. The narrative structure is definitely different, taking the form of transcripts from oral interviews about a character who's no longer on the stage to represent himself. As a result, what you get is a tangled projection, at times incomplete and often contradictory, of that central character, as seen through the eyes of the people who knew him. And by the way, this narrative technique subtly echoes the neural transcripts described *within* the story.

As the story progresses (NO SPOILERS), it gradually undertakes a systematic deconstruction and reconstruction of the character of Buster Casey, which continues to evolve in unexpected ways throughout. The nice thing about this process is that it makes you keep returning (in your mind) to previous points in the narrative, realizing they didn't mean quite what you thought at the time.

There's also the unique metaphor of "boosting peaks", and once you've read the book, you'll see how that metaphor applies to the perceptual process of reading Rant's story through the senses of people *other* than Rant himself. There's also the metaphor of the car salesman -- in which Wallace Boyer is essentially a representative of the author, Chuck Palahniuk, himself. Like Boyer, Palahniuk carefully, and skillfully, directs readers through a series of "control questions", "embedded commands", and "pacing", taking them exactly and only where he wants them to go.

The novel explores some big, mind-bending ideas, too, all with a vintage Palahniuk backdrop. Surreal touches like the "Sex Tornado", "Animal Fishing", and "Party Crashing" will remind you of other Palahniuk novels, while the voices of the characters in "Rant" are rather different. They remind me of the characters in Mark Richard's "The Ice at the Bottom of the World", which I've also reviewed (and this is meant as a very favorable comparison). Other aspects remind me of the postmodern elements of a Don DeLillo. Also, because of the narrative structure, the novel is *all dialogue*, and no description (except for what you get in dialogue). It's a little bit more like a play than a novel in that way. Very interesting, and usually successful.

An added bonus: Palahniuk manages to put a reference to his own "Fight Club" into the novel, evoking it as a cultural artifact in the world Rant Casey inhabits.

By far my favorite book.

Stop reading reviews for it right now, though. Most of the ones I've read contain spoilers, which, believe you me, you don't want for this book.

Now on to the actual book. You probably already (think you) know what the book is about, so I'm not going to give a summary. Don't have expectations going into the story. They're probably going to fall apart less than halfway through, anyway. I really can't think of anything to say other than read this. It is true that Chuck re-uses some themes and plot devices from other books (modern messiahs and self very destructive hobbies) but he does so in a way that still sounds fresh. Seeing the events unfold and connect has been one of the most satisfying things I have lately, or ever, for that matter.

My only complaint is that most of the character's "voices" sound very similar.

Combining snake bite-induced erections with car crash-induced time travel and a whole host of other bizarre and almost realistic events, Chuck Palahniuk has created another character in his universe of strangeness with Rant Casey.

The story unfolds as a biography of Rant after his death, strung together through snippets of interviews with dozens of his close friends and neighbors. It starts off simply enough: an odd little boy in middle America causes quite a stir as he grows up by getting into mischief like collecting other people's teeth; purposely getting bit by snakes, spiders, and rodents; and using real animal blood and entrails as part of a community haunted house. Palahniuk's simple language and townie slang kept me engaged and enjoying the yarn.

Soon enough, Rant moves to the city, and we find out we're actually in a futuristic world where people "port in" to experience entertainment, reminiscent of the video games from David Cronenberg's eXistenZ or the "feelies" from Brave New World. There's also "Party Crashing," a game people play where they crash their cars into each other. When Palahniuk drops this unusual character of Rant into this even more out of the ordinary world, it's inevitable the story is going to get much more complex and interesting.

What I have always enjoyed about Palahniuk's work is that his characters are incredibly bizarre but he always finds a way to speak through them about very real but seldom-expressed human perspectives. A lot of times it seems he can figure out some of my thoughts and perceptions and explain them to me, with more clarity and sensibility than I would've thought possible. This book is no different: Rant is pretty far from anyone or anything I've ever known, but because of Palahniuk's descriptions, Rant is still somehow familiar.

So, even though the story gets pretty twisted and out of control confusing near the end, it's still a very interesting read with a lot of unpleasant but likable characters.

Rant is by far my favorite Palahniuk character. He's funny, he's smart in a weird not-so-smart way, and he does things in ways that seem strange to everyone else but make perfect sense to him which is admirable.

Things aren't always as they seem tends to be a running theme in many of the books by Palahniuk that I've read, and this book is definitely no exception.

I really liked this book a whole lot and would really recommend it to anyone who wants to read a Palahniuk book. Don't read Fight Club first, read Rant.

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk ****

Written in a pretty unusual way for a novel Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey is one of Palahniuks crowning achievements as an author. Entertaining, funny, insightful, and always just a little bit odd.

The book chronicles the life of Buster 'Rant' Casey one of the worlds most notorious somethings. While not a mass murderer he might as well be. The story is told in spoken word interviews from the people who knew Rant best, or the ones who think they did. While every persons story conflicts with others it shows that we don't always see ourselves as others do.

While still not his best work, Rant is one of the top releases from UpChuck.

What keeps me coming back to Chuck Palahniuk is he always has me thinking. He's not an author you read once and put down, smiling and thinking "what a good story". He's an author that requires you to put some effort into unraveling lots of different ideas that sometimes conflict with what a character is saying. On that note, Rant was probably the most difficult Chuck book I have read thus far. Given I've only read 2 other Palahniuk novels, Fight Club and Choke, I still don't see how it can get any more brainbending than this. That last quarter of the book made my brain hurt but I loved it so much. Rant is definitely one I'll come back to and still be putting together no matter how many times I read it. While I believe there's a lot I missed and will have to reread to understand, it was definitely worth my money, no regrets on buying this one.

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk ****

Written in a pretty unusual way for a novel Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey is one of Palahniuks crowning achievements as an author. Entertaining, funny, insightful, and always just a little bit odd.

The book chronicles the life of Buster 'Rant' Casey one of the worlds most notorious somethings. While not a mass murderer he might as well be. The story is told in spoken word interviews from the people who knew Rant best, or the ones who think they did. While every persons story conflicts with others it shows that we don't always see ourselves as others do.

While still not his best work, Rant is one of the top releases from UpChuck.

What keeps me coming back to Chuck Palahniuk is he always has me thinking. He's not an author you read once and put down, smiling and thinking "what a good story". He's an author that requires you to put some effort into unraveling lots of different ideas that sometimes conflict with what a character is saying. On that note, Rant was probably the most difficult Chuck book I have read thus far. Given I've only read 2 other Palahniuk novels, Fight Club and Choke, I still don't see how it can get any more brainbending than this. That last quarter of the book made my brain hurt but I loved it so much. Rant is definitely one I'll come back to and still be putting together no matter how many times I read it. While I believe there's a lot I missed and will have to reread to understand, it was definitely worth my money, no regrets on buying this one.

What a fascinating read by a ridiculously talented author. Other than being a fan of the film version of his novel "Fight Club", I didn't know a whole lot about him. Now I know that he is a writer to greatly admire and envy. It took me a few pages to adjust to the experimental form this novel is written in, but once its hooks were in me the book never let go of my rapt attention. Slowly but surely it reveals its secrets, not showing you the little man behind the Wizard of Oz in one fell swoop, but rather, exposing the method behind the madness in brilliant little increments. By the end I was left in a joyous daze. My perception of reality will never be quite the same.

This book really delivered what I expected and that's nothing short of genius writing. I began reading this book after finishing Choke, which disappointed me, and I was in need of redemption in one of Chuck's books. The style of the book (similar to that of Capote) reads quickly: it's from multiple points of views of different people who knew Rant Casey. It reads like a play almost and between them all you capture the entire story of Rant Casey but still with just that little bit left at the end for you to decide for yourself. I absolutely loved this book and although it gets a little..out there, I still enjoyed the expected twist toward the end of the book. This book does what most of Palahniuk's books do, make you think about society, yourself, what we think about things and the possibilies. This book still has me thinking and this is the book that keeps Chuck at the top of the list of my favorite fiction authors.

Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favorite contemporary writers. In my opinion, I think he is destined to become known for many classics, including my two favorites: Survivor: A Novel and Fight Club: A Novel. "Rant" is a typical Palahniuk novel, and by typical I mean a incredible format and a story told only by the incredible lives of the characters that surround the hero (or anti-hero as the case may be).

"Rant" is told through the lives of those that encountered him, in the incredible, amazing, and tragic moments that defined his (and their) lives. I was not necessarily fond of the format throughout the duration of this book because at times some of the encounters are trivial at best. Knowing Palahniuk, I always thought there was something meaningful in the meaningless moments. Unfortunately, outside of further defining those characters and Rant himself, which I suppose is the whole point of the story.

It is a wonderful tale with a twist of the unnatural. Strung throughout the story is bits and pieces of the grand scheme of the direction of the story. You see it coming and know what is going on, but with the chaos and destruction of Rant's life pounding in every "testimonial," I almost refused to believe it.

This book is not in its own right a masterpiece, but it certainly further adds to the exceptional list of extraordinary books. It is a must read for Palahniuk fans, although for those out there, I would suggest the previously mentioned books as prerequisites for complete and total appreciation.

J.Stoner

Chuck might not be your favorite writer, so don't read him. I thought this was one of his stronger books, and I love them. It's so refreshing to see a novelist WAY outside the box, and the culture. These themes are not for everyone. If you like your violence served up with intelligence and very black humor, if you want to stretch your mind in unaccustomed ways, and if you are happy to see someone writing that is overtly critical of our consumerist and anesthetized culture, then step up to reading Chuck. If you like formulaic novels with plot points and plot reversals and clever tricks, then read elsewhere.

That being said, this novel is so innovative and so unique, that it deserves its share of accolades and awards for sheer audacity and stylistic flare. Chuck is one of a kind and we are lucky to have him so dedicated to stretching our minds in such darkly twisted directions. Chuck may have some agendas. So who doesn't? I applaud him for his brilliance and creativity and spirit and literary aplomb.

One of the things that Chuck Palahniuk is a master at doing through his books is giving you what filmmakers call "the willful suspension of disbelief". Most of those filmmakers will use that willful suspension as a prerequisite for allowing the movie to affect you - Palahniuk, however, makes it a part of the effect of his book. You close the book to put it down and have dinner or grab a cup of coffee and wonder - does time really exist in the way I think it does? is there a massive epidemic just on the verge of exploding into the population? is our socio-economic system just a more subtle way of doing the violence we used to do through racism?

Rant, a story told through soundbites, is part biography and part journalism. The book is written through short, paragraph long snippets from the people that knew the protagonist (of sorts), an anti-hero named Rant Casey. Like watching the nightly news, you'll see different (and sometimes differing) opinions on one thing that happened.

All of this makes it a phenomenal study in what we think "reality" really is, and how we come to the idea of "reality" through the stories that we tell. It brings up the question of if we can tell a story that is a lie and make it reality simply through telling the story well enough.

As a Christian reader, there's a lot to work with in Rant that comes along side faith and helps you to arrive at new questions, even if at sometimes those questions seem to be at first quasi-heretical. That's a normal Palahniuk trait, I've found. While he doesn't make anything too obvious, there is certainly an understanding of faith in Palahniuk's being and writing.

I certainly recommend Rant. It's a fun ride, especially after you get used to the "soundbite" writing. Enjoy!

Pros: Okay, so this Chuck Palahniuk fellow is an outstanding author and he plies you with his trade on the first three pages of this novel. When he wants to bring you somewhere, he takes you there and introduces you to real people who walk, talk, think, and care about things you may have never thought about. It's not the twists in a Palahniuk story that make it so good, it is the tactile reality of his characters and settings that set them apart from the vast majority of anyone writing today. When you read Rant, you are in a world of night, with snapping rapid jaws and lowlife celebrants who are too cool for the neon lights that show you their scars and pimples, living out their insignificant social plans of mayhem and stupidity, and I mean that in the best way. And once you have been picked up for this party of automobile accidents known as lives, you can't get out. It's glorious.

Cons: But Chuck, the twists are just getting hokey. This one is cornier than Fight Club's fairly smooth alter ego twist, and less believable than Invisible Monster's everyone is related twist. In a way, it combines both of these with some seriously bad psuedo-science. I mean, he could've just omitted explanation, and it might've flown. However, it crashes like a dreamliner full of flaming cow crap, and he keeps you going on for another 50 pages to reinforce how bad it really is. Somewhere in there is a genuinely good idea, and I really mean that. It dodges behind the crap, even the most ham-handed rape scene I've read lately, and almost surfaces. But alas, it's sinking into the same quagmire as the bad idea, so you just let it go.

Summary: I've complained a lot lately about great ideas being squandered by authors who should know better. Oddly, this is a poor idea made into something so close to great that it is seductive. You can learn a lot from it, if you can just not feel disappointed when the twist comes and invalidates any worth to the whole thing, while simultaneously hinting at the better idea that should've occupied its place. It's insanely bizarre and like other bizarre stupidities, such as Catch 22 or Catcher in the Rye, you're obligated to read it because it's a nouveau concept. Then go sit down and write the same story only better. It's not hard because he basically hands it to you. Seriously, read this book, get upset, and write something better.

Chuck Palahniuk has taken my mind through a ride that is hard to forget. This book is deep and philosophical on so many levels. The characters are amazing, you'll be hard-pressed to find similiar characters elsewhere. The plot is genius, a plot only Palahniuk could deliver. The idea of "creating the future" is refreshing, an interesting way of looking at the world around you. I have read this book two times now, and I would recommend re-reading this one because it is better the second time around. Rant is a mind-blowing book that should be read by everyone.

This book is a real treat. Palahniuk is a phenomenal talent. What I like most about his writing is that where other authors would pull back from a subject, he goes all the way and then some. I loved Fight Club and my brother lent me Rant, which I enjoyed just as much. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good writing AND fascinating story telling, with a caveat that the reader needs a strong stomach. No, it's not for everyone, but I highly recommend it and can't wait to read more. I'm off to start Choke!

Having read only Palahniuk's "Fight Club" (2 years before the film) previously and enjoyed it, I thought this book too would be found to be a breath of fresh air. Instead I came away from it feeling like Palahniuk is a one trick pony...He seems to seek to shock the reader with differing gross out scenarios and behaviors...Yet numbed by films like SAW 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, etc., etc., and seeing and hearing worse than Palahniuk's creations every night on the evening news, his prose no longer brings anything new to light...A sad reflection on our society it is but Palahniuk's worlds have become the everyday mundane...

The oral history style of the book is its best part, only seeing the protagonist from a distance, we never get inside his head, only hearing how others observed him...The plot itself reads like JG Ballard's Crash mixed with leftovers of Fight Club and a dozen other "shocking" novels...nothing new or earthbreaking here and you don't really get involved with the novel, merely skipping from page to page waiting for a character or event to care about...neither of which ever arrive...

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."