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Rant: An Oral Biography Of Buster Casey Chuck Palahniuk Doubleday Three out of four stars
Buster Casey is dead. Friends called him "Rant" -- the sound a person makes when they vomit. Unknown in life but glorified through death, Rant Casey lives on in more ways than one -- but I've said too much.
Chuck Palahniuk's new novel, Rant: An Oral Biography Of Buster Casey, takes the form of an oral biography. Hence, Rant's life unfolds through the mouths of various eyewitness accounts. Channeling so many different voices into the same narrative causes problems for Palahniuk, but generally, the reader can feel a sense of solidarity in the main contributors. Utilizing this format also gives Palahniuk a great template to juxtapose ideas to scenes to action.
Granted, Palahniuk, still riding the fame of Fight Club -- and I do mean the movie more so than his book -- has never been a great prose stylist. Yes, he's improved, Rant exhibits this, but Palahniuk's books have never been about great writing as much as thematic content. Instead, the innovative and often gripping ideologies (most often anarchy, masculinity and death) surrounding his texts become immediately relevant to those searching for separation from a seemingly uniform and drone-like society.
Buster Casey is Palahniuk's new Tyler Durden. He is a troubled youth who seeks out coyotes, snakes, spiders, etc. in order to be bitten, eventually becoming the catalyst of a rabies epidemic among all humankind; a fatalist who participates in "Party Crashing," a club where groups of people crash cars into each other for fun and an enigma who can tell exactly what someone ate a week ago by smelling their sperm or bloody tampon. Ewww.
What's best in Rant is displayed through the polar issues of godlessness versus godliness, and who draws/defines the line. Rant may not be a perfect book, but none of Palahniuk's books have been. What's important is that Palahniuk is at his best form when he's at his worst.
