Pros: Crass, vulgar Palahniuk with a new literary presentation. Boogers and car crashes.
Cons: Disorienting to the new reader, typical plot twist to seasoned reader, weak ending.
The Bottom Line: Those new to Palahniuk will be marveled by the base language and vile characters. Veterans will appreciate the new presentation but won't be fooled by the same gimmick twice.
SpookyMonkey's Full Review: Chuck Palahniuk - Rant: An Oral Biography of Buste...
Jeff Pleat (Human Resources Director): According to our records, we engaged Buster Casey for two weeks in the capacity of dishwasher. By apparent coincidence, during the brief span of his employment with us, some sixteen dinner guests encountered foreign objects in their food. These ranged from steel paper clips to a buffalo nickel dated 1923.
Todd Rutz: The kid slides an arm inside the sock, all the way up to his skinny elbow. and he drags out a fistful of ... we're talking impossible coins. It wouldn't matter how bad they smell. a 1933 gold twenty-dollar in gem condition. A 1993 gold ten-dollar, uncirculated. An 1879 four-dollar piece, the Liberty with the coiled hair, near-gem condition.
The problem with Chuck Palahniuk as of September 1st, 2007, is that you can only be fooled by his novels once. Sure, he's a talented writer with a macabre lust and a knack for inventing beautiful characters and then smearing them into the cement, but every story he writes is essentially the same story.
What? I -loved- Fight Club! I'll stab you!
No, it's true. His stories have the same formula - create a novel character with a life under duress (whether self-inflicted or otherwise), make them meet people worse off than themselves and then hit the plot with the heaviest crowbar you can find, creating a plot twist that most, but not all, people will not be able to predict.
The challenge for someone who is trying to recommend a Palahniuk book to a new reader is trying to decide which of the books will have the greatest effect on a 'Niuk virgin, given that they're all scripted the same way.
What's so special about him in the first place?
It's a matter of presentation. Some writers like the omnipotent narrator, some prefer the third person reliable. Palahniuk writes like he's carving the words onto your face with a fork. He's vulgar, he's intense and there's not a lot you can do to get out of the narrative. You're pulled in, throttled a bit and then left in a gutter with ISBN numbers drawn on your backside.
I'm scared.
As you should be. Chuck is very aggressive storyteller. He uses plot devices not common among today's writers. He'll often make allusions to archaic concepts and then explain them in excruciating detail in the following sentence, as if responding to the reader's queries of 'Eh, what's this jerk on about?'. This gives two results - 1) The narrative is convincing and immersive and 2) You get the impression Chuck is doing it solely to stroke his ego in your face.
Get with the good on this, Monkey. All I'm smelling is bashing, which, ironically, is what you'll be in for if you talk smack.
A typical response. For all the gripes I've listed thus far, Palahniuk has received a fanboi-esque response to his works - and justifiably so. His novels are all original in content and wholly bizarre. Rant is a new concept for him, presenting the tales of a Buster 'Rant' Casey through the narratives of those who knew him. Past tense.
A novel about a dead guy? That's called a biography.
Yes. This separates itself from the back in that the story progresses, haphazardly, through chunky communications, notes, excerpts and dangling participles of a series of characters. Rant is dead and everyone has something to say about it.
Still not sold.
The thrill here is trying to determine exactly what the truth is. As people often do, the stories told about Rant are often exaggerated or outright twisted beyond recognition to cover up heinous truths or protect the reputation of those involved. The characters become unique through their retelling of past events and despite the fact that he never utters a word, Rant becomes a legend.
No fighting?
Fighting here is substituted for a hobby called "Party-Crashing". This is like Demolition derby with massive philosophical and ethical baggage. Depending on your level of involvement, it ranges from an excuse to crash into people or to find deeper meaning in your life.
Good enough.
Palahniuk's greatest accomplishment in this novel is creating a truly disgusting protagonist that not only invokes sympathy from the reader, but even tugs on the hearts strings enough to make one feel loss. Mourning. You will actually feel as though you've missed an experience in knowing Casey. He's sociopathic, twisted, vile and offensive to every sense, but there's undercurrents of innocence and purity.
I cried like a little girl when I read the Ugly Duckling. I'll probably do it reading this too.
Bring some Kleenex, little buddy. But back to the downside - once you're hooked onto Rant and trying to unravel the disorienting narrative (which refuses to follow any timeline progression in the least), you're left with an ending that does not tie up. Palahniuk poses a series of very complex dilemmas and mental paradigms and resolves them poorly or not at all.
You say that about a lot of books.
I feel that way about a lot of books. If I get to the last page and feel like I must have missed a detail or that I've been gypped a chapter, then it didn't end well. Palahniuk wrote a brilliant novel up until the last handful of pages and I felt let down. It is difficult for a reader to get invested in a character that is despicable enough only to find that things don't weigh in as they should have.
Would I be better off reading something other than this then?
I would advise anyone not familiar with Palahniuk to read at least one of his works. Those of you who have seen Fight Club like the creepy fanbois that you are should read at least one novel to get a sense of how graphic and crude Palahniuk can be while still weaving a delicate hand and making chronically human characters.
In terms of his works, where does this rank?
I find Diary and Choke to be his best works. The freshness of the presentation and overall grotesque nature of the novel brings this into third place.
Who can you compare Palahniuk to that I might have read before?
I was reminded several times of Vonnegut in presentation and diction while reading Rant. It has that same out-of-our-contemporary-mindset freshness that books like Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse Five yield.
I'm going to fight you later, I hope you know that.
Fine. Just don't spill my beer, ok?
Literary Fiction - Buster Rant Casey just may be the most efficient serial killer of our time. A high school rebel, Rant Casey escapes from his small ...More at Barnes and Noble
Palahniuk s mind-bending new novel takes the form of an oral history of Buster Rant Casey, who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of t...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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