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ISSUE #33.25 • BOOKS • REVIEW

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey


Chuck Palahniuk gets cine-man-tic, again.

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BY KELLY CLARKE | kclarke at wweek dot com

[May 2nd, 2007] Sometimes, when I'm driving real fast on a steep road, I start veering toward the guardrail. Playing chicken with myself. But Chuck Palahniuk has got me thinkin' that I've got it all wrong.

I should be aiming at the other cars.

In the author's latest gut-twister of a novel, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey (Doubleday, 320 pages, $24.95), Palahniuk, longtime Portlander and the brain behind Fight Club, introduces us to Party Crashing, the latest way disaffected Americans in the near future connect—by stalking and then slamming the shit outta each other's vehicles. He also introduces us to Party Crashing's Messiah, Buster (Rant) Casey, who has kick-started a national rabies epidemic (turning Americans into the likes of the drooling, shambling extras from 28 Days Later) by getting high from animal bites and stealing kisses from lonely country girls—and their mothers.

True to its "oral bio" tag, Rant's odd entrance and odder exit from this world are revealed through scattershot interviews with Rant's mysterious father, his gimp dominatrix girlfriend, his Crash posse and a bemused "historian" named Green Taylor Simms, among others. It's a winsome, sprawling horror of a book, worth following along with if only to find out how the disparate threads of infectious disease, ritualistic auto carnage and probable matricide will knit together. And, oh yes, they do.

In Portland conversations, Palahniuk's name gets mentioned with a smirk, denoting that, really, what has the pulpy author ever done besides give director David Fincher the raw material for the most entertaining man-cinema ever?













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But to dismiss Palahniuk as film fodder is to also name his biggest charm: His books are movies. His high-octane, blood-spattered prose transmits sharper visions than a big-budget horror flick. His heroes, ranging from terrorizing cross-dressers (Invisible Monsters) and schizoid Fight Clubbers, to—who can forget—boys who lose their lower intestines to pool pumps mid-orgasm (Haunted), are juicy roles begging to be cast (if an NC-17 rating didn't stop them first). Rant's choppy oral-history style serves to highlight the author's strengths: Jumping readers straight into the action, leaving character development to be gleaned from inference or anecdote.

The book also highlights Palahniuk's weaknesses. The themes are no surprise (gore; the evils of a disconnected, consumer-driven society). And, sure enough, somewhere between the revelation that all Americans are now outfitted with Matrix-style multimedia ports and the theory that Mr. Casey just may be his own grandfather, the narrative begins to devolve into a muddle of government conspiracy theories. Luckily, before it goes over the cliff, Rant's whiplash ride is wild enough to make you want to grab your own car keys and go party.

Chuck Palahniuk reads from Rant 7 pm Wednesday, May 2, at the Bagdad Theater, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 236-9234. $24.95 (includes a copy of Rant ).

 

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Jeff Taylor  writes on May 3rd, 2007 9:31am

Missed the reading at the Bagdad, dammit. The movie is likely to be a smash; Americans already fight with their cars. Anyway, no government-conspiracy theory sounds too preposterous these days.

Occasionally you find out something you have been wondering about for a long time, and then it is your duty to share. Someday, somewhere, someone will ask you who wrote Fight Club, the name of the author, and you will have to answer verbally. Chuck's last name is pronounced, according to reliable informants, as "PALL-uh-nuk."

I have heard five incorrect variations, including Puh-LOON-ik and a rhyme for colonic, but it is a relief to finally get it down right --I hope.

Rant is destined to become a great movie, probably filmed in Portland if there's any justice, and then media people with microphones will be buttonholing random Portlanders to ask if they've read the book. If this happens to you, be prepared; Keep Portland Hip; pronounce Chuck Pahliunuk's name correctly and effortlessly.

Travis Smith  writes on May 19th, 2007 8:00pm

Just hearing about this book makes me want to read it. it just seems like our society as a whole is trying to cover how screwed up it is, even tho no one knows it themselves. i think it really takes books like these to connect us back with reality. i mean, what else is going to do that than a book about disconnected and disturbed people? When i read fight club, it really made me think. maybe we shouldnt be going with the crowd, we should be waking it up. or maybe even bitch slapping it. god bless Chuck Palahniuk, cause i cant, my reason being i cant pronounce his name in the first place.

Clayton  writes on Jun 8th, 2007 1:25am

What a ride! I thought the book was very anticlimatic until about half an hour after I finished reading it, when all of a sudden everything hit me. All the underlying elements and themes that had subconciously been embedded into the back of my mind not realizing it. I was puzzled but then all the pieces came together and painted this insanely brilliant image and message that I had completely missed. It was a fantastic reaction to what I thought was disappointing. Chuck Palahniuk blew my mind with this one- and I loved it. The way he looped everything together and his masterful technique on character development was shear genius. Read the book.

Mayhem  writes on Jun 26th, 2007 8:23pm

I read the book. If you were the great-grandfather, grandfather and father of a child, wouldn't that child be incredible inbred and deformed? I had a few issues with the whole thing. I appreciate the creativity but tees were left uncrossed.

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