Rant

an oral biography of Buster Casey

Hardcover, 320 pages

English language

Published Nov. 19, 2007 by Doubleday.

ISBN:
978-0-385-51787-4
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5 stars (1 review)

"Like most people I didn't meet Rant Casey until after he was dead. That's how it works for most celebrities: After they croak, their circle of friends just explodes...."Rant is the mind-bending new novel from Chuck Palahniuk, the literary provocateur responsible for such books as the generation-defining classic Fight Club and the pedal-to-the-metal horrorfest Haunted. It takes the form of an oral history of one Buster "Rant" Casey, who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of our time."What 'Typhoid Mary' Mallon was to typhoid, what Gaetan Dugas was to AIDS, and Liu Jian-lun was to SARS, Buster Casey would become for rabies."A high school rebel who always wins (and a childhood murderer?), Rant Casey escapes from his small hometown of Middleton for the big city. He becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. On appointed nights participants recognize one another by such …

6 editions

Review of 'Rant' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

"Palahniuk gets a tremendous amount of mileage from sprinkling pop-cultural references throughout his outlandish plot. Alongside a liberal helping of William S. Burroughs and Philip K. Dick, Ballard’s controversial Crash (concerning sexual fetishists of car accidents) is the most obvious homage. Yet just when the plot finally appears to be straightening out, Palahniuk throws in thematic references reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s film eXistenZ and Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko.

"The result is a plot that never stops, multiple points of view, shifting perspectives, contradictory information, nauseating side trips, truly dark wit, and a skewed take on humanity so warped that the effect on the reader verges on the vertiginous. It doesn’t make a lot of surface sense, but there is an intriguing undercurrent of logic that drives Rant’s increasingly preposterous events."

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Subjects

  • Demolition derbies -- Fiction