Before Matt asked me to read Rant, I’d never read anything by Chuck Palahniuk. I’ve seen Fight Club so I had some inkling of how dark and strange his writing style might be, but damn. Now that I’ve been exposed (much like so many of the people Rant meets), I can’t believe I waited this long.
The full title of the novel is Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey. Palahniuk ditched any semblance of straightforward plot progression and puts your preconceived notions about how a story works to the test, as you learn the legend of Rant through a wide variety of “contributors” — friends, neighbors, family, and scientists all imparting pieces of their memories with Buster “Rant” Casey. However, like any memory, any and every contributor is potentially (and plausibly) unreliable and skewed in his/her telling, leaving it up to the reader to ultimately piece together Rant’s history. It may be confusing at first, trying to remember all the names of the people that knew Rant. But it’s more effective to not ask questions, and just be enveloped in the story. Don’t know what the little sun and moon symbols mean? Not sure what a “Party Crasher” is? Just keep reading, Palahniuk wanted it that way. It’s one of the ways that Palahniuk really keeps you on your feet with Rant. Every so often, he’ll subtly and indirectly introduce some tangential detail, which will flip the story thus far upside-down. What starts as a story of a small town boy slowly builds into something much, much larger, like a spreading infection. Kind of like Big Fish on opium (as if it wasn’t trippy enough already).
If you’re into darker books, give this one a try. Obviously, if you’re a Palahniuk fan, this will most likely enthrall you. Keep in mind, though, this is not light reading. It does take some effort to intertwine the different versions of stories people tell, to learn who everyone is, and then relearn it, and to learn how and why different people have polar opposite opinions of Rant. But you’ll probably be glad you did.
