I'm not a Chuck P fan simply because he is "edgy" or because I get off on the so-called depravity of his often violent and sexual themes. I know a few folks like that. What I enjoyed most about this book was the structure, the measured reveal. Based on the oral tradition, each chapter is composed of brief statements from a cast of dozens. Individually, these narrators are hopelessly unreliable, but taken together they form a whole picture that is more true than any single testimony could be. (I'...

A Brief CaveatIt feels somewhat strange and almost in bad taste to be reviewing a Chuck Palahnuik book because this just happened. (If you don’t want to search through the link: Paquita (one of the coolest peeps on Goodreads) made mention of the fact that Chuck P. had recommended the book she had just read and if she had known that, then she probably wouldn’t have read the book because she doesn’t care much for the stylings of Mr. Palahniuk. Enter a crazed, rabid fan of Chuck P. who starts criti...

MY REVIEW FROM AMAZON: Look, if you are one of those people who consider themselves "fans" of an author's work so long as it is constantly the same, then forget all about this one. Don't read it expecting Fight Club. In fact, don't read any book by Palahniuk expecting Fight Club but Fight Club. He is a talented writer, with more to offer than the same book reprinted fifty-thousand times. Most of the reviews so far written for this book seem to have been written by the above-mentioned sort of fan...

Wow. How can I possibly describe this book? Mediocre? Unfocused? Half-assed?I am a big fan of Palahniuk. I love Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, Choke, Diary, and Lullaby. I even like Haunted a bit. I think he is great at picking some aspect of American Culture and flipping it over so it's soft white underbelly is clearly visible.Unfortunately, with Haunted, he appears to have developed a taste for the 'big gross-out.' Rant continues that trend. And what is worse is that the book is wri...

Yet another great piece of original and innovative fiction by Chuck Palahniuk, as he constructs an 'oral history' of the life and times of Buster 'Rant' Casey; this is a dark pseudo-science horror, slash off-key comedy, told in excerpts using the transcripts of interviews from people whose lives Rant had crossed. A Palahniuk masterclass in twisted fiction. 8 out of 12.2013 read

Chuck Palahniuk is the literary equivalent of punk rock. In a book that pulls on varied and important themes, Rant: An Oral History of Buster Casey manages to feature an exceptionally peculiar storyline that never stops at its primary goal: being a hell of a good time. This is a book that deals with important topics, like religion and the meaning of life, but doesn't keep itself neatly organized and stacked with pristine white pages. Instead, Rant is a beautiful book with pages askew that just h...

I can't do it. I can't finish this book. Usually Palahniuk creates fairly unsympathetic characters, as in this book, and that I'm used to. Because it WORKS; the plot-lines of his books are always ridiculous in a totally fascinating way, which makes up for the stupid characters. However, Rant bored the fuck out of me. I tried. I read more than half and I do not care about this nutjob guy and his rabies and his slobbering all over the ladies, or the driving around in cars being obnoxious or whatev...

It's not everyday you read a book about rabies, the origins of God, time travel, and bumper cars. Seeing that this is a Chuck Palahniuk book, I shouldn't be surprised that this novel hops barriers and barrels through genres without a single fuck given for your comfort or confusion level. Buster "Rant" Casey can tell you what you had for breakfast three days ago, what kind of flowers you have waiting in a vase back at home, and whether your shower head is steel or bronze simply by eating your pus...

“History is nothing except monsters or victims. Or witnesses.”― Chuck Palahniuk, RantHE was close. He was so damn close. He just didn't close it at the end. It was a poem that ended in a whimper. The mixture was nearly perfect, just not flammable. But don't say Chuck didn't try. I imagine Palahniuk had Ballard's Crash and Benford's Timescape, several Oral Histories, and perhaps even Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid sitting on his shelf as he wrote this. Reading Rant was

Yeah, I just read a Chuck Palahniuk book; I feel like I’m back in high school and should begin loudly listening to Garbage CDs and writing “I <3 Spike” all over my notebook any second now. In fairness, Palahniuk does finally seem to be breaking out of his mold at least a little; I skipped reading Haunted because I wasn’t in the mood to be squicked, but what had been irritating me about all his previous books was that they all seemed the same. They all utilized a near-identical style of narratio...

What the hell?Let me first say I love Chuck P. I love his usually disturbing stories and weird characters. I don't mind the fact that he seems a little crazy, and I don't mind all of the sex he writes about. I also don't mind the gory/gross factor. I like him!This book was just bad in my opinion. Maybe if I knew it had an amazing ending I could have pushed through the last half, but after the first half of this book I realized I didn't care at all about Buster, or his story. So I stopped reading...

What an amazing Clusterfuck.

When I hear this song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUZf24...) one of the things I think of is Chuck Palahniuk. I lied. I actually never heard this song until about four minutes before typing the previous sentence. For the sake of accuracy, when I heard the Elf Power cover of the song, which until about five minutes ago I didn't even realize was a cover, but which I should have assumed since the whole album it is one is made up of cover songs. I wanted to share the Elf Power version, but this

(Full review can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)So before anything else, a horrible confession: that this is the first novel by Chuck Palahniuk I've ever actually read from cover to cover. Yeah, I know, shame on me! And the reason this is such a big deal, of course, is that I'm an obsessive fan of the movie version of Fight Club, adapted from another of Palahniuk's novels, a film I have officially now seen one zillion freaking times. And why do I...

3.5Is he the protagonist, or the antagonist? Good question about our Mr. Buster Casey, also known as 'Rant' which is also a pretty good description of this story. I mean, this thing is all over the place. To figure it out you might have to partake in some time traveling and still you'd be left with filtering facts from rabid infested party crashers with gold coins in their pockets and Christmas trees tied to the roofs of their cars. Still confused? You should be. After all, this is classic Palah...

WTF did I just read and why did I finish it? This book is a mish-mash of narrators, grossness, time travel, car crashes, a rabies plague, segregation and dull characters. I kept hoping it would improve and then it was just over. This story somewhat follows a dull-witted character named Buster or Rant (as he's better known) who gets off on catching rabies. His attraction to pain and rabies eventually leads to a rabies plague. The story is told from the various and far too many points of view of p...

So far I've enjoyed everything from Chuck Palahniuk I've come into contact with, though fellow readers have warned me to stick to his earlier, and supposedly better, books (people don't seem to have much good to say about his last several offerings). Well, I took their advice and dove into RANT, a novel that many have raved about. And rave about it they should! This is one brilliantly twisted tale, full of all sorts of intrigue, shock, and awe. It reads at a great pace, and lures you along exper...

This is the story of a small town hell raiser named Buster ’Rant’ Casey who did some slightly unusual things when he was growing up like collecting bucketfuls of his classmate’s teeth. Young Rant also angers more animals than Steve Irwin so that they’ll bite him and infect him with rabies which he deliberately spreads to his class mates. After he grows up and moves to the city, Rant joins a disenfranchised part of society forced by law to stay in their homes during the day and who get their kick...

First off, a disclaimer. I love Chuck P. like a brother. If the man was on dialysis I'd give him a kidney even if I only had one good one left and consider it payback for all the stories of his that I've enjoyed since discovering his work. The lowdown: Rant tells the story of Rant Casey - a small town kid that turns his little town on it's ear before moving to the city to continue his work. The book is comprised of accounts from people that knew Rant with only second hand accounts of his words a...

I haven’t been loving Chuck books lately and it is not like me to keep coming back to something after it disappoints so many times in a row. I think it is the author’s voice that has me whipped. He has a way with words that is quite unique and I have not seen it repeated elsewhere. I love that he is able to stamp things his own with this writing style but that he is also able to step out of the box and try new things. The only negative is that I don't always love the end result. The reading jour...