‘Rant’: Not Your Everyday Reality

If you would like to know how to make nitroglycerine, properly hold a lobster fork, set up scams, form vast and intricate conspiracy plots, and travel to the depths of human depravity, then I suggest you read Chuck Palahniuk. The man who convinced the world that Fight Clubs existed has returned with his newest work, “Rant.” With a plot somewhere between “V for Vendetta,” “The Matrix,” and “28 Days Later,” “Rant” is sure to be gratifying for Palahniuk’s faithful readers and “virgins” alike.

Palahniuk, the author of such titles as “Fight Club” and “Choke,” has a unique and twisted writing style easily recognizable from a hundred miles away. His quick narrative movements force the reader to hold on, following along in limbo between laughing, crying, or vomiting.

It’s not Palahniuk’s back-alley sexuality or obsession with horrific violence that wins the reader over as much as it is what comes in between. In a vein similar to that of Dan Brown, Palahniuk captivates the reader with his supposed facts, little tidbits of information so well fleshed out that it’s difficult to doubt their veracity.

“Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey” is written in the form of interviews with everyone connected to the eponymous protagonist. The plot can be loosely defined as a look at Rant’s strange childhood (one in which his mother filled the family’s food with shards of metal and glass, and he purposefully subjected himself to the stings and bites of spiders and vermin), his involvement in “Party Crashing” (a form of tag played with cars), and his eventual spreading of a highly contagious form of rabies that wipes out large portions of the human population.

Palahnuik fills in this loose structure with a metaphorical social commentary voluminous and tangential enough to justify the title “Rant.” As in his other novels, Palahniuk magnifies the darkest spaces of modern society and runs wild, creating a world of post-apocalyptic human depravity without the Second Coming or the nuclear destruction of “1984.” The world’s population is split by strict curfew between “Daytimers” and “Nighttimers,” and people spend their time “boosting” experiences through a metal portal in the back of their heads; books, TV, and movies are utterly obsolete.

Palahniuk alludes to current political situations with invented laws like the “I-See-You Act,” and even refers to President Bush at one point. Though the narrative is definitely paranoid, it’s also very convincing, beginning coherently and concretely before reality slowly unwinds itself. The reader finds himself peering over the top of the book at a world that doesn’t look quite the same, a world where sinister forces pursuing sinister ends are constantly calculating against him.

Palahniuk’s exploration of death in the novel is almost giddy. He fills “Rant” with epidemiology, historical accounts of widespread disease, and grisly segments of “DRVR Radio Graphic Traffic Reports.” His characterization is as unfocused as his narrative, the characters become broadly defined, often horrific and vulgar, and capable of nearly anything in and outside the bounds of normal reality.

Although far from an easy read, “Rant” is a suprisingly enjoyable one, and will leave you feeling like you did after that great party: you know a lot happened, you have trouble piecing it together, but you feel oddly satisfied.

—Reviewer Andrew F. Nunnelly can be reached nunnelly@fas.harvard.edu.