Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Rant is a fantastic, wild, at times surreal tale of the eponymous protagonist Rant Casey. Buster “Rant” Casey, farm boy-turned-folk-hero, is dead. The story is written in the form of an oral biography, a life-story told in many sometimes conflicting personal accounts.
Young Rant’s escapades vary from acting as his town’s tooth fairy with real antique gold coins, causing gross inflation in the process; holding a haunted house in the community grange hall, which he decorated with animal viscera; and deliberately exposing himself to venomous insects and rabid animals for thrills.
Rant leaves his backwater hometown to an unnamed big city, urban areas now segregated by time, people being either daytimers or nighttimers. Many nighttimers- the new lower-class segregated to the night, comprised mainly of social outcasts, whores, addicts, and pleasure-seekers- engage in a practise called party crashing: the deliberate ramming of one’s car into another’s and playing up the accident for kicks. Rant, trouble maker and insect venom junkie to boot, fits right in.
Rant, by Chuck Palahniuk is an explosively exciting, raw, hobo spider bite to the jugular, a perfect choice for those who enjoy the finer things in life. If you feel that your selection of reading has become dry and cliché, that your literary life is limited to your English class or your age group, you should read Rant.
Among Palahniuk’s other works are Choke, Damned and Fight Club, which was made into a highly acclaimed cult film.