TCH News

Issue date: 12/10/07 Section: Entertainment

In the future, the population is separated into two groups - one existing during the day and the other during the night - that are never allowed to mingle. The government has an epidemic policy that allows them to permanently imprison whoever they choose under the pretense of infection control, crashing cars on public roads has become a sport, and the newest party drug is rabies.

If that description alone isn't hint enough, Chuck Palahniuk, cult-author of FIGHT CLUB, has obviously written a new book. RANT: AN ORAL HISTORY OF BUSTER CASEY tells the tale of Buster "Rant" Casey, deemed a macabre serial killer after becoming the super spreader of contaminated saliva. Through the perspectives of innumerable individuals who meet Casey before his death, the novel is thrilling for its style alone; as a fictional compilation of oral histories, the constant conflict of views, the question of narrator reliability, it keeps a reader from putting the book down.

The world that Palahniuk creates in RANT is as terrifying as it gets, and any fan of this author knows how chilling he can make a world seem. What this future encompasses isn't a smorgasbord of nuclear weapons or constant warfare. That sort of world would almost be ignored, lost in the intriguing complexities of the plot, as well as the vibrant undercurrent of social criticism. Palahniuk delivers his characters into a time where segregation has reached unimaginable heights, government power reaches into every corner of life, and everybody seems to be waiting for an excuse to kill you.

What is evident, though, is that RANT is not merely a story about a boy coming of age and turning into something of a legend. That he purposely plunged his arms hundreds of times into holes, just to be bitten by any animal willing to grab on, is almost lost. That he spreads rabies and turns a good portion of the population into drooling zombies capable of murder barely dents the surface of the book. What Palahniuk stretches beneath the actual plot is the demand for people to examine what their world is really like. To understand how events in life mold a person's identity, to search for something true and honest and palpable, and to realize the power of an individual. Through his characters, he asks, "How do you continue to live after you learn that your every breath, every dollar you pay in taxes, every baby you conceive and love will only perpetuate some evil system?"

With dozens of different narrators, there is at least one individual for any reader to identify with. Beyond that, the novel demands that the reader actually think for a change. Shocking, sure, but even if a person has a weak stomach, this book manages to be just as beautifully infectious as the saliva of "America's walking, talking Biological Weapon of Mass Destruction."

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