Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

Additional Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey Information

“Like most people I didn’t meet Rant Casey until after he was dead. That’s how it works for most celebrities: After they croak, their circle of friends just explodes.…”


Rant is the mind-bending new novel from Chuck Palahniuk, the literary provocateur responsible for such books as the generation-defining classic Fight Club and the pedal-to-the-metal horrorfest Haunted. It takes the form of an oral history of one Buster “Rant” Casey, who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of our time.

“What ‘Typhoid Mary’ Mallon was to typhoid, what Gaetan Dugas was to AIDS, and Liu Jian-lun was to SARS, Buster Casey would become for rabies.”


A high school rebel who always wins (and a childhood murderer?), Rant Casey escapes from his small hometown of Middleton for the big city. He becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. On appointed nights participants recognize one another by such designated car markings as “Just Married” toothpaste graffiti and then stalk and crash into each other. Rant Casey will die a spectacular highway death, after which his friends gather testimony needed to build an oral history of his short, violent life. Their collected anecdotes explore the possibility that his saliva caused a silent urban plague of rabies and that he found a way to escape the prison house of linear time.…

“The future you have, tomorrow, won’t be the same future you had, yesterday.”
—Rant Casey


Expect hilarity, horror, and blazing insight into the desperate and surreal contemporary human condition as only Chuck Palahniuk can deliver it. He's the postmillennial Jonathan Swift, the visionary to watch to learn what's —uh-oh—coming next.

What Customers Say About Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey:

fashion. I started reading Chuck P. in high school, this book although it is one of his later books still has that charm in a true chuck p. It holds your attention all the way through the book. Good read.

This story is awesome. It was recommended to me because I was a fan of Hunter S Thompson. The way it is written, through a series of short interviews makes it great to read on the john. It is quite graphic at times and shouldn't be recommended to younger audiences.

Reading about it totally made me want to be a part of this non-existent lifestyle, akin to the way that reading Fight Club made me want to find an underground fighting league. Rant is a historical account of the protagonist's life told by those around him, friends, parents, lovers.etc. Chuck has an amazing way of creating these little collectives of people that are odd in their own right, but also amazingly free spirits that you just want to be a part of.What I didn't like: Ok, so the way this book was formatted was confusing to say the least. Throughout the first half of the book the narrative revolves around Rant's childhood and his various oddities that serve him in the future of the book. Perhaps the oddest and most interesting hypothesis posed in the book comes when Rant discovers that if he can travel back in time (of course by Party Crashing in a blaze of fireball glory) and stop a former version of himself from having less than honorable relations with his mother, then he can prevent his birth and therefore become a God without a beginning or an end. In these endeavors he contracts rabies, but also experiences his first adrenaline rushes. Party Crashing is a lifestyle, and Chuck teaches us all of its nuanced rules.

The bites and venom become a drug for him. Cramming his arm into the dark spaces and petting the soft dark fur, or the smooth scaled skin until he feels the teeth sink into his wrist. Of course he invariably contracts rabies, and becomes a carrier.In the second portion of the book, the narrative switches to the future and the story takes a drastic and confusing turn. There was just too much here.it seemed like about five books instead of one.Last word: This book is good.

Oh, Chuck, is there any cluster of circumstances that you can't craft into a confusing collection with a barely recognizable storyline. We ride along in cars with Christmas trees glued to the roofs, and Just Married cars packed with Party Crashers wearing thrift store tuxedos and wedding dresses. Like any animal suitors in the wild, the more elaborate the car design, the more Crashers it seems to attract.In yet a third turn, Rant spreads rabies as though it is a venereal disease and the whole book takes a twist into time travel. An odd way to attain a supernatural existence and a distinct turn on the usual concept of, if you go back in time and accidentally kill your grandfather then you will have never been born and will disappear on the spot.What I liked: Party Crashing. Rant meets fellow night dweller Echo Lawrence and learns how to find joy and a new adrenaline rush. Also, the storylines.oh the storyline., just trying to recount what happened in this book, I left out a few arcs. As a child, he starts by stuffing his arms any hole in the ground where it appears that an animal might live. Each section of the story was told by accounts or recollections of various characters.

In the future he lives in a segregated society consisting of daytime dwellers and the working class night time dwellers. The nighttimers partake in an activity called Party Crashing, or the intentional act of roadway demolition derby. While this was at first confusing, once you get the hang of it, it really seems to work. While it is no Fight Club, no Choke, no Diary, not really even a good Invisible Monsters, it is all in itself supremely odd and unapologetically Chuck.Reviewed by Scott

I really enjoyed this novel and have read others by Palahniuk. I'd put it up there with Survivor. A little choppy at first, but it all came together nicely. Would love to see the challenge of making this into a movie.Ben

I thought the book had everything this modern-day cultures needs to help people see outside the box.