Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey Features

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“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:

If you read a Chuck Palahniuk book do not start with this one. Go the way of Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, or Survivor. The plot is just bad and makes the whole book uninteresting. 2 stars because the oral biography, although hard to read at first, was a good idea.

This one is hokeyer than Fight Club's fairly smooth alter ego twist, and less believable than Invisible Monster's everyone is related twist. When he wants to bring you somewhere, he takes you there and introduces you to real people who walk, talk, think, and care about things you never thought about. Somewhere in there is a genuinely good idea, and I really mean that. When you read Rant, you are in a world of night, with snapping rapid jaws and lowlife celebrants who are too cool for the neon lights that show you their scars and pimples, living out their insignificant social plans of mayhem and stupidity.

Oddly, this is a poor idea made into something so close to great that it is seductive. And once you have been picked up for this party of automobile accidents known as lives, you can't get out. It's glorious.Cons: But Chuck, the twists are just getting hokey. Pros: Okay, so this Chuck Palahniuk fellow is an outstanding author and he plies you with his trade on the first three pages of this novels. Then go sit down and write the same story only better. However, it crashes like a dreamliner full of flaming cow crap, and he keeps you going on for another 50 pages to reinforce how bad it really is.

It dodges behind the crap, even the most ham-handed rape scene I've read lately, and almost surfaces. But alas, it's sinking into the same quagmire as the bad idea, so you just let it go.Summary: I've complained a lot lately about great ideas being squandered by authors who should know better.

It's not hard because he basically hands it to you. It's not the twists of a Palahniuk story that make it so good, it is the tactile reality of his characters and settings that set them apart from the vast majority of anyone writing today.

You can learn a lot from it, if you can just not feel disappointed when the twist comes and invalidates any worth to the whole thing, while simultaneously hinting at the better idea that should've occupied its place. In a way, it combines both of these with some seriously bad psuedo-science.

I mean, he could've just omitted explanation, and it might've flown. It's insanely bizarre and like other bizarre stupidities, such as Catch 22 or Catcher in the Rye, you're obligated to read it because it's a nouveau concept.

Seriously, read this book, get upset, and write something better.

I am a huge Palahniuk fan and this book did not disappoint. The oral authobiography style literally gives every character his/her own voice. Rant Casey's story makes the reader question society, history, and reality.

best book ever. the ending is crazy. it takes a minute to get used to this style of writing, but i loved it.

This was a great deal and received it in pleanty of time and in good shape