Weekly Hornet

Issue date: 5/2/07 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Shawn Grant Sound off: Chuck Palahniuk's eighth novel, "Rant," is a success.

Media Credit: Doubleday

"Rant" is acerbic, funny, violent, apolitical, invigorating and disgusting. It is the work and the author that just may save bookstores from completely degenerating into warehouses of schlock, pandering almost completely to sex-desperate middle-aged women--the largest demographic among book buyers.

Chuck Palahniuk's eighth novel opens with a typically confounding and alluring thought: "Like most people, I didn't meet and talk to Rant Casey until after he was dead. That's how it works for most celebrities: After they croak, their circle of close friends just explodes."

Rant Casey is "a sexually conflicted thirteen-year-old rattlesnake-venom junkie with rabies." He seeks pain as a religious experience, and venomous stings as vaccinations against boredom and future bites.

Palahniuk doesn't have to be dead to enjoy his monetary success, but he may have to croak before his work is recognized as some of the most important literature of the last quarter-century.

The youth that comprise his army of followers may say as much about Palahniuk's polarizing political instigation as it does about his effective writing. This is the draw of Palahniuk: A voice that preaches without being too "preachy." It's the kind of writing that makes the reader want to get up and do something instead of sit on his or her couch and absorb carbohydrates; make something instead of purchasing it.

In a way, Palahniuk has been ranting since his career began. "Fight Club," published in 1996, was a slow-rolling boulder of anti-establishment that picked up momentum exponentially as word of mouth kept tattered copies of the novel circulating among circles of friends.

Palahniuk's first novel was a rant against conformity. All of his subsequent work could also be classified as such, including his latest novel.

In this case, "rant" doesn't necessarily mean a lengthy emotional diatribe without subtext or subversion; it means that Palahniuk's voice is so strong that he will bully the reader into overlooking secondary meanings and thematic undercurrents.
The author employs "shock and awe" tactics with the ease of someone who has made a living from surprising readers, so it's easy to take every word and phrase at face value and forget the author's other strength--complex yet concise plotlines.

"Rant" is full of Palahniuk hallmarks. Short chapters are broken up further by the rare style of fiction writing that the author employs: oral history. In each chapter, at least one character tells the reader a little more about Rant Casey. Many of these "oral" histories are less than a page long. Some are simply a sentence. The disjointed nature ensures that the narrative is contradictory and confusing. Palahniuk keeps the reader hungry for more information right to the last line. The term "fast-paced" doesn't even begin to describe the rush of adrenaline shot into the reader's veins with Palahniuk's voice and this distinctive style of fiction.

"Rant" relies heavily upon the reader's suspended disbelief. Like Vonnegut's ice-9 from "Cat's Cradle," Palahniuk uses believable events to set up scenarios that would otherwise be ridiculous. Instead, they become scary.

Unlike Vonnegut, who used alternative methods to provoke thought about government and legal action within the system, Palahniuk seems to want to provoke chaos. Not as noble, but Palahniuk's techniques are perfect for advertisement-sick students and teenagers.

"Rant" is spectacular. Is Palahniuk rabble rousing? Possibly. Is he pandering? Maybe, but it is definitely an extraordinary trip through a minefield of decapitated expectations. Palahniuk virgins should definitely read this novel. Chuck alumni don't have to be told.

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