Because Ideas Matter...
The faculty and staff of Butler University's College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences presents
Recommended Readings
Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey
by Chuck Palahniuk, Anchor, 2008
Reviewed by Eloise Sureau-Hale
Darkness lovers, weird-factor seekers, Rant
by Chuck Palahniuk is for you! Written in an innovative style of
oral biography, where many voices intertwine, Rant is a pleasurable
novel for anyone interested in reading something a little outside
of the mainstream.
Buster Casey, aka Rant, is a young boy from
a small town. From the start Rant is portrayed as different from
the rest of his peers, gifted with an unusual sense of smell. His
life takes a strange turn when he decides to leave home in order to
get away from his small-town life and, especially, his father.
Faced with "party-crashers night-timers" whose enjoyment comes from
crashing cars into each other, Rant discovers life in the
underground, a whole subterranean universe the "day-timers", those
who have jobs and lead uneventful lives, won't dare enter. And this
is where it all starts… and ends. Faced with strange characters
that seem to know more than they should, time in general, and death
in particular, start taking on a whole new meaning as the story
enfolds. After Rant the modern reader will never look at the world
the same way again.
Mixing the fine line between fiction and
science-fiction/fantasy, writer of the best seller Fight Club,
Chuck Palahniuk does a marvelous job at gripping its reader from
start to finish.
- Eloise Sureau-Hale is associate professor of French at Butler
University.