Reality Bites
Rant, by Chuck Balahniuk
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At first glance, Rant is a sci-fi mystery, not an anarchist's call to arms. By using oral biography format, Chuck Palahniuk manages to create a central character — Buster "Rant" Casey — who eludes readers from beginning to end, his death established in the opening sentence.
Through his childhood neighbors, friends and teachers, the readers discover Rant's addiction to spider bites and animal bites as well as his ability to discern the previous owners of used condoms and pads by smell. By the middle of the novel, however, the story has shifted its focus to a city population segregated by day and night, hell-bent on using its space efficiently.
If by creating a fantasy alternative universe, Palahniuk seems to be wandering off the topic of Rant's life story, he's not. His point is simple: The identity of an individual is defined entirely by society. Through oral biography format, readers get to know Rant only by the impressions he has made on the community he has affected (or infected, as Rant carries a virulent strain of rabies developed from his animal bites).
But, this is Palahniuk, so the thesis is turned on on its head soon enough: What if the individual defines society? What if he defies the conventional perception of time (i.e., time travel is impossible) and rewrites history — consequently, reinvents society — altogether? Suddenly, Rant's mysterious life and death become a kind of protest against the Establishment, namely, a paranoia of history as it is written: "What if this? If somebody went back and reworked the past, how would the rest of us know?" What if, Palahniuk asks, history is consensual delusion?
Take out the döppelganger reality and Rant is Fight Club: the history edition. Rant's nighttime Party Crashers are essentially dressed-up, co-ed Fight Club members who prefer car crashes over fist fights. Both novels are centered on charismatic leaders who confront a hypocritical society obsessed with morality, hedonism and consumerism. Most importantly, both novels end by sticking it to the man: Fight Club protests against capitalism by blowing up banks, whereas Rant confirms merely that Rant is the victim of a conspiracy theory and that time travel is the anarchist's ultimate weapon.
Chuck Palahniuk will read Thu., May 10, 8 p.m., free, Free Library of Philadelphia, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, www.library.phila.gov.
Rant
By Chuck Palahniuk | Doubleday, 319 pp., $24.95
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