Review of Rant by Chuck Palahniuk

Tittle: Rant

Author: Chuck Palahniuk

Editorial: Anchor Books

Genre: Pulp Literature

Country of origin: USA

Pages: 320

Days to finish it: 8

Year of publication: 2007

Personal score: 4.5/5

Preview: my very first time writing a review in English… and how the rabies will perish the world one day

So this is totally new. No, not me writing a simple review. It´s me writing in English, and there´s been a while since I didn’t wrote in another language (actually I´ve never wrote in other language), almost three years. So let´s see how it works… and if works moderately, I´ll work in other reviews in English. (Of course if I a read another book in English soon).

I recover the main idea of this preview, the one of the rabies ruling the world of the book. What if the humans were dominated by the epidemics? What if the humans had to split in two sides, the healthy ones and the sickest ones? Maybe this topic sounds kind of crazy, but in a future –not so far away– this could be a reality. Rabies, flu, diphtheria, HIV; thinking in these diseases it doesn’t sound so wild right? My main point here is that someday the world will end… by a fucking disease. I hope you don’t mind google: “inflectional diseases” before sleep…or eat.

How did I get it?

A work-friend of mine lent it to me; we share –sometimes– similar tastes in books, and literature. The day when I forget my book in home, I was forced to read this. It was the right decision or should I read one book per time?

A little bit of the author…

Should I write my enormous admiration to the writings of Palahniuk? Yes, all we know that his topics are so weird, and outlandish, but we still loving him. The last thing that I read of he was the graphic novel “Fight Club 2” I stayed with not the best opinion and a taste very sour… I think such a good novel shouldn’t end like that. 

Review

This is the oral biography of Rant Casey one of the majors serial killers in the modern time, but he didn’t kill their victims with his own hands, no, he killed them with their diseases and a high rate of contagious. 

In the middle of his youth, Rant decides escape of his birth town and move to the city, there he knows the Party Crash a different way to live that is much more than a derby of demolition. In the end he will find a spectacular death that not necessary means the end.  

Spoken by his childhood friends, partycrashers, persons who barely knew him, his parents and even his enemies, we will know the story of Rant Casey one of most efficient serial killer of our time. Did we could know who Rant Casey was really? Or only will be rumors of a scapegoat made by the government?

Opinion

The first of all… I don’t know if this book was the best selection as the first book to read in another language. The good point is that I already knew Palahniuk and he didn’t shocked me as the first time, the negative point is a different way of narrative, the kind of an oral biography, that I assume will be hard even in Spanish. The main character never speaks truly, the narrative falls in the persons who knew it, principally in his parents and the partycrashers.  

I had dozens of favorite parts, one was when Echo Lawrence (also my favorite character, I guess he made this “helpless” girl more endearing than the Rant himself) knows how to differentiate and how taste different STD. Also I love it when Rant licks one part of the body of Echo and knows exactly what she eats days before, or when something is wrong.

All we know that Palahniuk is bizarre in his prose, that he is in love with the crashes, with the disasters and he loves all the paraphilia possible (includes the weirdest STD you could imagine), but even with all the distorted topics, we love him. And that’s exactly we still reading him.

The party crashers take all the story, and make it of them. I think the success is when the third characters (the persons who barely knew Rant) speak; they give the profundity that the story needs and make it barely credible. And also the well justified facts besides all the narrative (how it works the rabies, the nature of the STD and how the crashes work).

Even when this story is one of the rarest things I’ve read, I enjoyed a lot. Let´s go everyone, let´s love Palahniuk everyone. Also we could try reading in another language… no, I don’t speak Chinese. 

Quotes           

"Do you ever wish you'd never been born?

"How the future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday."

"Andy Warhole was wrong. In the future, people won´t be famous for fifteen minutes. No, in the future, everyone will sit next to someone famous for at least fifteen minutes."

"You grow up to become living proof of your parent´s limitations. Their less-than-masterpiece."

"In the first forty three seconds you meet a stranger, experts in human behavior say that, just looking at them, you decide their income, their age, their brains, and if you´re going to respect them."

"A salesman only has to prove that he´s just as obsessed with you as you are with yourself. After that, the two of you share a common passion: you."

 "History is, Rant was the kind of mistake a girl needs to make while she´s still young enough to recover."

"Every lick an investment in getting licked back."

"And between orgasms, I started to cry."

"Accidents happen. People you love will die. Nothing you treasure will last forever. And I need to accept and embrace that fact."

"What if the reality is nothing but some disease?"

"You ever found yourself trapped in a world where you´re everybody worst nightmare?