Ryan Reviews Books For You

My first book review:

“Everything is… a copy of a copy of a copy,” says one character in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club; it’s also an apt description of Palahniuk’s work after Fight Club, including his newest book, Rant. While sometimes entertaining, Rant is ultimately a stubbornly unoriginal derivative of Fight Club, and another indicator that Palahniuk would rather repeatedly churn out the same novel than attempt any artistic growth.

Chuck Palahniuk rose to fame after the 1996 publication of the cult favorite Fight Club, a novel about two young men and their search to escape a vapid, consumerist society through self destruction, which was later adapted into a popular movie. Fight Club, especially the film, became a sort of cultural landmark for disaffected youth at the turn of the century who, like the story’s protagonists, felt alienated from society by authority and changes in technology (if it’s any indication, Fight Club is the most listed “Favorite Movie” among Stetson students on Facebook).

Fight Club was successful not only because it tapped into the angst of generation, but also because it was written in an ironic, minimalist style, mixed with humor and pure gross out imagery, that, along with a compelling plot and twist ending, seemed to give Palahniuk an original and interesting voice. Unfortunately, Palahniuk’s fresh voice quickly grew stale, as he published eight books in ten years that had almost identical plots and narration techniques as Fight Club. Each new book was hailed as Palahniuk’s reinvention of himself, but each disappointed, choosing instead to rehash the theme and story of the author’s most successful novel.

Rant is no different. It is the story of Buster “Rant” Casey, a rebel who becomes the leader of a group called the Party Crashers, who crash cars to, you guessed it, escape their vapid, consumerist society by self destruction. It’s very familiar territory, and it’s hard not to think of Rant and Party Crashing as a second rate version of Tyler Durden and his fight clubs. Rant also has Palahniuk’s trademark twist ending, but it’s only really surprising in how inane it is, a bizarre sci-fi injection that clashes with the tone of the rest of the book (without spoiling too much, it involves both time travel and being one’s own grandfather).

Rant advertises itself as “the oral biography of Buster Casey;” that is, it told through interviews and recollections with the characters rather than direct narration (the first line of the book is “Like most people, I didn’t meet Rant Casey until after he was dead”). This seemed like a promising improvement for Palahniuk, a chance to incorporate multiple voices instead of the stale tone of his previous books, but it falls flat: all the characters talk like Palahniuk writes, and it would be near impossible to tell which is which if not for the bold printed names next to each block of text. What could have been a much needed evolution in style becomes a gimmick.

Disappointment and gimmicks are characteristic of Rant in general. While it has its moments, particularly with the author’s hallmark gross out imagery (this time it’s used tampons blown out of the garbage onto a barbed wire fence), Rant is only mildly entertaining, certainly nothing to dwell too long on or to indicate that Palahniuk will move beyond spitting out weak Fight Club clones.