Who?! What?! Where?! When?! HOW!? My mind is totally blown. I don't want to give too much away other than this is a must-read for Palahniuk-heads.

The basic gist: a novel about a serial killer, deceased, through the eyes of the people who knew him (i.e. mother, father, friends, etc).

I don't know how he does it, but my jaw is always left on the floor.

RANT was published May 2007. I finally worked up the nerve to read it after playing hide-and-seek with HAUNTED (2006). The novel is narrated in the form of an "oral history." Palahniuk cites three such histories influencing his book: George Plimpton, Capote; Jean Stein, Edie; and Brendan Mullen, Lexicon Devil -- all of which I've reviewed and are excellent. The style and craft of an oral biography is surprisingly effective and it allows Palahniuk to dodge awkward authorial shift in time or location. This is important for Palahniuk becasue he writes from scene-to-scene, avoiding chronology. Palahniuk's minimalist style reads more like a story board than an epic. He also gets to cover more with less.

The story itself is characteristically Palahniuk. Know that you are going to die. Intensify your life with that knowledge. Redemption is sought through self-destruction coupled with an erotic interest in the macabre. Transformation is the desirable. As with previous novels, disease and poison and contagion is splashed across most of the pages.

Everything was running along smoothly in the narrative - the rabies and the tar and the spiders and the gold coins when on page 114 things began to change. The change-over reminded me of Ellmann's DOT IN THE UNIVERSE which also has an interesting rupture in the kind of narrative that one thinks one is reading. And then it happens again. And again. This makes for some really fun reading. At times it reminded me of the film From Dusk Till Dawn. \

If you enjoy Palahniuk's work already then you'll really like this, I think the effort ranks up there with his earlier work. Certainly I enjoyed Rant more than Haunted or Choke. As many readers know, Palahniuk is a great story teller and you'll get sucked in on this one. It has LULLABY and DIARY vibes and if you read STRANGER THAN FICTION some of the themes in RANT will be familiar.

Check out my Reading Chuck Palahniuk group if you're interested in a list of literary influences on this particular work (January 2008).

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"The future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday." Wallace Boyer (4); Echo Lawrence (18); Neddy Nelson (253).

"To arrive at Middleton requires four solid days of driving, which is the longest period of time I have ever experienced inside an automobile without colliding with another vehicle." From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (7).

"Picture the moment when your mom or dad first saw you as something other than a pretty, tiny version of them. You as them, but improved. Better educated. Innocent. Then picture when you stopped being their dream." Echo Lawrence (28).

"The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic system… It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy." From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms (130).

"There are worse ways to be dead than dying." Shot Dunyun (212).

"Nobody's sure how it really works. Nobody's going to tell you what's really going on. But a few of us are going to become gods." Tina Something (253).

"We Know Why You Rubberneck." Traffic Report DRVR Radio.