• Rant

  • By: Chuck Palahniuk
  • Narrated by: various
  • Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (1,450 ratings)

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Rant  By  cover art

Rant

By: Chuck Palahniuk
Narrated by: various
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Publisher's summary

Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the New York Times best-sellers Fight Club and Lullaby, is known for his edgy novels, and Rant is no exception. Palahniuk presents this fictional biography of Buster "Rant" Casey in a series of vignettes told by the people who knew him best. As intricate as a spider web, Rant succeeds in recounting the story of one man's life only through the eyes of others. But the question remains, "Who was Rant Casey?"
©2007 Chuck Palahniuk (P)2007 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"This dark religious parable (there's even a resurrection) from the master of grotesque excess may not attract new readers, but it will delight old ones." ( Publishers Weekly)
"Outrageous but not quite over the top, full of energetic humor, Rant...is a memorable portrait of the cults that gather around authentically different people and a portrait of dystopia that feels unsettlingly contemporary." ( Booklist)

What listeners say about Rant

Average customer ratings
Overall
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great on audiobook

This is one of the best audiobooks I've ever owned. The book was actually much easier to follow in spoken form vs written form. The character voices were great! I would recomend listening to this on audiobook over reading the hardcopy any day.

As for the story, just like other Palahniuk tales it is strange, captivating and just plain gross at times. It's occasionally hard to follow, but it's a story that will make you think. I've listened to it three times now and every time I've caught something new that I missed the time before. I can't wait for a sequel!

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22 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

History is nothing except monsters or victims.

“History is nothing except monsters or victims. Or witnesses.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant

HE was close. He was so damn close. He just didn't close it at the end. It was a poem that ended in a whimper. The mixture was nearly perfect, just not flammable. But don't say Chuck didn't try. I imagine Palahniuk had Ballard's 'Crash' and Benford's 'Timescape', several oral histories, and perhaps even Hofstadter's 'Gödel, Escher, Bach' sitting on his shelf as he wrote this.

Reading Rant was like watching a blind guy juggle a bunch of balls, some are on fire, and some you realize are actually burning cats. Palahniuk exists on an edge of grotesque, absurdity and social criticism that sometimes makes you lose sight of the shore. You forget what the normal is. You forget the boundaries. You are caught between a weird night and equally bizarre day. You aren't sure what to do so you just keep digging/reading.

Five major takeaways from this novel (which I might one day delve into deeper if I ever find myself with too much Liminal time or space in-between):

1. Rabies & Bites
2. Hyperosmia/Hypergeusia
3. Time Travel + Incest
4. Party Crashing + Night & Day
5. Oral History/Myth-making/Christianity

Anyway, I enjoyed the novel. It flew. But it just ended meh. No bang. No cliff. Just a strange, absurd, grotesque, incestuous loop.

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16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

dark and disturbing

If you enjoy a dark sense of sarcasm and can tolerate a certain level of brash honesty regarding human nature, this book is for you.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

4 for Creativity

If you've read other Chuck Palahniuk books, you know that it will not be ordinary. This one is no exception. I suspect the author of having a few interesting ideas, e.g. boosting, that he wanted to write about and put them all into one bizarre manuscript. I use that word on purpose because "story" doesn't seem to be the right word. The format is more documentary, but fictional. Some parts of it are truly gross (big surprise), but it makes your mind stretch so much that I have to give it good marks for creativity and originality. I am not sure if this author is classified as sci-fi, but his themes and commentary sure fit the best of the genre.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Renewed Fath

I was a big Chuck Palahniuk fan; I have listened to his entire list of book and was looking forward to the next. After listening to Haunted I was so turned off on Palahniuk I did not buy his next two books. I took a chance on Rant. The book did state a little slow for me, but it ended up restoring my faith in Palahniuk’s talents. The store was as creative as Diary & Lullaby and as interesting as Choke. It is still not as good as Fight Club. The time travel part was a little far fetched but overall the store was well worth the time.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Great readers but, books stinks.

My decision to buy the book was based on the quality of the readers. The key learning point for me was; even great readers can't make a bad book good. The plot is too contrived and implausible. The readers did their job but, the books smells bad.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Faded at the end

Don't get me wrong. It's certainly not a waste of time. I really liked the ensemble cast and find Palahniuk quite imaginative and funny. I was just expecting the book to say more. Part way through I really thought this book had the potential to be great. I felt the end didn't live up to the beginning. Maybe I just didn't get it.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

but I love his work

Frankly, i couldn't get into it. The voice was rough, the language harsher and cruder than nescessary and this isn't the Chuck I've come to love so deeply. Maybe I'm in a mood, but after trying several times I was just turned off and uninterested. Of course, any other of his stories so far I would walk on glass to re-read. Perhaps it's just as audio that this one displeases so much...

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

loved it!!!

What a bizarre listen!!!! Chuck is the best.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Production is a ten, story is a zero

The group of narrators and the production on this book is outstanding. The material that they had to work with is juvenile and sophmoric at best. Chuck is trying to hard to be significant. He should stop cranking out books every year and go through the process of developing his story so that his quips and quotable one-liners will not look so out of place. His attempts at bringing hip philisophical insights to his readers has been going downhill and come across like barflies giving advice to virgin lapdogs.

I finished the book through will power.

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6 people found this helpful