Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey Review

Chuck Palahniuk’s fiction novel Rant: The Biography of Buster Casey is the story of Buster “Rant” Casey, a troubled young man that grows notorious as one of the best “Party Crashers” of the Nighttimers. Released in October of 2005, this novel takes the reader on a wild ride in more than one way, through the eyewitness accounts of those who were family, friends, and enemies of the late Buster Casey. The story is pieced throughout by these eyewitnesses of “Rant” Casey’s life, and tell detailing, yet contradicting accounts of the man’s life in a know-all, tell-all oral history of the man known as one possible notorious serial killer of all time.
The story starts in the small town of Middleton, and is the birthplace of Buster “Rant” Casey, son to Irene Shelby and Chester Casey. Throughout his young, short life, “Rant” played the role of a typical troubled child, and is constantly surrounded by obscene characters that although helped shape him into the horror he was to become, he was dammed since day one. Born to Irene when she was 13 years old, and Chester only fourteen years of age, he was raised by child parents, as Irene’s parents before. “Rant” Casey becomes an obsessed child addicted to poisons, venoms, and self-mutilation. Being a primary carrier of Rabies, and spreading it about to all the local teens, while creating gruesome scenes throughout his home and the book overall.

Photo from Personal Delicious Library
Photo of the Hardcover Edition

Having an obsession for being rabid, and only having a rush from venoms, “Rant” Casey begins to stick his arms and legs into different dens and holes, hoping something would bite him and give him his “rush”. One oral telling states that this may have been by seeing his grandmother be bit by a Black Widow spider, and her following death, that may have sparked this obsession with venom; like a hint at “Rant” testing his mortality.
Buster Casey (called “Buddy” by his mother) receives his infamous nickname during a church event on Halloween by buying up all the guts, eyeballs, and entrails from the local butcher shop, using these props to scare the blindfolded children, and having the putrid old blood smeared about the food that made them “rant” and vomit. This would begin a series of events that would lead “Rant” Casey to leave his small hometown, and move to the big city, to find himself.
On obtaining the money to buy the guts from the butcher, another peculiar incident occurred where a man pulled up in a car beside “Rant” as he was running to get help for his dying grandmother. The man said to Buster “Rant” Casey that he was his true father, and hidden in a secret spot was “treasure” for Buster to go and pick up after he helped his grandmother.
The treasure was actually a whole chest full of out printed coins from the mid 1800s with a market value of millions and millions of dollars. Buster Casey takes this as not only a blessing, but also a guise to make a marketing strategy by trading teeth for a coin. Different teeth would receive either a gold coin, or silver coin, and would go to raise the inflation of the entire town. This caused so much chaos and greed that nicknamed “Rant” again as the “Tooth Fairy”, as he and fellow childhood friend Bodie Carlyle would collect teeth from the local youth, and replace it with the overpriced coins. This strategy would pay off down. Chester Casey sits with his son, about to send him off to the big city, and says that the man in the car was his true father, and that he would have to find himself alone in the city. From here on out we see Buster Casey is seen growing up into a man, and about to start his true calling in life: Party Crashing.

Party Crashing is similar to Demolition derby, but instead of a set track, the “Crashers” would have carpools of people designated with a certain position in the car, while driving around on the local highways of the city. “Rant” Casey moves to the big city where he begins a job as an exterminator, and starts a collection of poisonous and rancid creatures to feed his addiction to poison and Rabies. The collection includes all sorts of poisonous/infected creatures such as Hobo and Black Widow spiders.
By happenstance chance “Rant” meets up with Echo Lawrence (A young lady horribly disfigured from a car accident that killed her parents), Shot Dunyun (Works with transcripts that are jacked into people’s brains and acts like a virtual reality of film and video, sometimes rehashes these films with affects of drug-induced euphoria), Green Taylor Simms, (Orator and Historian position in the fray of Crashers) and Neddy Nelson (A psycho-babbler conspirator that spouts outlandish theories).
These “Party Crashers” pick him up during the Nighttimer curfew (Due to recent outbreaks of Rabies that is later blamed on Rant, citizens are split between “Daytimers” and “Nighttimers” in a forced segregation), spotting him the position as “mascot” in the middle of their “Just Married” flagged vehicle. Without precedence, the first meeting is love at first sight, in more ways than one as “Rant” purposely kisses Shot on the mouth to send as a picture back to his parents in hopes of causing more unwanted stress in their life about their baby boy.
“Party Crashing” uses “flags” i.e. “Honeymoon Nights” are when all cars participating dress up as “Just Married” newlywed cars, “Tree Nights” dealt with bolting Christmas Trees to the top of the vehicles, “Mattress Nights” had participants tie mattresses to the top of the vehicles, and many other forms of flags on different events. These flags, although at times humorous were to mainly point out who was a “Party Crasher”, and who were just civilians.
Despite the wild, chaotic sport that is “Party Crashing”, there are primary rules to the game. To any team that does not follow those rules, there are fouls called on them, and after three fouls, that team are not notified of the next night that “Party Crashing” would happen. A few examples to the rules is that flags have to be visible on the cars participating, so a “Soccer Mom” night had to be painted up with team names and look like a high school van off to a soccer game. Another important rule was that no collision of the cars could be more than 20 mph combined, so if Car A is traveling at 10 mph, and collides with Car B going 11 mph, the combined impact is 21mph, and over the limit. T boning (hitting a vehicle from the side) was also illegal.
“Rant” begins to become a well-known figure in the illegal Demolition Derby, and by some accounts becomes the scapegoats for the government to use as a cause for a super spreader of the Rabies pandemic in both the city and the small towns surrounding the area. This makes Buster “Rant” Casey infamous, and helps spark an intimate relationship with Echo Lawrence, becoming that generations “Sid and Nancy” as described by a high school student’s account in the book.
Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk is available in paperback from Doubleday Press, and is worth reading. Without revealing much more, if one can get passed the style of biography this novel is written in, where Palahniuk gives reference to several other biographies written in this style are found in the Author’s Note of the book’s first hardcover edition.
Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey was an exciting, hysterical read, and despite being four years old, I recommend anyone to read this book, which read fast and is fun, if not grotesque. Chuck Palahniuk is a great cross between humor and horror, and it always is fun to be both grossed-out and bawling with laughter in his books. The novel is somewhat sophomoric, a cliché notion to what one expects of Chuck Palahniuk’s work, but the story itself is fluctuating constantly between different sorts of testimonies, so not one voice is ever majority. Testimonies from over 50 different witnesses keeps the book moving at a fast-pace, and has amazing details not quite found in most modern novels. I especially love how the book makes one have to question who is being the most honest eyewitness to Buster “Rant” Casey’s life account. A perfect read for anytime, you may see yourself either loving the book, or hating it completely, but one thing is for certain: it has Chuck Palahniuk written all over.

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