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Chuck Palahniuk. Photo by Shawn Grant |
If
I hear one more fathead bemoan the fact that books aren’t
what they used to be, I’m not only gonna reach for my
revolver, I’m gonna use it, to really give ’em something to
cry about. Of course books aren’t what they used to be, you
dolt. Neither are we. And I for one am damn glad that we
aren’t.
Think about all that
salad you ate during those so-called halcyon days, all the
shit you had to shovel, all that world you didn’t know. Do
you really think roughage tastes better with age? Think the
shit won’t stink now that you’re older? And that world you
had no idea about, was it that much better when it wasn’t
yours?
If you answered “yes” to
any of the above, you can stop reading this right now. In
fact, you may as well stop reading altogether, because you
can’t handle yourself, let alone books, and if you can’t
handle either, you sure as hell can’t handle the work of
Chuck Palahniuk.
Take Rant
(Doubleday $24.95), the Chuck’s latest head twist of
fatalness. Dubbed “An Oral Biography,” it consists of
nothing but the blood and the guts and the chatter left in
the wake of the life of one Buster “Rant” Casey, the once
and future king of the road. In Casey’s case, roads were
meant for crashing (Hey JG!), and lives were nothing
if not rabidly lived.
And rabidly infected.
See, as a boy Buster loved bites, and he went way outta his
way to let any and all of the wild world’s creatures nibble
and chunk on his flesh. As a result young Rant developed
some serious infections, the best and worst of which was
rabies; as the bad boy grew to be a badder man, he did
everything in his prowess to spread the disease.
Most infected are “The
Party Crashers,” that gaggle of thrill-seekers who dress for
weddings, then drive around looking to crash their cars into
each other. They’re a slutty lot, so their infections are
pretty much a given— and a take.
So’s their, er, drive,
the lengths and distances these viralites will go to show
that they’re alive; the pain they inflict and endure to
prove that they feel; the sudden and unequivocal rush of
near-death — and true life.
It is not a new story in
the annals of extreme self-discovery, and, as existence
becomes increasingly digitized, it won’t be an old story
either. So long as we live and we die, there’ll be rites of
passage, and the longer we do both, the bloodier they’ll
have to be. Thank Zeus there’s a cat like Palahniuk to
bloody ‘em into being.
Think about that the next
time you hear a bemoaning, and be happy we’ve got something
to bemoan about.
Chuck Palahniuk reads
from Rant,
Saturday, May 12, 7:30 p.m. at the historic Coast
Guard hangar, Shake-A-Leg, 2620 S. Bayshore Drive,
Coconut Grove. Tickets are required. Call 305-442-4408 for
more information. Hood is online at www.therealjohnhood.com.
