Rant – Palahniuk’s future

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey (2007) is another tour de force by Chuck Palahnuik. This is a distorted dystopian futuresque rambling tale of disjointed accounts centred around the character “Rant” Casey. Because it is an oral tale, and because characters and events are described through the eyes of others there is a lack of exposition, which I for one enjoy. I’ve never been a big fan of the endless descriptions of who, what and where when it comes to future-fic, and I have read quite a bit of that kind of stuff, since one of my major essays was about Dystopia. This novel dumps the reader squarely in medias res and takes off running.

First thing we find out is that Rant is presumed dead. So right off the bat the main character is dead already. The tale of his life gets slowly reconstructed in bits and pieces by the people who have run into him at one time or another. Rant comes from a small town and parts of his childhood are retold, both by friends and foes. The outlandish stories about how Rant has found gold coins in old paint cans all around town, the gory story of how he got his nickname “rant” and stories of his mother and father – all of this is woven into the descriptions of what is going on in the relative now.

The world of Rant is an obscure future deceptively close to our own with some big differences. For instance, there is a curfew separating those who are active during the day from those who live and work at night. It becomes ever more strict when there is an epidemic outbreak of rabies. Nighttimers and Daytimers go through that classic division where they categorise each other as Other and blame societies ills on each other. All the tragically familiar reasoning we have seen time and time again over race, class, gender etc. is suddenly focused on which time of day you are active in.

There is also a loving description of an ousider sub-culture which revolves around party crashing, a sort of deliberate demolition derby run amok in the streets. People dress up as wedding parties, soccer moms, Christmas tree buyers or high school fotball supporters and crash into each other in the streets. It seems the more expensive the cars and fancier the dress-up the better. Rubber necking is more than a past time, it’s an entire world unto itself.

Rant is at the centre of the action, not just because he is wealthy from all the “tooth fairy” money he has, but also because he is a carrier of a new strain of rabies which he infects friends and lovers with. The virus spreads in the Nighttimer community and further deepens the rift between Daytimers and Nighttimers. Rant himself is fine, and there are parallells drawn with Typhoid Mary and other super carriers. The reader will recognise some typically Palahniuk social commentary in the critique of how society handles contagious diseases – from the times of creating a smallpox pandemic amongst the Indians in the 1800s and to the AIDS epidemic in Africa in current times – saying that it’s odd how these things always seem to happen when the rich white west needs to find a cure and needs lots of test subjects.

Rant Casey is a man pieced together through the recollections of others. This is a pretty typically postmodernist attitude towards the truth and identity. He looms large in the text, never given a voice of his own, and the reader has no way of divining his intentions. Why is he so obsessed with sticking his hands and feet down wild burrows and waiting to get stung or bit by whatever lives there? That’s how he contracts rabies and learns of the priapism caused by the bites of certain spiders. What is he up to in general? Infecting people with rabies?

None of this, however, is the strange part of the story. The strange part (well stranger part then) is the theory that slowly comes to light over the pages that given the right set of circumstance and the right mind set you can place yourself outside time and in effect timetravel. No machines needed. This puts an interesting spin on the grandfather theory – one that has been recounted many times – where you travel back in time and accidentally kill your own ancestor. It seems that here the theory here is more about going back in time and siring yourself, creating a superior version of yourself. Palahniuk just sort of slips this in there. Just like he does with the rabies, the party crashing, the curfew and the “ports” some people have in the backs of their heads.

To my mind some of the best dystopian fiction does just that, describes a world alien to ours but without making that the whole point. And just like Fight Club you can easily imagine “Party Crashers” taking a step in from the fictional realm in the good old tradition of life imitating art.

I like the mix of ideas and Palahniuk’s take on the bleak future/now. I like the covert social criticism. I like the way he deals with his topics without becoming preachy and obvious. It is quite a trick to pull off all the differnt voices and still manage not to lose the main plot. This kind of eye witness account of events can become stale and too much like boring journalistic text, but not in this case. It is a good read, sedcutive as ever, funny, nauseating and frightening. The ending is sufficiently open that you can easily imgaine this tale continuing in some form or shape. A dark and disturbing brave new world with all the literary tricks of a really talented author.

MULE

The Road by Cormac McCarthy – On the road in Dystopia

Cormac McCarthy has created an unusually bleak vision of the future in The Road (2006). A boy and his father travel through a burnt out landscape covered in ash where the dead sit like poor wayfaring strangers in ancient bog body fashion along the side of the road. All they have is each other, a few paltry possessions, a gun with two rounds in it and a shopping cart to haul their meager provisions. I have read quite a few dystopic tales in my day, and this is definitely one of the better ones. There is a sense that no matter how bad things get, human life will continue on some small scale no matter what the price. The father does most of the telling, the world is described through his memories and what he sees around him.

As you might well expect not all of their fellow travelers are friendly. Cannibalism, rape and plunder are definite risks to be taken into account here, as well as the many natural dangers. If you have ever been on a long trek you know that having the wrong boots can quickly become a very big problem. Having no boots at all in cold weather when you have to keep moving to stay alive is no joke. The boy and his father have little sparkling conversations that you really feel are authentic. When the father tells the boy not to look at the many dead because things you see stay with you forever the boy merely replies “okay”. That okay is the answer to a lot of complicated conversations and questions between the two and you just know deep down that nothing will ever be okay again.

This is a true version of TS Eliots “The Wasteland”. All around are the dead, watching, and everything is covered in ash. Nothing grows, no one can live. Cities and towns and farmhouses are plundered down to the bone. People have resorted to eating their own kind because there is nothing else to eat and there really is very little hope that anything can get better. Also I like the fact that we are not told what went wrong. And it really does not matter from the point of view of these two pilgrims what happened, because they are living in the aftermath. And as a reader you feel for the father trying to keep his hope up as well as keeping them both alive. As he looks at the boy and watches him grow thinner and more careworn he also begins to become sick himself.

Normally you can feel fairly certain that the lead characters are going to make it, but in this particular novel you never feel that certainty. They could go at any minute, their life is that precarious. The language is pretty stark and grim and takes on the aspect of the gray landscape. It is one of those books that you hardly want to put down for the sheer need of knowing what is going to happen next. When the pair find some little windfall, some unexpected apples in the snow of an old orchard, or a warm place to sleep, you already know that despite the brief respite they have to get moving again in the morning.

One of the interesting aspects of a novel like this is it makes you think about what you would be able to do when forced back on yourself – what cruelty and desperation could make you kill or forsake your ideals. As philosophical questions go it is a fairly basic one, but still worth asking.

Mule