Jun 09 2007

Chuck Palahniuk’s Rant

Published by ben at 9:09 am under Criticism


Rant CoverI’m normally not a fan of Chuck Palahniuk. I liked Fight Club fine, but I despised Lullaby to such an extent that, even though it had been the only other Palahniuk novel I’d ever read, it colored my thinking about him absolutely. (I did start Choke and didn’t care for it; I’ve also listened to a bit of an interview he gave shortly after Haunted was released, which was smart enough to convince me that he had talent, talent that was wasted on Lullaby.) What bugs me about him, based on my limited reading, is his seemingly absolute aversion to specificity. Where do these stories take place? Somewhere. When is it? Sometime. What exactly is the sickness at the heart of society that drives characters to do what they do? Something. It’s all very Beckett, Sartre, or Camus, but without the elegance or the depth. We can, of course, come to conclusions about the who, what, where, and when of these novels, but for my own personal taste, politics, and aesthetics, Lullaby (and by reverse extension Fight Club) fall short of saying anything interesting.

I can’t say that Rant entirely deviates from the “pattern”–it begins in a nowheresville small town named Middleton and moves to a big (unnamed, natch) city about one-third of the way through. The historical moment of the novel is never made explicit. The small town scenes seemingly could be set at any moment of American history after WWII (or maybe even before). There is little identifying technology and no reference to any historical event that might give the reader a clue, except a few mentions of “Party Crashing,” the I-SEE-U Act,” and “out-cording”, neither of which make any sense upon a first reading until well-after this neo-nostalgic section of the novel concludes.

Once the setting moves to the city, the reader becomes aware that this is not the 1950s, 60s, 70s, or any other recognizable period in history. To compensate for the impossible traffic conditions of the future (yes future) the world of the city has been divided into day and night. Citizens are only allowed to emerge from their homes for twelve hour shifts. Klaxons warn of the approach of dawn or dusk and $500 or $1000 fines are levied for people who do not comply. Nighttimers (as they are called) form a kind of underclass. They are given subsidized housing and certain other perks in the hopes that more people while choose to be nocturnal, but mainly their ranks are drawn from the endless supply of teenagers who–like the hippies, punks, and goths before them–mainly leave the day behind to piss off their parents. The most significant form of community found at night is the somewhat mysterious activity of Party Crashing, a sort of game which involves flagging your car with a pre-arranged symbol (a Christmas tree, a “Just Married Sign,” etc.) and prowling the streets looking to “tag” (i.e. run into) other cars similarly marked. But it’s not just for giggles. There is a point, even if it takes a while to develop.

The plot element that finally clues the reader in to just how far in the future this novel is set (or simply the fact that it is absolutely not set in some version of our present with a minor tweak) is the existence of Matrix-like ports in the back of almost everyone’s head. The ports are used for “out-cording”–think of what Nero does in Strange Days–a form of entertainment that has, overnight, eliminated all other media. And that’s the set up.

Oh, except for one thing.

Rant Casey, the eponymous protagonist whose story is told through the recollections of several dozen characters of various acquaintance, is into rabies. As a child he would vaccinate himself against boredom or schoolwork by sticking his hands down animal holes. He had been bitten by black widows, hobo and recluse spiders, coyotes, bats, skunks, and innumerable other dangerous critters. Eventually he became an asymptomatic carrier of a highly contagious and highly drug-resistant form of rabies which, according to the government, threatens society on an existential level and is the justification for the more or less genocidal slaughter of Nighttimers. Okay, that’s the set up.

And from there the novel gets really weird.

However, I’m not going to spoil it by giving away any more of the plot. Let’s just say that the last third or so of the novel is equal parts JG Ballard, Kurt Vonnegut, and The Matrix.

That being said I do want to say a few things about the pleasure of reading Rant and some of the more interesting of its themes and aesthetics.

  • The cover is amazing. This novel is, in many ways, about the body and its collision with other bodies. Much like in Octavia Butler’s Kindred, the body becomes a means through which to escape the linear nature of time and narrative, and the abstracted flesh and bone on the cover does a very good job of capturing that aspect of Rant, which might otherwise go un-noted. Also, in it’s lack of title and other ornamentation, it is simply a pleasure to look at. It achieves the kind of timeless quality that I see Palahniuk reach for in his fiction but fail to achieve.
  • Palahniuk does an excellent job of pacing in Rant. Certain of the novel’s elements (such as the small crescent moons and suns that accompany the multiple narrators’ names when they are introduced) remain mysteries for long periods of time before their meanings are revealed. And while this sort of revelation may not in and of itself be new or awe-inspiring, when we begin to think about the whole novel, some interesting ideas manifest.
  • For starters, who is actually writing the story? By making Rant an oral history, and formatting the narrative like a series of interwoven interviews, Palahniuk begs the question of authorshipo (or, perhaps, editorship). Many of the characters are clearly replying to questions asked by an author/editor, many of which it is clear are dangerous. One character, towards the end of the novel, in chronically incredulous that the interviewer would even ask such questions, given the danger the answers contain. This particular character is something of a tin-foil hat wearer, which allows us to dismiss his warnings as those of someone who sees danger everywhere and believes that Major League Baseball is controlling our minds. We can also, however, ask whether it is the interviewer who lives in a separate reality, one in which s/he has never heard of the issues in question.
  • What we therefore have, in the novel’s format, is a set of oblique agonisms. The reader is learning everything for the first time in an order that allows for narrative. The interviewer has already learned everything and has presented it in that narrative structure. However, this interviewer only knows this information as an outsider, unlike the narrators, who know most of what they know first-hand (although know it in a biased and often limited fashion, as would any such narrator–think Citizen Kane, but with more interpolators). The needs of each of these individuals and groups come into constant conflict with one another, but never in a strictly contradictory fashion. Instead, for certain moments, the needs of the narrators (to convince the audience of the truth of their report( align with the needs of the audience (to make sense of the narrative) or with the interviewer (who must weave the conflicts together). These alliances are only temporary, however, and in the end no one group can ever exert any real control over who Rant Casey was or why he did what he did (infected people with rabies, died in a fiery car wreck, married his mother [maybe]).
  • And in the end, control is what this novel is all about. The government attempts to control people through the manufacture of crisis (or fear-mongering of an extant crisis), through the development of certain forms of technology, and through an epistemological command of our sense of time. Differing factions attempt to control the legacy of Rant Casey as martyr, hero, saint, villain, terrorist, or devil (or some combination thereof). Readers, speakers, writers, editors, and others attempt to convince anyone who will listen of their truth and others’ lies.

    • The issue of control is one that is very resonant right now–given the development in contemporary criticism of Foucault’s bio-power and bio-politics, the work of Agamben and Hardt and Negri, discussions of code and protocol by Lessig and Galloway, and science fiction like Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge–and apparently cuts across the boundary of criticism and writing. I will try to deal with this issue in future posts, perhaps after I have had a chance to digest Palahniuk a bit more and after you have had a chance to read it.

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