"Dried shit keeps flaking off his cowboy boots." That's one of the first things car salesman Wallace Boyer notices when he meets the protagonist of Chuck Palahniuk's forthcoming novel, Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey — and as anyone who's read the Fight Club author's other work knows, it won't be the grossest thing you'll hear about Casey before the story's end. Throughout the book, those who knew Buster "Rant" Casey tell their sure-to-be-funny stories about a man known for injecting himself with rabies and trying to get scorpions to bite him. (The name Rant, by the way, is the sound children make while vomiting.) Today, we bring you an exclusive preview of the first few pages. As for the rest of the book, due in May, the squeamish are forewarned. —Marc Tracy

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey [PDF]