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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 2007)
OCTOBER b. ¿007 ¡UStPUtj«, - books Squish^est Harvest Party Saturday, OcL 13“ 3pm - 8pm Rant and Rave This is your chance to experience crush at an urban winery. Come on down and get sticky with the Hip Chicks! Chuck Palahniuk's latest is a pulpy pleasure; Nobody Passes is a must-read Rant by Chuck Palahruuk; Doubleday, 2007; $24-95 hardcover The latest novel from Fight Club author, self-styled provocateur and queer Portlander Chuck Palahniuk, Rant is written in the style of an “oral biography”—an interview-based, sound byte- driven narrative technique popularized by George Plimpton in his biographies of Truman Capote and Edie Sedgwick. Palahniuk fiction alizes this documentarian approach to problematize the mystique of Rant’s primary character, Buster “Rant” Casey. Casey, whom we never hear from directly, is a character conjured through the testimony of friends, enemies, family and neighbors, with all the contradictions endemic to such a subjective mode of storytelling. It’s for the best that Palahniuk has chosen to go a less-typical route with the form of Rant, because the content is somewhat Palahniuk-predictable: The setting is a dystopian, vaguely familiar near-future, where Casey, the product of a squalorous, hypo critical small-town upbringing, escapes to the city and finds a surrogate family in a violent subculture. This time, instead of forming fight clubs, Palahniuk’s sexually polymorphous disaffected- youth set allow themselves to feel something by “party crashing,” an elaborately circumscribed game of cat-and-mouse using real cars and real roads. (One cannot help being reminded of J.G. Ballard’s infinitely more serious Crash.) The party crashing is concurrent with other speculative- fiction plot elements with which Rant is packed: the division of the human population into “night timers” and “daytimers,” a rabies epidemic, wide spread addiction to virtual-reality entertainment, time travel, etc. Pahlaniuk is better at thrill-seeking than social commentary. Despite his quasi-iconic status, his gift is less a literary one (his prose is never really more than serviceable) than an instinct for the sensa- tionalistic, pulpy and propulsive. But hostile hipsters and angry teens probably need their own Stephen King, and Pahlaniuk is the man for the job. Rant, with its campy, overstuffed quality and its generous helping of gallows humor, is best taken on guilty-pleasure terms. The less seriously you take it, the more page-tumingly enjoyable it is. —Christopher McQuain Admission is $10 and includes wine tasting, light appetizers, grape juice tasting, punch down the cap and grapes galore! Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity • Winery and Tasting Room Open Daily nam - 6pm 4510 SE 23RD AVE. PORTLAND • 503-234-379O Edited by Matt Bernstein Sycamore; Seal Press, 2006; $15.95 softcover www.hipchicksdowine.com (see our website for directions & events) Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity is an incredible anthology that tackles the complex issues surrounding the ideas of passing and explores the impact that various forms of passing have on the lived experiences of its contributors. Editor Matt Bernstein Sycamore, aka Mattilda, has previously edited other books including That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. Nobody Passes is a collec tion of ruminations on the idea of passing. The book probes the complexities of queerness and seeks to ana lyze the ways in which race, class, gender, presentation, ability, etc. intersect with one another. If you can get past the first few pages, you are in for an incredible and thought provoking read. The intro duction, however, is little more than narcissistic ramblings by Mattilda where she rages against her publisher, publishing as an industry, academia and those who she refers to as assimilationists. Unfortunately, her valid critiques get lost in this less-than-lucid attack on anything and anyone she deems as being not radical enough. However, once beyond her tirade, one can only marvel at the diversity of experiences represented in the contributors and the array of powerful, complex issues explored within these pages. The I topics include an examination of what it means to I pass as heterosexual when you and your partner are I in reality very queer; femme as a genderqueer I identity; and the politics of being disabled and I passing as able-bodied. Nobody Passes seemingly flows effortlessly from complex yet accessible academic analyses of pass- ing as a social phenomenon to raw and emotional accounts of the effects of different forms of passing. The various contributors also challenge readers to lixik at their own internalized assumptions relating to other members of the queer community. This book forces readers to examine their own privileges and the impact those have on themselves and oth- ers. Nobody Passes is a must-read for anyone hoping to gain a more nuanced and inclusive understand- I I I I I I I I I | I ing of who is part of the queer community. I —Sassafras Lowrey O I r just out o 1 ! n A ♦ EMPLOYMENT I NEEDS ONE MORE GOOD PERSON IN OUR AD SALES DEPARTMENT. If you have a car, computer skills, enjoy making and maintaining relationships with customers, and are looking to learn new career skills, you might be the right person for us. OPPORTUNITY @ | M JUST OUT k I Several different compensation packages are available, from full commission to an hourly rate. Employer-paid health insurance benefits are available. If interested please send cover letter T he S ensual N ew espionage T hriller from the A cademy A ward -W inning D irector of B rokeback mountain ■ x’ * 4 RF t I ng L ee ’ s potently erotic and susfenseful WB ust , C aution ’ casts a spell you won ’ t want to break ! Tony I .eung goes places he's never been before as an actor. Newcomer Tang Wei gives a performance that will be talked about for years. Ang Lee is a true master." r» II M I RAVI MM A n elegant , erotic movie - mixes daring and DELICACY WITH A MASTER’S TOUCH. The perfect blending of director Ang Lee's two most popular fdms.” RK HARD CORI IMM a wuhkkmi t » oi *, ihwc E3 , , ..... * 1911UOK1US1W Wl JMW MIH m *^11 w «iff .... f o c u fit IN SELECT THEATRES FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5™
