Chuck Klosterman IV

I've been a fan of Klosterman since I read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs in college (a solid 10 or 11 years ago). I really loved the way he could take a pop culture artifact, analyze it more than anyone thought it should be, and then somehow loop it into some larger theory on life or society. Plus, his writing made me laugh. I haven't read Klosterman since my 2nd year of grad school, when I had to teach an essay of his, and I haven't gone near a book of his since. A few months ago, I decided to pick him back up again and give him another shot as an older, wiser reader.

This book is divided into three parts: pop culture essays, essays that expounds his theories about various things, and then some fiction at the end. I only read the pop culture essays, most of which have been previously published in other publications like Spin, Rolling Stone, GQ, etc. They were exactly what I expected them to be: funny, sarcastic, and occasionally self-deprecating. Sometimes he takes his subjects seriously (see his essays on Wilco and the Metallica documentary), and sometimes he doesn't (see his pieces on Britney Spears and U2). Even when he takes his subjects seriously, he rarely goes beneath the surface layers of any subject, which might be because all of these pieces were written for magazines or other publications. Each essay is preceded by commentary by Klosterman, where he gives some behind-the-scenes details on the writing of the piece, which sometimes has more insight or depth than the piece itself.

I enjoyed reading the first section of this book. Klosterman is a great writer, a good thinker, and he makes me laugh constantly. However, he can definitely come across as pretentious and sometimes an insufferable music snob/geek (for example, his essay/theory on a specific Led Zepplin album being the birth of metal (which I read a couple paragraphs of and then skipped, because life is too short for me to read an essay that goes, song by song, through an album I've never listened to, and connects it to specific metal songs/albums, all of which I've never heard of in my life)). There were times when I thought, “Jesus, Klosterman. Britney is not a symbol of America or an empty vessel for you to pour meaning into. She's a human being. But you're right, everything she's saying IS bananas.” I chose not to read the last two sections because I'm just not interested in reading his theories or his fiction at this point in time.

Would I recommend this book to anyone? Probably not, unless I had a hunch that you might like Klosterman's writing.