Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

I recall reading this book fairly quickly back when I first got into C. K., but for whatever reasons, it took me four years to read the Kindle version, in which time it went out of print, and became very dated... Britney Spears, Val Kilmer, Radiohead, the White Stripes. OK, so something like the following may be dated, but it's still brilliant:The Edge was open about his support for John Kerry, but Bono—supremely aware that he will have to work with whomever wins—remained staunchly nonpartisan. “I have forsaken my ability to talk about this issue,” he said, and I find it hilarious that he actually used the word forsaken. For the past twenty-five years, countless people have referred to Bono as “messianic.” Now he actually talks like Jesus.His McNuggets eating experience is interesting, but his subsequent note contrasting his experiment with Super Size Me is, frankly, what made me a Chuck Klosterman fan for life:... Early in the documentary, Spurlock poses an important question: he asks us where personal responsibility ends and corporate responsibility begins. Super Size Me never answers that question, but I will. Corporate responsibility begins when corporations start breaking the law, and personal responsibility never stops. Spurlock questions the ethics of offering consumers mammoth 64-ounce beverages and massive portions of fries, because people can’t help themselves. “It’s just human nature to eat what you get, even if you don’t need it or want it,” Spurlock says. Well, whose f---ing fault is that? Why is a restaurant supposed to worry about people who get fat by eating food they supposedly don’t want?Goth day at Disneyland, the Morrissey cult among LA latinos, the all-girl Led Zep cover band:Roberta Plant looks a little like Parker Posey; her other band is called Easy, but this band is easier. All she has to do is sing the songs that changed her life. And if men (or women) want to watch her do that simply because she’s a woman, that’s fine; being a woman doesn’t have any impact on why she loves Physical Graffiti and In Through the Out Door. “Actually, the hardest thing is just memorizing the lyrics,” she says. “When I was learning ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ I had to close my eyes and create this entire movie in my head—I had to come up with this entire visual [expletive] thing, just so I could [expletive] remember all six verses of this weird-a-- sh--. I had to look up hedgerow in the dictionary.” Well, so did the rest of us.I actually liked the reporting, dated as it is, better than the thought experiments, which struck me as one toke over the line. It is worth getting to his thoughts on "guilty pleasures," however:Drinking more than five glasses of vodka before (or during) work generally qualifies as a guilty pleasure. This is also true for having sex with people you barely know, having sex with people you actively hate, and/or having sex with people you barely know but whom your girlfriend used to live with during college (and will now subsequently hate). These are all guilty pleasures in a technical sense. However, almost no one who uses the term “guilty pleasure” is referring to situations like these; people who use the term “guilty pleasure” in casual conversation are often talking about why they like Patrick Swayze’s Road House. This drives me insane for two reasons: by labeling things like Patrick Swayze as guilty pleasures, it somehow dictates that (a) people should feel bad for liking things they sincerely enjoy, and (b) if these same people were not somehow coerced into watching Road House every time it comes on TBS, they’d just as likely be reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Both of these principles are wrong.However long ago this came out (and in pop culture terms, it was eons ago), this may be, as intended, Chuck Klosterman's Zoso.

The latest Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman IV:A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, has come out in paperback, so I picked it up. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been reading this mammoth book on the Algerian war and have been reading some lighter stuff in between for a break and this totally fits the bill. That being said I had read a lot of the essays before, since I use dot regularly buy Esquire magazine, but it was nice to re-visit many of the articles. Love or hate Klosterman, he has a unique perspective on life and pop culture. However, I have to admit that I am a little bit more skeptical about some of his opinions like his defense of McDonalds in "McDiculous"-in which he comes across as a libertarian apologist for capitalism. "The Amazing McNugget Diet" was a mere week and has nothing on the film Super Size Me-a week isn't long enough to do anything to the body. I also found his hypothetical questions, that preceded several of the pieces, tedious.That being said there are some real gems in the collection. Some of my favorites include:a profile of Birtney Spears ("Bending Spoons with Britney Spears"-possibly the least self-aware celebrity alive), a profile of Val Kilmer ("Crazy Things Seem Normal, Normal Things Seem Crazy" -possibly the most self-aware celebrity around), a Johnny Carson obituary ("Here's `Johnny'"-the collapse of the common pop culture), a mediation on your nemesis and archenemy ("Nemesis"), the pop culture concept of Advancement, which I still don't quite grasp ("Advancement"), the problems of rooting for your country in the Olympics ("I Do Not Hate the Olympics"), fashion ("Three Stories Involving Pants," pop opinion vs. your opinion ("Cultural Betrayal"), the problem of monogamy ("Monogamy"), the significance of reality TV ("4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42).All in all, it is extremely entertaining, thought provoking, but not too taxing. I guess that's the definition of a perfect summer read.

Klosterman is an acquired taste, but I've always found his work to be the perfect mixture of funny and insightful at the same time. Some will say these are dated now; I would say that these are a fascinating slice of pop culture that's worth revisiting every few years. The format is excellent, a compilation of Klosterman's essays ranging from television, to film, to pop music and sports - with a health dose of silly journalistic assignments and shorter think pieces thrown in for good measure. Think of what you used to get in the olden days of ESPN's Page 2 and Grantland. At 400+ pages, it's the perfect read for a long vacation or plane trip, where you can skip at leisure between the various pieces depending on your personal tastes.Strongly recommend to those interested in pop culture or who want to remember the silly world we all lived in 15ish years ago!