Downtown Owl: A Novel

I was raised on a farm near a little town with 800 residents. As a result, I can relate to a lot of what's going on in DOWNTOWN OWL. Everybody knows everybody else; the new female teachers in town are celebrities; Friday night football is an event.There are three major characters. Probably the most compelling is seventy-three-year-old Horace Jones who lives on a farm outside Owl. Horace is a widower whose wife had congenital insomnia, which eventually drove her insane. He has another secret. He was swindled out of his life savings by a conman he took for a friend. He was too proud to tell anybody about it, however, as he thought everyone would think he was a greedy person. Horace has coffee in town with his friends every day where they shake dice to see who will pay and talk about the same things almost verbatim. Substitute cribbage for the dice and this is also dead on.The second most compelling character is a high school athlete named Mitch Hrlicka. He's the third-string quarterback on the football team and he hates Coach Laidlaw who calls him "Vanna" after Vanna White, for no decipherable reason other than that Vanna doesn't do much. He also hates his coach because the coach is having sex with one of the "hot" girls.The last of the three main characters is Julia Rabia, a new social studies teacher from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At first, she hates herself for taking the job in such a nothing-happening place until she meets Naomi O`Reilly, a second grade teacher who introduces her to the bar scene in Owl, where she quickly becomes intrigued by the "coolest" guy in town, Vance Druid, the least talented of the Druid brothers who were legendary North Dakota quarterbacks. Vance is more famous than his brothers because of a miraculous play that appeared on national television. These days he helps his brothers run a buffalo farm.It took me a little while to get into DOWNTOWN OWL. There's a section where author Klosterman discusses nicknames. Just about everybody has one in Owl, but they're the strangest nicknames you've ever heard. There's "Grendel" Sellers, a six foot seven sack machine on the football team; there's "Dog Lover," a bartender at one of the watering holes who also tortures cats; there's "Woo-Chuck," short for Woodchuck who is called this because he stashes Quaaludes in the upholstery of his Monte Carol. I thought this was a bit over the top at first, but I got used to it in short order. Klosterman keeps you reading with plot threads like the inevitable fight between Grendel and Cubby Candy, who was a stone killer when it came to fistfights. We also want to know when John Laidlaw is going to get arrested for fooling around with his female students. The townspeople seem to know what he's doing but they don't seem to have the gumption to do anything about it.Something that really snuck up on me was the snowstorm at the end. I knew it was coming, but I had no idea it would be similar to the Children's Blizzard of 1888 that took dozens of lives. Suddenly Kosterman's leisurely anecdotes about the three main characters take on greater significance. Who will live? Who will succumb to the elements?

My dad’s side of the family is from Wishek,ND. This book gave a sense of what life might be like in that sett.

I bought this book when it first came out in 2008, read through it in a flash, and walked away feeling vaguely disappointed, mainly because it was so unlike most of the other greatly loved works by Chuck Klosterman which come via short pop culture articles or chapters in books like Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs or IV. But after some time had passed I decided to dust this off the shelf and give it another read, to judge the book on its own merits and not necessarily in comparison to the author's other works.I have to say this time around I came away very impressed by this super accurate take on small town life (which outside of the mid-1980s movies and music will likely feel familiar in any time period). Everyone knows everyone's business, people have nicknames given long ago for bizarre reasons, routine is both comforting and soul-crushing, and people whether in their teens, 20s, or 80s have their own way of going through life on a day to day basis. The narrative style is from different points of view, so you get little windows into the strange thoughts and habits of the central and peripheral characters. It's small town action: adults sit around and drink alcohol or coffee with their same set of friends in the same places, kids play sports, drive around through the fields, and have strange conversations with each other while trying to understand life. And then a big event comes out of nowhere that impacts all of the lives of the central characters. It's a charming, strange little book that I'd recommend strongly to anyone needing a good read these days.

Owl is the name of a (fictional) small (pop. 800) town in North Dakota. Being from a small town (pop. 600; not fictional), Harrisville, Michigan this book seemed like a natural fit. With the exception of occasional reminiscing the whole play takes place in and around this isolated community. The upper European influence is of course everywhere. One might think of this story as Lake Wobegon-esque in the Bizarro World sense. Chuck Klosterman is the author of Fargo Rock City, Eating the Dinosaur, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, and most recently The Visible Man. In addition he is a prolific producer of E books.Klosterman is a pop culture fanatic but this one is different. Owl is "more" mainstream, reminiscent of Plain Song (Haruf) and The Shipping News (Proulx). Considering its diminutive size (288 pages) the story and characters will stick with you long after you put it down. The sobering and abrupt conclusion might leave you feeling the way you do when you find someone has died and no one told you they were sick. If you are from the parts of this mortal coil where Alberta Clippers are something vague like a hockey team you might want to look it up first. North Dakota is home to some of the most severe weather in the lower 48. As the author notes many diesel engines are left running for weeks at a time to keep the fuel from turning to something with the consistency of lava but without the heat..It is time for school to begin in 1983. A new young teacher has been hired. Julia came from a more metropolitan background but knows she needs experience. Mitch is a high school student whose English teacher and football coach has nicknamed him Vanna (searching for a letter). He is far more intelligent and curious than many of his classmates. Unlike so many congenital "small town forever" types he has the moral and brilliance internal compass that tells him where the edge is and how to keep from crossing it. Horace is an aging widower who both openly and subliminally mourns the early passing of the love of his life and who has settled into the concrete habits so familiar to those of a certain age. Habits so predictable you could virtually set the proverbial watch by. He and his partners in crime live out their existence like stones in a rock garden with their repeated stories and petty belief systems.Klosterman has managed with these three individuals to penetrate the society that is Owl. The school, the bars, the general environs, the secondary players will be familiar to you long before you begin to sense that things don't always work out the way you hoped. In small towns seemingly mundane events take on lives of their own and form the mythological road down which all locals will march. The lives of our heroes here will be no exception. As one reviewer said this ain't Kennedy on Albany, but how could it be? I predict you'll agree this one is a keeper. 2.75* GIBO

third book of his i've read this year, would like to have a beer with him.

Excellent.