A Book of All-New Pop Culture Pieces by Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman has chronicled rock music, film, and sports for almost fifteen years. He's covered extreme metal, extreme nostalgia, disposable art, disposable heroes, life on the road, life through the television, urban uncertainty and small-town weirdness. Through a variety of mediums and with a multitude of motives, he's written about everything he can think of (and a lot that he's forgotten). The world keeps accelerating, but the pop ideas keep coming.

In "Eating the Dinosaur," Klosterman is more entertaining and incisive than ever. Whether he's dissecting the boredom of voyeurism, the reason why music fan's inevitably hate their favorite band's latest album, or why we love watching can't-miss superstars fail spectacularly, Klosterman remains obsessed with the relationship between expectation, reality, and living history. It's amateur anthropology for the present tense, and sometimes it's incredibly funny.

Q: What is this book about?

A: Well, that's difficult to say. I haven't read it yet - I've just clicked on it and casually glanced at this webpage. There clearly isn't a plot. I've heard there's a lot of stuff about time travel in this book, and quite a bit about violence and Garth Brooks and why Germans don't laugh when they're inside grocery stores. Ralph Nader and Ralph Sampson play significant roles. I think there are several pages about Rear Window and football and "Mad Men" and why Rivers Cuomo prefers having sex with Asian women. Supposedly there's a chapter outlining all the things the Unabomber was right about, but perhaps I'm misinformed.

Q: Is there a larger theme?

A: Oh, something about reality. "What is reality," maybe? No, that's not it. Not exactly. I get the sense that most of the core questions dwell on the way media perception constructs a fake reality that ends up becoming more meaningful than whatever actually happened.

Q: Should I read this book?

A: Probably. Do you see a clear relationship between the Branch Davidian disaster and the recording of Nirvana's "In Utero"? Does Barack Obama make you want to drink Pepsi? Does ABBA remind you of AC/DC? If so, you probably don't need to read this book. You probably wrote this book. But I suspect everybody else will totally love it, except for the ones who absolutely hate it.

Related Categories:
Books > Social Science > Popular Culture - General

Inside the mind of a media maven

In an early chapter of Eating the Dinosaur, author Chuck Klosterman ruminates on whether he has a favorite guitarist. “That’s more a question of virtuosity versus feel,” he writes. “Jeff Beck has a high level of both, I suppose, but sometimes that works to his disadvantage. Clapton and Page are both good, but I think we’ve taken the blues as far as they can go. The blues get in the way now.” It’s a classic Klosterman riff, not unlike a riff from one of his guitar heroes. And it’s these writing flourishes that make Eating the Dinosaur such a gutsy, irreverent, wonderful read.   Klosterman is a gifted essayist whose work is regularly on display in Esquire and The New York Times Magazine. Now he displays his wit and wisdom in a nonfiction collection that explores pop culture, sports and the meaning of life. Eating the Dinosaur ponders such wide-ranging topics as the similarities between the late alt-rocker Kurt Cobain and the late cult leader David Koresh and some of the things Unabomber Ted Kaczynski had right. There are lighter pieces about sitcom laugh tracks, Garth Brooks, time travel and the new look of Pepsi. In the wrong hands, this eclectic mix could prove disastrous. But Klosterman exhibits a deep knowledge and a deft touch on an expansive list of topics, and his insights are sometimes enlightening, sometimes educational and always entertaining.    John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.