I Wear The Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman

I Wear The Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman is likely one of the most fun people you could ever invite to a cocktail party. His ability to opine on almost anything makes him a national treasure, and when he gets rolling on a theme… Watch out!

I Wear the Black Hat is a meditation on villains, villainy, and why we lionize some and demonize others. Kobe Bryant, Bernie Goetz, Batman, George Bush, Charlie Manson, OJ Simpson, and a few hundred others get insightfully skewered in this collection of essays on why how we think the way we do about the bad guys.

Awesome brain-candy popcorn from a master of cultural criticism. Delightful collection of essays as usual.

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

Downtown Owl introduces us to a small handful of residents of Owl, North Dakota, population 800, in the late fall of 1983. Mitch, Zebra, and their friends are juniors in high school. Julia is a history teacher and a transplant from Milwaukee. Horace is an old man. They intersect in a way that is more remniscient of Richard Russo than anything else Klosterman has written. While some of the dialog and banter might remind dedicated readers of his other work, and while the occasional bit of clever pop-culture criticism sneaks in, this is generally a novel of very mild comedy, limited insight, and only marginally successful attempts at pathos.

I think Klosterman is fantastic, and I've enjoyed everything he's written. But his novels are his weakest stuff, and this is the weaker of the two.

The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman

The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman

Klosterman is bright, fun, and funny. His new novel, The Visible Man, is both silly and insightful at times. At worst, the main character is an interesting, creepy prick, who CK uses to make some clever observations about modern middle America. He’s also so playful and borderline DFW in his linguistic byplay, that I can’t help but really enjoying most of what goes on here.

That said, the best parts of this book are the excerpts from his upcoming book of essays. The bit about Batman and Bernard Goetz made me excited for more Klosterman wit and observation.

Chuck Klosterman IV by Chuck Klosterman
Styled somewhat in the style of Led Zeppelin’s final album, Chuck Closterman IV treads the same turf as his other works: fast-paced, clever pop culture analysis. The book is divided into three sections: Things That Are True, Things That May Be True, and Things That Are Not True.

Klosterman definitely improved as his career advanced and he matured; there is a pronounced delta between Klosterman IV and, say, Eating the Dinosaur, written some years later. Still though, Chuck Klosterman IV was entertaining, but by this point, I’d grown a little weary of the shtick, and the pop-culture references had started to feel more like an exhumation than a fresh look at (semi-) current events. So I elected to move on rather than read Klosterman’s earliest book, Fargo Rock City. However, I would like to make my esteem for Mr. Klosterman clear here: He writes a great essay.

Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs by Chuck Klosterman

More Klosterman from a few years earlier, Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs deals primarily with television, sports, and music. It’s all in a similar vein to Eating the Dinosaur, though without the clever mashup structure.

If overly clever, not-at-all-reverent essays on pop culture are your thing, and you don’t mind subject matter which is fast becoming dated, you’ll be delighted by Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs.

Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman

Turns out, Chuck Klosterman is smart, funny, and occasionally insightful. Eating the Dinosaur is a collection of essays on pop culture and interviews with the type of vapid celebrities that little the late-night talk-show pop culture landscape like worms on the sidewalk after a rain. Except the essays are brilliant, and they are woven together in twos, sections from each essay, which are seemingly unrelated, chopped and screwed under the banner of an interview. And the awesome magician’s trick that Klosterman pulls off is to have the disparate parts all combine by the end of each chapter to have some broader significance, relationship, or commentary.

I read Eating the Dinosaur in one sitting on an airplane from Texas to Seattle, and immediately visited a Half Price Books there in Redmond, where I picked up two more Klosterman books.

Highly recommended.