{"id":657,"date":"2006-09-30T16:13:18","date_gmt":"2006-09-30T16:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/30\/chuck-klosterman-chuck-kloster\/"},"modified":"2006-09-30T16:13:18","modified_gmt":"2006-09-30T16:13:18","slug":"chuck-klosterman-chuck-kloster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/09\/30\/chuck-klosterman-chuck-kloster\/","title":{"rendered":"Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman IV [Library of Babel]"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Onion’s AV Club review<\/a> of Chuck Klosterman’s Chuck Klosterman IV<\/cite><\/strong> came across my RSS feeds the other day, and reminded me that I haven’t actually booklogged it. That’s a glaring omission, as a quote from it was the basis for the third most viewed post<\/a> on this weblog to date.<\/p>\n

The book is subtitled “A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas.” The “Dangerous Ideas” part has already been covered in the problematic quote bit above, said ideas showing up here in the form of fourteen essays originally for various magazines (with cute\/ clever little “hyoptheticals” as introductions for each). The “Curious People” show up in the celebrity profiles (mostly for Spin<\/cite> that take up a bit more than half of the book. These are embellished with footnotes and introductions explaining the context of the interviews and the reaction to the original publication.<\/p>\n

If you’re not normally into celebrity profiles, this probably sounds pretty toxic, but there are bits of genius in most of them, such as this bit from a 2003 article on Britney Spears:<\/p>\n

\n

“Had I not went into music,” she tells me, “I probably would have gone to college and became a schoolteacher. That was my dream, because I love kids. Either that, or an entertainment lawyer.” For a moment, I think this is a joke. But it’s not a joke. But it’s brilliant. Schoolteacher, entertainment lawyer, pop star, African warlord– what’s the fucking difference? “I’m famous,” she concedes, “but I’m not famous like freaking Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston. But in my weird little head, I just think we’re all here to inspire each other. We’re all equal. We just bounce off of each other and show the world what we can do.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

OK, if you’re allergic to both celebrity profiles and snark, you should just give this book a miss, but Klosterman has a way of capturing the bone-deep weirdness of the titanically famous while remaining generally sympathetic. These aren’t the total fluff you usually find in People<\/cite>— there’s enough of a subversive edge to them that they’re compelling reading, even if you ordinarily don’t care about the people he’s talking to.<\/p>\n

As with any collection, there’s some fairly disposable stuff here, most notably some lightweight pieces from his early days as a features writer for a midwestern newspaper, and a largely pointless novella about the adventures of a twentysomething movie critic for a midwestern newspaper. On the whole, though, this is an excellent collection. If you liked Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs<\/cite>, you won’t be disappointed by this.<\/p>\n

Of course, if you actively disliked Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs<\/cite>, you probably want to skip this one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Onion’s AV Club review of Chuck Klosterman’s Chuck Klosterman IV came across my RSS feeds the other day, and reminded me that I haven’t actually booklogged it. That’s a glaring omission, as a quote from it was the basis for the third most viewed post on this weblog to date. The book is subtitled… Continue reading Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman IV [Library of Babel]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-booklog","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}