Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman

This is what Klosterman does best - non-fiction ruminations on pop culture. His desire to write fiction is understandable, but he has yet to achieve the level of skill and engagement he does with this collection. The best piece is on a Guns'N'Roses tribute band that has more energy and passion for the music than the original band ever did, but all of the pieces are good. He nails how reality TV has changed the way we behave in real life, and makes a convincing argument that Trisha Yearwood is more important than Lucinda Williams.  He's searching to understand how pop culture (and really, at this point, is there any other kind?) affects us.

The Visible Man - Chuck Klosterman

The problem with an invisible man story is that it's been done.  There was the original story, a slew of movies, a few Twilight Zone episodes and all of those daydreams everyone has had.  So, what to do if you want to tell an invisible man story?  (Let's ignore the answer "don't tell one" for one) You look for a new way to tell it. The first thing you do is get rid of the invisible part - there's no such thing as invisible, and science will back you up. So, make him visible, in the sense that if you knew what you were looking for you could see him. Add a suit and and a cream and an obsessive type with social skills so poor that he can only understand other humans by observing them for lengths at a time.

But a straight ahead narrative won't do, and neither will a journal type story. Instead, change the focus to a series of conversations between a therapist and the invisible man. But you can't do like that - you need to have it a collection of notes and emails that could be used to create a book, add a letter from the therapist to the editor, and there, now you have something.

What you have is a story that's made more entertaining by the diversions and asides and the observations about culture and people, but lacks a narrative force in the main story.  The structure gets in the way of the first section (an email exchange - literary history question - what was the first novel to use letters as a narrative device? And what was the first novel to use emails? Those authors have some answering to do) but gets out of the way for the remainder, and the book is better off for it.

Killing Yourself to Live - Chuck Klosterman

The problem with Chuck Klosterman, or at least Chuck Klosterman's writing, is that he knows that he's a writer, and he knows that you know that he's a writer. You have certain expectations, even if you don't know who Chuck Klosterman is, because as someone who would read a book about rock star deaths, you have a set of certain expectations about what a book like that would be about and what kind of person would write that kind of book. And Chuck Klosterman knows this, and he knows that you this. And he knows that you know that he knows this.

We could call it the Eggers effect, or perhaps the DFW effect. It's a bit maddening, really, this level of self-consciousness. We could blame reality TV as well, and maybe The Gary Shandling Show, for breaking the 4th wall and never putting it back together again.

This book is about a music writer doing a 20-day tour to all of rock's famous death spots - the Chelsea Hotel, a field in Iowa, Mississippi, and Seattle.  If you care about rock deaths (and why wouldn't you if you are reading this book) then you know about these places. You will probably also chuckle at the author calling the rental car Tauntan and get all of his other references. 

Instead of giving us the expected writer-on-the-scene reporting, the book takes a left turn and the author ruminates about three major relationships in his life.  Most of the novel is spent on these three women , rehashing the past, worrying about the future.  It's all fine and good, but it stalls the forward motion of the book.

But, the author knows this. He mentions that the main thesis of the book is underdeveloped and the cutesy sub-title shows his hand - we're not getting the full story, either about his relationships with these three women or about the rock star deaths. Not sure where to go, he ends with a phone conversation between him and a female friend who implores him not to write a book about women he used to be in love with it.  She cites the faults in such a novel (all of which are in the book that you just read). And that's the ending you're given, which is probably the ending you were expecting, if you are the type of person who would read a book like this.

Half Empty - David Rakoff

We've adopted this idea that we have to think positive to be successful, that thinking happy thoughts can lead to actual happiness. It runs contrary to what most of us actually think, and that's part of the challenge - change your thoughts, change your life.

David Rakoff takes the opposite view. He interviewed Julie Norem, a psychology professor that wrote a book about 'defensive pessimism' which is the idea that a certain type of negative thinking, of preparing for the negative by assessing the possible outcomes, is actually a more positive approach.  The essays in this collection follow this idea of defensive pessimism, finishing with the darkest one about the author learning that the cancer he had in his youth had returned.  Very dark and very funny.

Bang Crunch - Neil Smith

The style ranges from one end to the other in this short story collection. There is that too-literary style, the one that I associate with writing workshops and  university creative writing classes, the ones that are too clever for their own good. "These canine teeth of mine... stick out like box seats at the opera" is a line from a story in this collection. Not a bad line, but compounded with a character named
Eeepie Carpetrod and it becomes a bit much.  

Two of these stories don't suffer from this over style - Jaybird and Scrapbook - and they are the best in this collection. They demonstrate the author can indeed write without relying on the the rhetorical flourishes that look good in a writing workshop and but nowhere else.

Arguably - Christopher Hitchens

The trick with Hitchens is that he wants you to disagree with him, to take on his arguments and offer some ones of your own.  You can feel it in the writing, this need to engage. This collection of essays, the first since he was diagnosed with cancer, focus on the post 9/11 decade, a time when he carved out a complex position that neither conforms to left or right.  He's famously anti-religion, with a scorn that encompasses both Islam and Christianity, and thinks that the US was justified in the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. But he also criticizes the Bush administration over their response to Katrina.

In the end it's the writing that matters, and most if it here quite good. You shouldn't agree with everything he says (he probably would respect you more if you didn't) but it's a fun ride.

How To Be Good - Nick Hornby

After sleeping with an acquaintance, Katie begins to question her goodness. She's a doctor who doesn't really like her patients, a mother who doesn't really like her children and a wife who hates her husband, and aspiring novelist who writes a weekly Angry Man column in the local paper.  She wants to think of herself as a good person, but when her husband finds a faith healer who encourages him to take in homeless, she begins to doubt.

The first part of this novel is some of the best stuff Hornby has written, but it loses steam about halfway through. As with his other characters, it's hard to really like Katie - she's too flawed, too human to either dislike  or embrace completely. It this ambivalence that is a weakness in the book, leading to an unsatisfactory ending.