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.

Downtown Owl - Chuck Klosterman

Wanting to like this book, because I like his writing on music and pop culture (Sex, Death and Cocoa Puffs, IV) I tried to overlook the flaws in this book, but by the time the ending comes (slapped on) my patience had waned. Klosterman can write a good piece on a Guns'N'Roses cover band or Latinos who love Morrissey, but his journalistic/ironic detachment isn't suited to creating characters the reader needs to care about, or at least be mildly interested in, especially given the ending.  There are moments when the  divergences into pop culture and commentary achieve a level of near brilliance, but this novel would have worked better as a faux-memoir or having  Klosterman  embedded in a small North Dakota town an report from the ground.