Synopsis
Pop culture guru Chuck Klosterman comes as close to a magnum opus as he is likely to compose with this collection of essays which chart the ethereal distances between present events and our media-guided memory of them. Klosterman name-drops an amalgam of seemingly random icons and has-beens of music, film, sports, and politics (Ralph Sampson, Garth Brooks, Alfred Hitchcock, Kurt Cobain, The Unabomber), and then uses his unique form of mental magnetism to map their hidden, but significant connections. As the pages rise and descend, from right to left, Klosterman's cultural convergences accumulate and accelerate, such that, like his subjects, his disparate essays coalesce, revealing structure and a master plan, as he identifies our tendency to cherish mass exaggerated versions of reality over individual experience.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2009-10-20 |
| Size | | Length: | 245 pages | | Height: | 8.8 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 12.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
The best-selling author of Downtown Owl and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs takes a humorous look at expectations versus reality in pop culture, sports, and media, in a book that explores such questions as: Why is pop culture obsessed with time travel?; What do Kurt Cobain and David Koresh have in common?; and much more.
Industry Reviews
"Funny, irreverent and fascinating....[Klosterman's] best collection of writing since his breakthrough, SEX, DRUGS, AND COCOA PUFFS."
(09/15/2009)
"Klosterman's essays are still both witty and clever, not least the chapter he devotes to exploring the lack of irony that bonds three otherwise very different cultural figures: Ralph Nader, Werner Herzog, and Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo."
(10/23/2009)
"Mr. Klosterman's relentlessly thoughtful prose makes a case that our arts and entertainment are more suffused with meaning than ever before. Even as he's fretting over the direction of the culture, his writing stands as an eloquent defense of it."
(10/24/2009)
"The book feels more mature than SEX, DRUGS, AND COCOA PUFFS, while still keeping to Klosterman's signature style of making absurd statements like 'Britney Spears is paid less than she deserves,' and going on to justify his claims....[Klosterman's] work is still peppered with unexplained references only sensible to someone as music-savvy as him, as well as allusions that will be just as confusing in 10 years. But the end product seems likely to age better. It isn't a low-culture manifesto, it's a personal one."
(10/29/2009)
"Klosterman's trick is to use stupid-sounding subjects as grist for smart, funny essays....[He] performs literary high-wire acts with his essays: they're great when he succeeds, but things hit with a thud when he missteps. He mostly succeeds in this book....The essays in this book are like guitar solos by his beloved Eddie Van Halen. They show exceptional talent and are original. They can soar, and part of the fun is trying to guess where they'll end up."
(11/01/2009)
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