sad wings of klosterman
I don't get it. Does anyone - anyone?? - rate this Chuck Klosterman guy as any kind of a writer? I would genuinely like to know.
I managed to successfully avoid reading this avidly populist culture vulture, I mean, journo's stuff for some time.
Until two occurrences:
One, being involved in the LITERARY DEATH MATCH in S.F. a few months back and one of the 'judges' saying my writing reminded him of Klosterman. Okay, I will concede that we were both brought up in sub-sub-rural, back of the boondock-like environs (CK in North Dakota, me in Maryland). The comparison blessedly ends there.
Then, I scanned a recent online chat with a fellow poet/scribe pal. In it he had some positive comments about one of CK's books. Its title I will not dignify by naming, as the calculating stench of Klosterman's longing to identify with the Classic Rock multitudes, frankly, reeks from the title on.
Don't you just love these guys who make a tidy living defending the indefensible: McDonalds, Guns N Roses, U2, Britney effing Spears for chrissakes?
Guys who put forth the opinion that a band like the Ramones is unworthy of its place within the expanse of pop music, due to not going platinum and being more favored by rock critics than hair metal money-spinners like, wait for it, Ratt. Horrors!
Who then turn around and make cute little comments, in footnotes no less, about Geo W being the worst president since Grant. Really, can this prat be any less lacking in convictions? Besides, who does he think he is, David Foster Wallace?
Sorry, Chuck, as much as I disdain some of the musos you heap scorn on (perhaps deservedly so) need you be reminded that the people who put the bastard in office (twice!) were probably the ones who, in their youth, bought records by Ratt, and Britney, and Billy Joel, all of whom and more are given much ink within your CV? Including those from your own home state you are so goddamned proud of referencing?
'Look at what's on bookstore shelves out there. Look at the idiots who write them and those that buy them. There's lots of idiots'. So a glancing acquaintance of mine who used to rule the West Coast's answer to SPY Magazine, and has now co-written a history of Bay Area punk, once told me.
I wonder, in the face of heavyweights like these in the literary piranha pond, if it's sometimes even worth carrying the f*&# on. Honestly.
Maybe this is all a bit harsh, and I’m sorry, but the effort spent to read, even consider, Klosterman’s admittedly well-crafted devil’s advocacy ultimately felt like an expense of time never to be relived.
Best to just leave this hack with literary pretensions/delusions to his intended and evidently enamored audience.
As for me, to paraphrase a far more eloquent pop-culture observer: I think someone should stick a sixer of PBR and an iPod of KISS tunes in the prairie putz’s hands, shove him into a corner and forget about him.