Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas [Paperback]

Chuck Klosterman (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 3, 2007

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SEX, DRUGS, AND COCOA PUFFS

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN IV

CONSISTS OF THREE PARTS:

THINGS THAT ARE TRUE

Profiles and trend stories: Britney Spears, Radiohead, Billy Joel, Metallica, Val Kilmer, Bono, Wilco, the White Stripes, Steve Nash, Morrissey, Robert Plant -- all with new introductions and footnotes.

THINGS THAT MIGHT BE TRUE

Opinions and theories on everything from monogamy to pirates to robots to super people to guilt, and (of course) Advancement -- all with new hypothetical questions and footnotes.

SOMETHING THAT ISN'T TRUE AT ALL

This is old fiction. There's a new introduction, but no footnotes. Well, there's a footnote in the introduction, but none in the story.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Esquire columnist Klosterman may remind listeners of a slacker holding forth at a tailgate party or over a game of beer pong. Klosterman has imbibed a lot of lowbrow culture in his young career and the tone of his sentences are a blend of jaded and amused, with a voice both nasal and deep. The strongest material in this uneven collection of pop culture essays are his celebrity profiles, in which Klosterman employs an offbeat narrative energy. Unfortunately, there is a jarring effect in these pieces when audio actors stand in for the interviewed celebrities such as Britney Spears, Val Kilmar, Oliver Stone and NBA star Steve Nash. The audiobook concludes with a short story, which Klosterman also narrates. Having listened to the author as himself for almost four hours, it's hard to accept him as the first-person narrator of his own fictional protagonist. In the end, Klosterman IV offers up a casual and relaxed style, but the narration is only as engaging as the material, which unfortunately becomes increasingly ragged as the collection unfolds. Simultaneous release with the Scribner hardcover (Reviews, May 29).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Pop-culture-enthusiast Klosterman anthologizes his previously published rock interviews, opinion pieces, and a short story to create an entertaining albeit head-scratching follow-up to Killing Yourself to Live (2005). Rock fans will appreciate the ironies in Klosterman's interviews as he plays the interloper invited to the party who sits back and makes fun. Caustic throughout while alternating between disclosures oddly unrevealing and quasi sympathetic, Klosterman observes, "Britney Spears is the most famous person I've ever interviewed. She was also the weirdest." Bono picks Klosterman up in an insanely expensive car, then helps injured kids in a hospital only to be taken aback when he plays the new, still unreleased U2 album and the kids sing along--not taken aback in humility but in capitalist questioning of how the album leaked. Contradictions and silliness best exemplify this collection. Klosterman's writing is funny and smart, if not so new or earth shattering, and that, after all, is pop culture. Mark Eleveld
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (July 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743284895
• ISBN-13: 978-0743284899
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #212,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chuck Klosterman is a New York Times bestselling author and a featured columnist for Esquire, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and has also written for Spin, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Believer, and ESPN.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Chuck's Common-Sense Is In Short Supply In the Culture October 4, 2006

By R. W. Rasband VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

The title of "Chuck Klosterman IV" hearkens back to Led Zeppelin's classic untitled, "Stairway to Heaven" album. It's typical of Chuck's approach, which is to examine our significant pop culture landmarks with ironic, self-deprecating wit. This book collects some of the highlights of Klosterman's journalism over the past decade. He has been hailed as the successor to Hunter Thompson, but I think he has a quality that Thompson lacked (as much as I admired the work of the Good Doctor). That quality is American common-sense, in abundance. Klosterman's method is to examine pop culture with the close reading usually reserved for so-called "high culture." And then he takes the contrarian view, which can yield some surprising insights. A lot of these icons have been only worshipped their whole careers, so the combination of Klosterman's ruthless scrutiny and heartland human sympathy produces strange and wonderful new wisdom.

I mentioned Klosterman's compassion because it's an attribute not normally associated with critics. But it gives us a more rounded portrait of his subjects, which this time include Wilco, Robert Plant, Metallica, U2, the White Stripes, and Britney Spears, to name just a small sample. He can see clearly and unsparingly while taking into account unavoidable human frailties. This got him into trouble with his infamous profile of Billy Joel (included here), which was meant by Chuck to be a celebration of his career, but was interpreted by Joel and other as a too-candid, embarassing look at an artist's mid-life crisis.

My favorite essay in this book is "Cultural Betrayal", which should be recognized as a brilliant analysis of the current culture wars in America. His great central insight: in a democracy "don't get pissed off over the fact that the way you feel about culture isn't some kind of universal consensus. Because if you do, you will end up feeling betrayed. And it will be your own fault. You will feel bad, and you will deserve it." If everyone would take this advice, the bitterness of our national culture arguements would be considerably lessened and we could actually begin to talk to each other again. Klosterman's essays about snobbishly reviled pop culture actually have a distant echo of similar essays by the patron saint of common-sense, George Orwell. It's not an entirely ridiculous comparison, if you will actually take the time to read this witty, insightful collection.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Klassik Klosterman January 20, 2007

By A. Ross HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

My take on Klosterman is this: if you absolutely must get a pop culture fix by reading about inane movie stars or overrated bands, you might as well read someone who is smart and funny about them, and that person is Klosterman. Although not a metal fan, I loved Fargo Rock City, and found his essays in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs exceedingly funny. Killing Yourself To Live didn't work as well for me, and I was glad to get another dose of his shorter works here ( all of which were previous published). The book (whose title is a reference/homage to albums by both Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath) is divided into three parts.

"Things That Are True" contains about twenty profiles and pieces of reportage. Included are the best Britney Spears profile ever ("Britney Spears is the most famous person I've ever interviewed. She is also the weirdest. I assume this is not a coincidence."), a very good U2 piece ("U2 is the most self-aware rock band in history. This generally works to their advantage."), and solid profiles of musicians The White Stripes, Radiohead, The Streets, Billy Joel, Jeff Tweedy, and metal tribute bands. There are also profiles of actor Val Kilmer, basketball superstar Steve Nash, a Q&A with Robert Plant, experiential pieces on Latino Morissey fanatics, the unofficial "Goth Day" at Disneyland, Akron-area clairvoyants, and a "Rock Cruise" (featuring Styx, REO Speedwagon, and Journey), and contrarian review essays on the documentaries "Super Size Me" and "Some Kind of Monster."

The somewhat briefer "Things That Might Be True" section contains about fifteen more personal opinion pieces written in recent years for Esquire (these are available at Esquire.com) and Spin magazines. Topics include how to recognize your personal nemesis and archenemy, the Olympics, guilty pleasures, monogamy, the ten most accurately rated artists in rock history, pirate vogue, robots, genetics, watching VH1 for 24 hours, etc. The final section, "Something That Isn't True At All," is a 35-page "not-so-loosely autobiographical" short story written back in 1999.

The style throughout is pure Klosterman, although there is a certain sympathy or quasi-compassion in some of the pieces that plays a nice counterbalance to his natural snarkiness. One rather refreshing element is the newly written introductions to each item in the first section. These provide an interesting context and are a peek into how a magazine writer might come to regret elements of their work. The pieces in the second section are introduced by the kind of pithy hypotheticals he unveiled in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Ultimately, the best way to read the book is leave it lying around the house and anytime you're tempted to pick up Entertainment Weekly or US or flip on MTV, pick it up and read something far funnier, smarter, and more insightful. Sure, it's just pop culture, but that doesn't mean it has to be idiotic.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Great collection of pop culture tidbits.... September 8, 2006

By secoulte

Format:Hardcover

If you like S,D&CP, you will love this too. There are always parts where I find the things Klosterman is writing about is picked directly from my life growing up on the tailend of Generation X.

You either like this type of writing or you don't. Klosterman's work typically applies to a very specific segment of the population, but to that segment his writing really connects.

I especially enjoyed the essay on identifying your Nemesis and your Archenemy, and the differences between the two, for I too have a Nemesis - and yes we are friends, yes we sit down and have a drink together every so often, and yes we have both punched each other in the face at one point or another in anger.

If you want to read a book where you find yourself laughing out loud while reading it on the subway, pick it up.