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Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (Hardcover)

by Chuck Klosterman (Author)
Key Phrases: goth kids, selling suits, Ricky Rumble, New York, Led Zeppelin (more...)

4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (34 customer reviews)

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Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Fans of Klosterman's Ritalin-paced pop culture criticism (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs) will eagerly devour this collection of previously published essays. Whether investigating Latino fans of British pop icon Morrissey, interviewing female tribute bands like Lez Zeppelin and AC/DShe or eating nothing but Chicken McNuggets for a week, Klosterman is always entertaining and often insightful. But other than a sympathetic profile of Billy Joel, Klosterman rarely strays from his favorite topics: heavy metal music, television, sports and sex. Perhaps this career overview is his way of recycling old themes into some kind of new "defining endeavor," as he describes the title inspired by Led Zeppelin IV (as it is unofficially called). This would make perfect sense given his work so far: Fargo Rock City was an original and confident debut (like Led Zeppelin I); his newest book definitely has kick, but overall it's a mixed bag of collected essays—strong and not-so-strong performances—its parts are greater than the whole. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

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Product Details

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Scribner (August 23, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743284887
ISBN-13: 978-0743284882
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (34 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #257,813 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
goth kids, selling suits

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Ricky Rumble, New York, Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, Some Kind of Monster, Billy Joel, Val Kilmer, Britney Spears, Cheap Chick, Johnny Carson, White Stripes, Los Angeles, Steve Nash, Van Halen, North Dakota, Jeff Tweedy, Super People, Lez Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Page, Road House, Jack White, Uncle Tupelo, United States, Bats Day

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 20 books:

Hail to the Thief by Radiohead on 7 pages
Stairway to Heaven by Plato Papajohn on page 80, page 94, and page 185
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman in Front Matter
Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell by Amy Sohn on page 266
Fallen Angel, Vol. 1: To Serve in Heaven (v. 1) by Peter David on page 304

See all 20 books this book cites

Books on Related Topics (learn more)

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman

Discusses:

The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll by Holly George-Warren

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The New Rolling Stone Album Guide by Nathan Brackett

Discusses:

The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock by Various

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	64% buy the item featured on this page: Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas 4.3 out of 5 stars (34) $19.00
	19% buy Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto 3.8 out of 5 stars (138) $10.98
	7% buy I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell 4.2 out of 5 stars (390) $10.15
	5% buy Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story 3.4 out of 5 stars (94) $10.98

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Customer Reviews

34 Reviews

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4.3 out of 5 stars (34 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 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 (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

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.

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Klassik Klosterman, January 20, 2007

By	A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

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.

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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 (Lake Tahoe, CA) - See all my reviews

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.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Mostly funny, entirely entertaining
This is the first book I've read by CK and I found it, for the most part, to be pretty funny. When I picked it up and thumbed through it I happened (apparently) among the more... Read more

Published 2 months ago by C. Corbett

4.0 out of 5 stars Collection of essays and a novella
This book collects about three dozen Chuck Klosterman essays, mostly reprints from SPIN and other US magazines, with new introductions from the author. Read more

Published 5 months ago by K. W. Schreiter

4.0 out of 5 stars Try Audio Chuk
It felt a little like my birthday when I found Klosterman's latest book on CD, read by him, in the Border's bargain bin. Read more

Published 7 months ago by Stanford Gibson

5.0 out of 5 stars This man is funny - no, I mean it. Really funny.
I picked up a copy of Mr. Klosterman's latest book on CD to listen to in my car as a commuter pick-me-up. I hadn't heard of him before and bought the CDs blindly. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Teal Kozel

4.0 out of 5 stars He hates the Olympics, but that's okay, because he's hilarious
The most entertaining interviews I've read, Klosterman's short pieces on everyone from Britney Spears to Val Kilmer to Steve Nash work on so many levels. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Mark J. Lehman

5.0 out of 5 stars Klosterman at his best
Though I find most essay compilations disjointed and wildly varying in quality between the pieces, Chuck Klosterman's consistent excellence has always impressed me. Read more

Published 10 months ago by mzakal

3.0 out of 5 stars Creative insights
Klosterman's work reflects creativity and interesting insights into American culture. His major frame of reference is modern-pop music. Read more

Published 14 months ago by Howard E. Borck

4.0 out of 5 stars Made me care about Billy Joel
Contains previously published interviews and essays on personalities and topics as disparate as Britney Spears, Radiohead and the phenomenon of Latino Morrissey fans. Read more

Published 16 months ago by spitgrrl

5.0 out of 5 stars a Fresh Title
Chuck Rambles at Times. He is Also a Bit Crude.
Yet All in All He's a Pretty Brilliant Writer.
Fresh Read.

Published 16 months ago by Borris "Yeltson"

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most enjoyable collections I've ever read.
If you're familiar with Klosterman, then you probably don't need these review. If you're not, then I highly recommend that you start familiarizing yourself with either this book,... Read more

Published 17 months ago by Zelie Nic

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