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Product Description
Product Description
Q: What is this book about?
A: Well, that’s difficult to say. I haven’t read it yet—I’ve just picked it up and casually glanced at the back cover. There clearly isn’t a plot. I’ve heard there’s a lot of stuff about time travel in this book, and quite a bit about violence and Garth Brooks and why Germans don’t laugh when they’re inside grocery stores. Ralph Nader and Ralph Sampson play significant roles. I think there are several pages about Rear Window and college football and Mad Men and why Rivers Cuomo prefers having sex with Asian women. Supposedly there’s a chapter outlining all the things the Unabomber was right about, but perhaps I’m misinformed.
Q: Is there a larger theme?
A: Oh, something about reality. "What is reality," maybe? No, that’s not it. Not exactly. I get the sense that most of the core questions dwell on the way media perception constructs a fake reality that ends up becoming more meaningful than whatever actually happened. Also, Lady Gaga.
Q: Should I read this book?
A: Probably. Do you see a clear relationship between the Branch Davidian disaster and the recording of Nirvana’s In Utero? Does Barack Obama make you want to drink Pepsi? Does ABBA remind you of AC/DC? If so, you probably don’t need to read this book. You probably wrote this book. But I suspect everybody else will totally love it, except for the ones who totally hate it.
About the Author
Chuck Klosterman is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Eating the Dinosaur; and The Visible Man. His debut book, Fargo Rock City, was the winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. He has written for GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Spin, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Believer, A.V. Club, and ESPN, and he now writes about sports and pop culture for Grantland.com.
Inside This Book
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love this book,
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This review is from: Eating the Dinosaur (Paperback)
If you like one Klosterman you will like them all. I would recommend starting with Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs followed by Eating the Dinosaur and Klosterman IV. Eating the Dinosaur contains a wide variety of wit and insight on pop culture as well as a hilarious essay on time travel for which the book is named. As with all Klosterman this book had me laughing out loud and thinking about life and pop culture in a different way.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Less funny, more philsophical...but still kind of funny.,
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This review is from: Eating the Dinosaur (Hardcover)
Chuck Klosterman's new collection of essays is less funny than his first collection (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs), and more heavy on the cultural philosophy side of things. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. While I didn't laugh out loud at any parts, there were certain in-the-head chuckles that the book elicited. However, there were times when the jokes seemed inserted into the text only because he thought: well, I should probably put a joke here. I didn't need that. The book is an interesting and readable work of cultural criticism without. That's not to say there aren't some genuinely funny parts, just that there were parts that seemed a bit forced in funniness.OK, so having not read SD&CP for a few years my memory might be flawed, but it seems this book is more substantial in its philosophy, argument and meaning. While SD&CP was a fun ride, I have forgotten a lot of what was in the book except for an essay on Pamela Anderson's breasts and something about Saved by the Bell. This collection seems a bit different than that, with the main difference being that he puts forward some interesting ideas about things like: why do people submit to interviews? why is our world devoid of literal meaning now? why do we love when famous people muck up? The books cultural milieus oscillate from music to TV to sports. While I'm not a huge sports fan, I did read both the sports heavy essays in the book, including the very sports heavy essay on football. And it's a tribute to Klosterman's readability and finesse that I read the football one right until the end. The moral of the story is that Klosterman can make almost any topic, even one you care very little about, an interesting read and relevant to you. So, don't skip any of the essays as he does a good job to make sure every reader is included. The part where the book falters for me is that some of his arguments or philosophical meanderings are based on his personal assumptions about what other people 'mean' or 'think'. This wouldn't be so bad if he didn't present those assumptions as fact most of the time. There were parts when I read the book and I felt a bit distanced from what he was writing because I couldn't help but think: well, how do you know that? If you brush this feeling aside though, the book has some interesting things to say about fame culture, reality, truth, irony, voyeurism, and technology.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chuck Does it Again,
By
This review is from: Eating the Dinosaur (Hardcover)
I've awaited another Chuck Klosterman Manifesto for a long while and Eating the Dinosaur does not disappoint. It offers classic Chuck, with his wit and charm, with a new way of organizing his thoughts. Great read.
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