About this title: From the author of "Fargo Rock City" comes another hilarious and discerning take on popular culture, exploring everything from the crucial role of breakfast cereal to how John Cusack films destroy the modern meaning of love.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Scribner
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780743236010ISBN:0743236017
Description: Good. BO. Nice paperback. Chip at top of spine. No spine crease. Light wear. Text is clean, unmarked, tight, tanned. All items are carefully and securely packed to insure they arrive in the advertised condition. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Scribner, New York
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780743236010ISBN:0743236017
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Postmodern America: reality TV, internet pron, Pamela Anderson, literary Jesus Freaks, and the real difference between apples and oranges. Love "Harry-Met-Sally Situation! 253 pages. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780743236010ISBN:0743236017
Description: New. No dust jacket as issued. Brand New! No Marks! Fast Shipping! Satisfaction Guaranteed! Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 253 p. Audience: General/trade. Brand New! No Marks! Fast Shipping! Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Scribner
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780743236010ISBN:0743236017
Description: New. Brand New Paperback, clean, tight, unmarked, no spine or cover creases. (Fine) All orders are shipped by kbooks every business day. read more
Edition: First Softcover Edition/Later Printing
Binding: Large Octavo Softcover
Publisher: A Scribner Publication, New York NY
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780743236010ISBN:0743236017
Description: Fine. Not Issued With A Dustjacket. 253 Numbered Pages. 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Identified as both ISBN-10 0743236017 and ISBN-13 9780743236010, the pristine textblock of this extra nice softcover first edition (later printing) is completely clean, tight, square and carries no highlighting, underlining or marginalia. The barely blue pictorial covers are very clean, bright, uncreased and show only faint finish rubbing, and quite minor edge and corner bumping. read more
Edition: 1st Edition
Binding: Oversized Trade Paperback
Publisher: Scribner, Old Tappan, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780743236010ISBN:0743236017
Description: Fine in Fine jacket. FIRST SCRIBNER TRADE PAPERBACK EDITION AS STATED. Book and cover are in fine condition with no flaws. "one of the brightest pieces of pop analysis to appear this century" The onion A.V. Club. SHIPPING INCLUDES ID TRACKING WITHIN U.S. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Date Published: 2004
ISBN-13:9780743236010ISBN:0743236017
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Fine as new. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 253 p. Audience: General/trade. Ships from US-NE. Support Independent Booksellers! Omahabooks offers same or next day shipping-satisfaction guaranteed. Priority, Expedited, APO, International may require additional postage-contact seller. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Date Published: 2003
ISBN-13:9780743236003ISBN:0743236009
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. VG+, light soiling to the board edges; dust jacket has a little edge wear. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 244 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"This is the first Chuck Klosterman book I have ever read. I saw Seth Cohen reading it on "The O.C." and decided to check it out. I was not disappointed.
It a series of ridiculous, highly pretentious, yet, very well-written essays on pop-culture. There really is no other way to describe it. If you want to laugh about inconsequential subject matter, such as "Saved by the Bell," then please read this book.
Here is a complete list of chapters (essays) that Klosterman tackles:
1) This is Emo: This essay discusses fake love, the appeal of John Cusack, and why Coldplay is arguably the worst band ever.
2) Billy Sim: Essay on Chuck playing the mega popular, The Sims.
3) What Happens When People Stop Being Polite: Essay on MTV's The Real World and its influence.
4) Every Dog Must Have His Every Day, Every Drunk Must Have His Drink: This is a lengthy essay on Billy Joel and how is so uncool that it makes him cool.
5) Appetite for Replication: This essay follows around a Guns N' Roses tribute band.
6) Ten Seconds to Love: Essay covering the Pam Anderson/Tommy Lee sex tape and what it says about the United States.
7) George Will vs. Nick Hornby: Essay on how much he hates soccer, especially youth soccer. This segue ways into his experience as a little league baseball coach.
8) 33: This essay discusses the Lakers and Celtics '80s era rivalry.
9) Porn: This particular essay covers porn, the Internet, and what it says about us as people.
10) The Lady or the Tiger: An essay about cereal and what it says about us as people.
11) Being Zach Morris: A lengthy essay on the TV show, Saved by the Bell.
12)Sulking with Lisa Loeb and the Ice Planet Hoth: An essay on Star Wars.
13) The Awe Inspiring Beauty of Tom Cruise's Shattered, Troll-like Face: This essay covers the film Vanilla Sky (and occasionally the film Memento).
14) Toby over Moby: Country music and its importance in the US.
15) This is the Zodiac Speaking: A lengthy essay dealing with serial killers.
16) All I Know is What I Read in Papers: This essay details the media and how it works (written from the point of a view of a journalist).
17) I Rock, Chump: This essay reviews Chuck's time at the Experience Music Project (EMP). This where people sit around and discuss music as if it's a scholarly subject.
18) How to Disappear Completely and Never be Found: This essay covers religion, clearly saving one of the best topics for last.
Just bring it in to a "scenester" coffee shop. I am sure it will spark some sort of conversation."
"I know I'm supposed to be won over by Chuck Klosterman's supposedly keen and cutting insight into pop culture and therefore the modern human experience, but I really just felt like I was at a really dull party and cornered by some annoyingly pseudo-intellectual guy whose sole enjoyment is to contradict and mock anything anyone says just to hear himself talk."
"This book started out great...nice and insightful...As it progressed, however, I've found myself removing stars from the rating.
He tries too hard to tie everything up in a neat little bow...every essay has to end with a witty little wrap-up sentence, dripping with a false poignancy, essentially wrapping it up with his original statement. It started feeling as formulaic as pop music.
It was when I got to Toby vs Moby that I found myself closing the book, and throwing it across the room. He stretches pretty far throughout his essays to make a point that isn't always there, but this one...When he had the audacity to tell me that the Dixie Chicks are more talented and relevant to music than the whole of the grunge era, when he proclaimed that pop country trumps alt country I began wondering where his head was, exactly. Then I flipped the book over and realized he's a writer for SPIN magazine, and it all made sense.
He's so quick to discount so many people's taste as some sort of a hipster fashion accessory; if you listen to Hank Senior, you're a poser, if you listen to alt country, you're a poser earning $56k+ a year with no true understanding of the working class. I'm sure I'll finish the book eventually, but I'm wary of it all, now.
I was willing to take his hatred of the Lakers with a grain of salt, but when he tries to tell me that the Dixie Chicks are the Van Halen of the next generation...Jesus."
"It's not that I didn't like this book... Okay, that's exactly what it is. But the real issue I had with Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is this: I've either had every conversation in this book (which I enjoyed more than these essay versions of them) or I've walked away from the conversation because it didn't interest me in the slightest. I can name at least ten people I know who could have written this book (give or take an article or two), and probably could have written it better (including the person whose choice this book is for my book club).
I didn't dislike it all, though. It was amusing in parts. It's just that I didn't find it to be wonderfully clever even though it was clearly trying very hard to be.
I could talk a lot about why I didn't like this book for little reasons, but on the whole, I think my distaste for it was rooted in the fact that I couldn't simply read it at my leisure, picking it up and putting it down to read a single article and then switch to something else, because we're reading this for book club and thus my reading has a deadline. Had I been able to just skip an article (such as the mind-numbing article on basketball) or stop reading one (like when he made repetitive references to Sigur Ros and Devo as though they were symbols of uniqueness, only to make them ordinary by constantly referencing them) so I could move on to something else or read an essay every few days, then I probably would have a kinder outlook on this book.
But here's the kicker as to why I can't simply dismiss this book. Do you know the game "Table Topics"? Or have you read the If...? books? They work on the same premise... posing a "what if" kind of question that you're supposed to then discuss with people. This may seem lame, because it implies that you can't have a natural conversation with your friends without the assistance of cards, but I found them amusing in college... and probably still would, given a particularly creative bunch of friends and a few bottles of wine. "If you could only listen to one album again for the rest of your life, what would it be?" "If you had to kill an innocent person to end world hunger, could you?" "If you were exiled from your current country, what new country would you pick as your new home?" "Which famous dead person would you most want to have a dinner conversation with?" "If you could either sleep with one famous person and never tell anyone or give the impression of a deep and loving relationship to the world but never actually sleep with them... which scenario would you pick?" (I actually think he did pose this question somewhere in the book...)
Anyway... there's one "essay" in this book that's my favorite part, not just because it's funny, but because it seems like it unwittingly captures the whole essence of the other articles -- or at least distills what good this book can accomplish. It's a small section of twenty three questions that the author would pose to a person and their answers would determine whether or not this could be his soulmate. Think of Table Topic and If...? questions (like those above) and multiply them by ten on a specific and weird scale... then you'd get the kind of questions that he asks.
For example, here's a fairly ordinary but still interesting one: Every person you have ever slept with is invited to a banquet where you are the guest of honor. No one will be in attendance except you, the collection of your former lovers, and the catering service. After the meal, you are asked to give a fifteen-minute speech to the assembly. What do you talk about?
And here's a weird one that I quite enjoy: Defying all expectation, a group of Scottish marine biologists capture a live Loch Ness Monster. In an almost unbelievable coincidence, a bear hunter in the Pacific Northwest shoots a Sasquatch in the thigh, thereby allowing zoologists to take the furry monster into captivity. These events happen on the same afternoon. That evening, the president announces he may have thyroid cancer and will undergo a biopsy later that week. You are the front page editor of The New York Times: What do you play as the biggest story?
And one more for kicks: Someone builds and optical portal that allows you to see a vision of your own life in the future (it's essentially a crystal ball that shows a randomly selected image of what your life will be like in twenty years). You can only see into this portal for thirty seconds. When you finally peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room, two decades older than you are today. You are watching a Canadian football game, and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey. Your chair is surrounded by books and magazines that promote the Canadian Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your walls. You are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that-for some unknown reason-you have become obsessed with Canadian football. And this future is static and absolute; no matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. This destiny cannot be changed. The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly come across a pre-season CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Knowing your inevitable future, do you now watch it?
Okay, last one, for real: Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks--he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can't learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he's doing these five tricks with real magic. It's not an illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He's legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope and influence. Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein?
These make me think that Chuck Klosterman missed his true calling as a "Table Topics for Gen X" writer. ALL of his essays seem to serve one purpose for me: they're mildly interesting, but they make me think of more interesting things that I then actually want to discuss with other people.
Weirdest thing of all, but I actually think this might be a good book for discussion at book club... not for discussing the merits of the book, but because Klosterman's random topics (the true meaning of Saved by the Bell, the weird interest he has in people who have met serial killers and lived, etc.) will hopefully inspire other things we want to talk about in the Table Topics sense of things.
My mother tried to make the point that perhaps Klosterman was really intending to inspire conversation with these topics. At first, I found it hard to believe that Klosterman, who writes about saved by the Bell and cartoon cereal characters, is really trying to inspire discussion... but that's totally it. I might find his writing to be somewhat lacking, but he really is creating a jumping-off-point for people who might find these topics to be of interest.
So Klosterman, despite all of the complaints I have, I give you three stars.
Oh, and if you don't pick the Loch Ness Monster, then I don't understand what you could possibly be thinking."
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