Eating the Dinosaur |  | Author: Chuck Klosterman
Publisher: Scribner
List Price: $25.00
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 154
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 1416544208
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.92
EAN: 9781416544203
ASIN: 1416544208
Publication Date: October 20, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A Book of All-New Pop Culture Pieces by Chuck Klosterman Chuck Klosterman has chronicled rock music, film, and sports for almost fifteen years. He's covered extreme metal, extreme nostalgia, disposable art, disposable heroes, life on the road, life through the television, urban uncertainty and small-town weirdness. Through a variety of mediums and with a multitude of motives, he's written about everything he can think of (and a lot that he's forgotten). The world keeps accelerating, but the pop ideas keep coming. In Eating the Dinosaur, Klosterman is more entertaining and incisive than ever. Whether he's dissecting the boredom of voyeurism, the reason why music fan's inevitably hate their favorite band's latest album, or why we love watching can't-miss superstars fail spectacularly, Klosterman remains obsessed with the relationship between expectation, reality, and living history. It's amateur anthropology for the present tense, and sometimes it's incredibly funny. Q: What is this book about? A: Well, that's difficult to say. I haven't read it yet - I've just clicked on it and casually glanced at this webpage. 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 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. 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 absolutely hate it.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
Good Klosterman, not Great Klosterman. November 22, 2009
bongo (Denver, CO USA)
This is a collection of about a dozen or so essays by Chuck Klosterman, music critic, essayist, writer.
Like his previous collection Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck takes something in Pop Culture and uses it to go off on various tangents, pursuing ideas and observations that interest him at the moment. It's fun. It's witty. CK talks about Nirvana, the Branch Davidians, Abba, Time Travel, the Unabomber, laugh tracks (CK no like), advertising, Ralph Sampson and the nature of under/overestimation, Rivers Cuomo and Irony, etc.
As a Klosterman fan I awaited this book eagerly. And I liked it. This is the sort of thing I liked -
1."'Abba was so mainstream,' Barry Walters would eventually write in The Village Voice, 'you had to be slightly on the outside to actually take them to heart.'"
2. "In New York, you get used to people pretending to laugh. Go see a foreign movie with badly translated English subtitles and you will hear a handful of people howling at jokes that don't translate, solely because the want to show the rest of the audience that they're smart enough to understand a better joke was originally designed to be there." (I see this in Denver too, btw. This aint just NY).
3. "Like the tone of Keith Richards's guitar, or Snidely Whiplash's moustach, Wells galvanized a universal cliche - and that is just about the rarest thing any artist can do."
Couple of quibbles though -
1. Rivers Cuomo *isn't* ironic? The guy who wrote Hash Pipe? I need more explanation on that one. It's an interesting hypothesis, I'll happily go along for a discussion here, but CK just asserts it and that's that.
2. I'm interested in reading what CK has to say about Nirvana and Cobain, I'm not so crazy about reading about David Koresh, particulary in that Koresh doesn't have anything to do with Nirvana (though he tries to imply a connection - 'Nirvana began recording In Utero in February of 1993, the same month the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the Mout Carmel compound in Waco, Texas'. Ok, they happened at the same time. Big deal.) Chuck seems to be a bit of a conspiracy theorist, hinting-but-never-getting-into-it, that the govt. set the Branch Davidians on fire. If that's what you believe, fine, but that belongs in a different book. I would've much preferred just a reflection on grunge bands.
 Another enjoyable read November 17, 2009
John A. Demarco (Detroit, MI)
I've enjoyed all of Chuck Klosterman's books (have yet to read Downtown Owl)and articles in Spin and Esquire. This is no exception. Brought it on vacation and found myself cursing Chuck Klosterman because I read it so fast I had nothing to read on the flight home. Really looking forward to showing my friends who are Michigan State Spartan football fans the chapter on "The Best Response".
Authentic? LOL Who cares. November 16, 2009
Melly (Dallas, TX USA)
I always pick up the new Chuck Klosterman even if there is too much sports for my taste (and no those essays are not for people that don't like sports Chuck! lol). Regardless, they're always worth the money. This was no exception. The idea of Garth Brooks' success being hinged on the absence of Bruck Springsteen sparked a long lunch conversation, which is what I love about these books. I totally disagree, but I'm apparently the minority! Chuck rights for people that aren't embarrassed to love popular things (Mad Men for instance). Great read.
 Klosterman looks for sincerity and authenticity everwhere November 15, 2009
tgidenver
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Chuck Klosterman is very critical in this collection of essays. But that's what he is: A critic. I'm more of a music fan than a sports fan, so the subjects of the sports essays were often foreign to me. Still, Klosterman's insights cross over to other aspects of life. Other reviewers have summarized the essays, so I won't repeat the summaries. A common theme throughout the essays is Klosterman's obsession with sincerity. Whether it is music or sports, sincerity and authenticity are paramount to Klosterman. He's like Linus looking for the most sincere pumpkin patch. And in FAIL, Klosterman turns on himself. He acknowledges his own lack of sincerity by explaining how he agrees with critics of technology, but cannot get enough of technology himself.
Klosterman's references to very current events will likely impair this book's longevity, so read it now. It's a short book and a quick read. I read it over a two-day business trip.
Not as good as the rest of Klosterman's stuff November 14, 2009
Michael P. Lewis (Washington, DC USA)
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
I just finished reading Chuck Klosterman's latest book, Eating the Dinosaur and i didn't like it. Before i get into why i didn't like it, i do want to say that i thought his essays about Kurt Cobain (Oh, the Guilt) and Garth Brooks (The Passion of Garth) to be really interesting. Also, the Time Machine and Abba essays were okay. I then had somewhat of a problem with the rest. I have 4 main reasons.
The first and main reason i didn't like the book is this: Chuck writes about what he's interested in. His past books were about Rock N Roll, Reality TV, Billy Joel, Dixie Chicks and other things. They had an interesting take on items i liked and were very familiar with. These essays expanded my thinking on these topics. For example, i had never realized that the Dixie Chicks were that similar to 80's Van Halen, nor had i thought about how Billy Joels was a unique kind of cool different than almost all other rock stars (on a coolness range from white to black, he's an orange). Also, past essays celebrated both the subjects and the concepts. The current essays are about philosophical views on the world. He asks questions and makes statements about society such as,
* Why we like or hate people who fail
* Why we interact with popular advertising in the manner we do
* Why Chuck hates laugh tracks in TV shows and america's approach to humor
* Why NFL Football is great
* Why watching people (voyeurism) is exciting: (because there's a possibility for anything to happen)
These are the topics of this book and they are just nowhere close to as interesting as his previous topics. His book of interviews, IV, had a great interview with Val Kilmer. Nothing here touches that.
Reason number 2 for not liking this book is that there are lots of quotes in the book. For some reason my Kindle never shows who says these quotes. That makes them WAY less interesting and just frustrating. Don't read this book on a kindle.
My third reason is that I didn't like the prose. I think i know why this is. I've tracked down Kloserman on podcasts and now seen him speak twice. I know what he sounds like in person. So much so that i now hear his voice talking when i read his text. Do you know when you notice someone is saying the word "like" too much and all of the sudden you find yourself pay attention to them actually say the work "like" over and over instead of whatever it is they are trying to say? Well, this happens with me and Chuck. He uses the words "idiom' and italicizes his word "must" and i can hear his emphasis. It bothers me. Maybe i've just read too much of his stuff.
Finally, the last essay in the book is about his dislike of technology and I completely disagree with his opinion regarding the Internet. He has a part in the book where he criticizes anyone who publicly praises the internet because he argues they only like it because it now makes them relevant. He says,"the only people who insist the internet is wonderful are those who need it to give the life meaning." I can't begin to say how wrong that stance is.
At the end, Klosterman comes off as a guy who is just bitter that the world is changing. He reminds me of people who refuse to watch television, won't own cell phones and only listen to music on vinyl. Grow up.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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