In his new book, "Eating the Dinosaur," which hits shelves today, Chuck Klosterman grazes on his favorite literary topics - music, sports, science and history.
There's no real connection between the 13 essays - other than they all get Klosterman's signature prodding and footnotes.
But there is a recurrent theme in a number of the pieces - failure.
He writes about the doomed career of the Houston Rockets' 7-foot-4-inch dud Ralph Sampson, Garth Brooks' unsuccessful mid-career Chris Gaines experiment and the Unabomber's unpersuasive attempt to free the writer from technology's chains in the final entry, titled "Fail."
Before you go hypothesizing about Klosterman getting all doom and gloom, realize that this is probably his most joyous book since his second, 2004's "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs." Without gloating about others' disappointments, the author earnestly examines his selected subjects in a way that is balanced - even if between the lines, or sometimes right in them, you can tell he despises them.
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Fans of "Sex," but maybe not his more autobiographical works, "Fargo Rock City" and "Killing Yourself to Live," or last year's foray into fiction, "Downtown Owl," will lap up his familiar pop-culture explorations and exclamations.
Klosterman, once a Forum reporter before moving on to Spin, Esquire, the New York Times Magazine and even ESPN, has always been a thorough journalist, but he dives deep into his subjects in "Dinosaur." His excitement gets the best of him in a few cases when excessive footnoting breaks the reader's rhythm.
That said, the Wyndmere, N.D., native is in full swing here. Who else would find a connection between the self-destructiveness of Nirvana and the doomsday destiny of cult leader David Koresh? And to find the humor despite the tragic outcomes of each on top of that?
In the first section, "Something Instead of Nothing," a discussion with documentarian interviewers Ira Glass (public radio's "This American Life") and Errol Morris ("The Fog of War" and "The Thin Blue Line"), Klosterman asks, "Why do people talk?" In particular, why do people feel compelled to answer questions they'd rather not field?
While he sets this up with his own personal discomfort over such situations after years of being on the interviewing end, he's able to make the question more universal than personal.
Granted, it's sometimes difficult to take his claims seriously. It turns out there's good reason. In "Something" he openly admits to occasionally lying in interviews.
Bookending that in the last section, "Fail," he says, "I enjoy writing about my own life, but I don't like people knowing anything about me."
In that, and with "Eating the Dinosaur," he has succeeded.
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- By Chuck Klosterman
- Published by Scribner
- $25; 256 pages
The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead and the Herald are Forum Communications Co. newspapers.
