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If you love music, and American culture as a whole, you will be entertained.Enjoy. I'm an audio production major, minoring in business, I'm not an extremely avid reader, but I LOVED this book.
He even uses the word ANYWAY (just like that, in all caps, all over the place) to create superficial transition between unrelated topics. Literally every page contains some sort of rude judgment about others' musical tastes. An editor somewhere actually let him get away with this.And sadly, Klosterman's idiot attempts at poignancy are not as bad as his judgmental attitude and musical arrogance. So he must know that Killing Yourself to Live couldn't possibly live up to even the most pretentious of Wurtzel's works. For example, the sentence, "At the moment, nobody in New York knows that I'm dead. If this were an educational textbook titled "Why Marijuana is Stupid," I'd give it five stars.Instead, this book purports to be an extended essay about the cultural significance of musician deaths, with all the profundity of two schoolgirls passing giggly notes back and forth. Imagine being stuck in a car for a month with the dumbest, most faux-pretentious stoner you know, the kind who tells disjointed anecdotes, can't hold a thought in his head for two minutes, and forms a fleeting, vapid bond with every waitress and hitchhiker he meets. It's all Spiccoli-ish nonsense, and it's on every page.
It's just a thin premise for Klosterman to ramble sloppily and shamelessy on every banal thought passing through his head. Yet Klosterman himself demonstrates some serious lapses in musical knowledge--he cannot remember Beyonce Knowles' name, referring to her only as "that religious woman with the perfect stomach from Destiny's Child," and admits he has to bring 600 CDs on his road trip because he is too stupid to figure out an iPod.Basically, Killing Yourself to Live is akin to some of Elizabeth Wurtzel's worst books (i.e., `More, Now, Again'), which is beyond ironic, since Klosterman recounts meeting Wurtzel on page 50. Klosterman is the worst type of scenester d-bag: you must listen to Obscure Band X to be hip. Hell, this book wouldn't stand up to the novels of Dave Eggers, who at least knows his audience is comprised of gen-X lit snobs who want to look smart without actually having to put any thought into being intelligent. On and on. With every such attempted literary epiphany, you can practically hear his brain cells dying, one by one, of smoke inhalation. Anyone who listens to Interpol is unhip. This is the obnoxious traveling companion that 'Killing Yourself to Live' provides.Klosterman admits upfront he is a pothead, though the bad writing makes that so painfully obvious.
I (of course) expect this from someone who writes for Spin, but it's amped up to eleven in these pages. None whatsoever. And this is because I am not," is not nearly as deep and insightful as he'd like it to be. There is no logic or linear pattern to anything Klosterman writes about; it's just a pastiche of childhood memories and random visual observations (all of them uninteresting), and excruciating explications of every girl he has ever slept with (thankfully, it's not many).What cheats the reader most is that this book has nothing to do with examining the relevance of dead rock stars.
I like the book so much, if Klosterman ever dies tragically, I might trek to the place of his demise. I'm not into pop culture as much as those around me, but this book was interesting and hysterical.
The thing is, that's only about 40% of the book. 3 ½ starsLet's be clear. I've read Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs several times and quote it liberally. CK is 35% more fun to listen to than to read, but he does not give us the opportunity with this work.
It is still Chuck, and, therefore, worth your time, but it does not fulfill the expectations set by SDaCP.Note on the audio book: It is indefensible that Klosterman does not read this himself. It is not that the reader is bad, it is just that his defining quality is that he is obviously not Chuck. The only thing that infidelity does is remind you of who you're not having sex with."But in the end, the two plots did not cohere enough to form a unified work. Here is one of my favorites:"Don't ever cheat on someone.I'm not saying that cheating is morally wrong (note: I disagree - but that is not the point).you will never enjoy it.you are never living in the sexual present.
It was an inspired premise. Now, it is Klosterman so the book has some great insights on relationships. I am a huge Klosterman guy. He also uses the road trip as an opportunity to connect /seek closure with women from various phases of his life.and then had the poor taste to fill 60% of a book on dead musicians with the sad exploits of his dysfunctional love life.
I was anxious for our most entertaining cultural analyst's reflections on fame, narcissism, drugs, music and death. But this book had too much Chuck and not enough dead musicians. Put Chuck in a rented silver Taurus with 300 CD's and send him to the all of the famous music death sites across America.
It was somewhat interesting but seemed like more of a blog than a book. However, that was just a sub-plot as the book was about Chuck Klosterman. So very po-mo. Ostensibly about a writer at Spin visiting places where rock stars died.
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