- "Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you."
Chuck Klosterman is an author who has written for SPIN, the New York Times, and Esquire, among other publications. He grew up in Wyndmere, North Dakota but relocated to New York City to write for SPIN. He has also written several books about American pop culture, but which always incorporate little pieces of his life and romantic relationships in his stories. He first became recognized as an author with the book Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, released in 2003, which tackled everything from fundamentalist Christians to the porn industry. His follow-up, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, chronicles his journey through the United States in search of places famous rock stars had died, while simultaneously moping over past romantic relationships.
His writing style is very unique: he can get into a complex, intricate analysis of the human condition and then litter his writing with F-bombs at the same time. Much of his writing is autobiographical, either talking about his interviews with famous rock stars and celebrities, past relationships, or growing up in North Dakota. He tends to write from an outsider's point of view, talking about how a country boy raised on Hair Metal and cheap pot can survive in today's hyper-accelerated media culture. Because of this, he has often been called "The Midwestern Hipster".
Bibliography:
- Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota (2001): An ode to Hair Metal.
- Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (2003): A collection of essays that put him on the map.
- Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005): A book of musings about love and death, centered around famous musicians who died young.
- Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006): A collection of previously published essays, with some new material thrown in for good measure.
- Downtown Owl (2008): His first work of fiction; A novel about people in the fictional town of Owl, North Dakota in the '80s.
- Eating The Dinosaur (2009): His second essay collection.
- The Visible Man (2011): His second novel, about a man who man who uses an invisibility suit to observe people when they're alone.
- I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains(Real and Imagined) (2013): A book about villains and why certain people are hated while others aren't.
- But What if We're Wrong: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past (2016): A book speculating about how widely accepted views might change in the future.
- Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century (2017): His second collection of previously published work.
- Raised In Captivity (2019): His third fiction book and first short story collection.
- The Nineties: a Book (2022): A book about the '90s.
Chuck Klosterman contains examples of:
- Berserk Button: He once dated a girl who blew him off to go to a Coldplay concert. His response, is, well... not family-friendly."It does not matter that Coldplay is absolutely the shittiest fucking band I've ever heard in my entire fucking life, or that they sound like a mediocre photocopy of Travis (who sound like a mediocre photocopy of Radiohead), or that their greatest fucking artistic achievement is a video where their blandly attractive frontman walks on a beach on a cloudy fucking afternoon. None of that matters. What matters is that Coldplay manufactures fake love as frenetically as the Ford fucking Motor Company manufactures Mustangs, and that's all this woman heard."
- Cluster F-Bomb: A lot of his work (see the quote under Berserk Button)
- Dead Artists Are Better: Not to Klosterman himself, but why he decided to write Killing Yourself to Live: he wanted to understand why so many artists only became notable after they die.
- Insane Troll Logic: A staple of his writing. His essay "33" tries to explain whether you rooted for the Boston Celtics or the Los Angeles Lakers in The '80s can explain every decision you make in your life, from political preferences to who you should marry to whether David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar was a better singer in Van Halen.
- Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: A big focus of many of his stories.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Killing Yourself to Live contains a story about a girl Chuck was interested in, who got high and climbed up on the roof of her house. The girl's friends were paranoid that she would jump off and injure herself, and Chuck was worried that he wouldn't get laid. So what happened? Nothing. The girl climbed down from the roof and never saw Chuck again.
- Sophisticated as Hell: His writing often shows this trope.
- Stupid Sexy Flanders: "Sexy British weirdo Benedict Cumberbatch."
