As you can guess from the title this is Chuck Klosterman’s tenth book which is an anthology of previously published articles - and I really enjoyed reading it!
The writing voice Klosterman’s cultivated over the years is very compelling. Obviously it helps that the subject matters - pop culture commentary on music, film and TV - interest me, but his articulate, funny, thoughtful and illuminating musings also drew me into subjects that don’t, eg. American sports.
I couldn’t care less about American football/basketball/baseball (and the worst essay here is the opener, about an obscure basketball game from 1988, which reeks of hipster bullshit), but Klosterman makes them not only accessible to an outsider like me but also appealing. His interviews with sports celebrities like Tim Tebow, Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady were informative and his profile on the Cleveland Browns (who I gather are a joke) was very amusing. I also liked his article on Royce White, a largely-unknown basketball player concerned with highlighting mental illness in the sport.
The interviews with Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, Noel Gallagher, Taylor Swift and Jonathan Franzen were entertaining and, like all great interviews, gave us a peek into the subjects’ lives, and I loved his thoughts on a variety of topics like The Walking Dead, Peanuts, Breaking Bad, Harry Potter, and Miley Cyrus. The Lou Reed obituary was excellent and his article on Danger Mouse (one half of Gnarls Barkley) introduced me to The Grey Album, an intriguing mash-up of The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album.
A number of essays made me laugh like when he went to see Nickelback and Creed play live on the same night and shared his thoughts on widely-hated popular bands. The Chinese Democracy review and his satire on The Beatles’ catalogue were brilliant too.
Not all the articles hit the spot. His piece on the VORM experiment, a tedious and pedantic scoring system he devised on musicians’ relevance (or something), was a chore to slog through as was most of his 10,000 word essay on KISS, which was overlong and overindulgent - all it further highlighted was how I’ll never be a KISS fan! And his interviews with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and Stephen Malkmus were dull (possibly because both men seem dull).
Mostly though, Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century is a bumper book full of engaging and fun nonfiction by a unique, talented and delightful writer - recommended to all Klosterman fans and anyone interested in pop culture commentary. Here’s to ten more, Chuck!
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