I was recently asked by a promotional company if I wanted to read and review the new Chuck Klosterman book, Killing Yourself to Live : 85% of a True Story, in exchange for a free copy. Since I was at least 85% likely to buy this book at the local Border’s anyways, I happily accepted. I was excited when the book arrived overnight, and I immediately dove in.
Killing Yourself To Live is the expansion to book form of an article that Klosterman was writing for Spin Magazine in mid 2003. The article centered on the tragic deaths of famous rockers, and looked deeper into the ultimate impact of those deaths on the recognition of said rocker’s careers and legacies as a whole. Though more about his “relationships” with three woman, and his cross country travels, than the death of rockstars, this book is classic Klosterman. Now I understand that it is entirely debateable whether or not someone can have their style referred to as “classic”, having only written three books, one of which was entirely made up of essays covering such topics as the social and cultural significance of The Sims and the relationship between Zach Morris and Mr. Belding on Saved By The Bell, but that is neither here nor there. The point is, that Killing Yourself To Live includes everything that makes Klosterman’s writing great. It is filled to the brim with over-indulgent pop-culture references, self-loathing, stories of failed near-romances, and gross overuse of the words “insamuch” and “unironic”. It is the kind of book that you knock out in a weekend, and then tell your friends that they should read too, only to get offended if they do not share the same enthusiasm for Klosterman’s obscure KISS references and stories about rural North Dakota.
After buring through the book in two days, I found myself wondering how I would review it. How would I sum up the book in a quick blog post, so that others could get a good sense of what this reading experience would be like, without putting together a review that read like a 7th grade book report? I ultimately thought that when explaining a book like this to others, it is less about the story, and more about the style. You either eat his writing up with a fork and spoon, or you struggle to keep it down. There is no in between.
I thought about how a common fantasy of mine is to have a soundtrack for my life. Some sort of background music that plays automatically at various points in one’s life, so as to further emphasize whatever emotions are happening as a result of being in whatever particular situation they I am in. It would be a world where every important moment in my life would be not unlike any episode of The OC, minus Mischa Barton and that gay dark-haired kid. I thought about how this soundtrack would only cover the very emotionally important moments, and that the in between would all be filled in with the normal dialouge and ambient sounds of normal life…except that those sounds and that dialouge would somehow be far more fascinating than they really were. Again, not unlike any given episode of the OC, and again, minus Mischa Barton and the gay dark-haired kid.
That filler dialouge, that random thinking out loud that would come sandwiched in between the overly literal and dramatic soundtrack music, would be written by Chuck Klosterman. That is in essence, what a Chuck Klosterman book is at its core. It is a glimpse into the world of a man who has a sountrack for everything he does (quite literally), and those in betweens…those dialogue and ambient sound filled times, are just made to be far more interesting than they really are.