I hate people.They make no goddamn sense.The other day I was standing at the checkout
in Woolworths as the cashier rang through my weekly groceries.It was late on a Tuesday morning and the place
was jam-packed with nanna’s doing their slow, shuffling shops.Every checkout had a line three people deep,
each with bulging trolley.Every
checkout that is, except for the bank of six self-serve jobs squatting in
lonely neglect at the other end of the supermarket.
Granted, these post-human checkouts haven’t
exactly been designed to cope with full trolley loads, so it’s understandable
that the bulk of shoppers would queue up for the old-school variety manned by
sullen teenagers and middle-aged women.But when you’ve only got a few items the de-humanized versions are a
godsend, taking a tenth the time you’d spend waiting for a real-life human to
scan them on your behalf.Only a fool or
a sadist would subject themself to a full-length wait behind inappropriately
legging-ed women and their screaming hell-spawn while a dead-eyed zombie scans
through a Saharan expedition’s worth of supplies.And yet while I waited for my own groceries
to be scanned I noticed a guy standing behind me, two people back, holding a
single packet of coffee.He had been
queuing for at least 10 minutes just so he could pass the coffee to the
cashier, have it scanned, and have it handed back.What the fuck could possess this guy to stand
there for that long when he could have walked straight up to one of the empty
self-serve checkouts, scanned it, paid for it and walked straight out the
door?As I looked around I found similar
buffoons populating every single checkout line.What the hell for?What does this
mean for the trajectory of humanity?
You know who
could tell you?
Chuck
Klosterman.
For those of you who don’t know Mr
Klosterman, he’s a journalist-cum-pop-cultural-critic of rockstar
proportion.Starting out at a paper in
Fargo, North Dakota (yes, that Fargo) he went on to work as an arts critic fro
the Akron Beacon Journal in Akron,
Ohio before moving to New York City in 2002 where he exploded as a senior
writer for SPIN.Since then has contributed variously to Esquire, GQ, The New York Times
Magazine, The Believer, and The Washington Post as well as writing
best-selling books including Fargo Rock
City, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs,Killing Yourself To Live, Chuck Klosterman IV, and Downtown Owl.
Eating
the Dinosaur is Chuck’s latest offering and will be
exactly what fans expect.But, my dear
friends, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.In a collection of essays on subjects as wide
ranging as the cultural importance of ABBA to the significance of Pepsi’s
recent rebranding, Chuck lets it buck and you will be thankful for it.Like Slavoj Zizek without the spittle and
narcissism (the social theorist Chuck himself refers to as the “maniacal
Slovenian monster-brain”) for Chuck everything is up for grabs.Any issue, any product, any trend is fair
game, critically speaking.What Chuck
does best is grab a bit of this and a bit of that to create arguments attacking
popular culture from unimagined angles and with surprising effectiveness.
Eating
the Dinosaur hoists up (post)modern Western society
by its most banal appendages (television laugh tracks, American football, ‘80s
NBA flops, Weezer, Nirvana, Friends, Mad Men) , and shakes them until
meaningful cultural criticism falls out.And it does it all while making you laugh out loud as you read on a
crowded train surrounded by wary strangers.This is the beauty of Chuck:He
speaks to the masses in a language we all understand, the language of iPads,
Second Life, Twitter and the Simpsons.He tricks us into following him on deep and meaningful explorations of
the direction(s) and meaning(s) of our society and by the time we realize we’re
reading something of real philosophical importance, it’s too late.He’s already got us hooked.He’s seduced us with a very charming and
commonly elusive combination of gargantuan smarts and effortless humour.
I’m just gonna get it out of the way right
now— I may hate people, but I love Chuck Klosterman.True, it could be argued that I might feel
this way because we share a similar geographical history (him growing up in
North Dakota, USA and I growing up in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada— three hours
from the North Dakotan border).Equally
true, it could be argued that I love Chuck because he gives me hope— hope that
writers from the perma-frozen arse-end of nowhere can go on to light up the
literary world with funny, biting, insightful social commentary.But no, my Polyester people, this is not the
case.These reasons have nothing do with
it.
I love Chuck
because the man is fucking smart and fucking hilarious.
With Eating
the Dinosaur Mr Klosterman accomplishes what for other authors is rare feat
indeed— crafting a book which could just as easily be read over a single
weekend’s beach holiday as quoted extensively in a scholarly paper.Its format (loosely connected but ultimately
stand-alone essays) makes it perfect for public transport reading.He might be smarter than you, but he’d never
let you know it.Instead he doles out
insights in little bite-sized morsels in a way that instantly makes you feel smarter.
Good ol’ Chuck.He’s done it again, the magnificent
bastard.With Eating the Dinosaur he’s delivered the kind of book that makes me
think (against my better judgement perhaps) that there maybe hope for us after
all.
B.C.H.
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