The Wake

Chuck Klosterman’s new book, Eating the Dinosaur, is a series of fragmented cultural studies essays that reads like a mix tape. The logic in all of the essays relies on the reader’s previous knowledge of Klosterman’s work in order to get to his admittedly convoluted points. About an eighth of the book is Klosterman’s apologies to the reader for the “irrelevance” (a topic that is discussed thoroughly in the essay “ABBA 1, World 0”) or farfetchedness of the theses he presents. It’s a quirky book that only Klosterman could have written due to the writer’s already established list of penchants: Kurt Cobain, (professional, American) football, (professional, sometimes international) Basketball, Marketing, and Reality Television. The best essay the book is about the liberalism that pervades professional football through the flippant changing of rules and gameplay. I’m not a football fan. Because of this I was warned three times in the text that I would not be interested in an essay that began with an in-depth description of a play coincidentally called the “read option,” but I was fascinated by how rapidly NFL strategy changes despite its cosmetically conservative politics.

Eating the Dinosaur is a frustrating book; beyond its scatterbrained and contrarian’s logic Klosterman manages to make a handful of excellent cultural observations. Here’s a list in Klosterman’s borrowed style (RIP David Foster Wallace): a) Back to the Future will never be considered an “oldie”; b) Rivers Cuomo is and always has been a sincere artist; c) Kurt Cobain is nothing like David Koresh (although an entire essay is dedicated to this subject); d) “Millenials” is a stupid word; and e) Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window portrays an wholly unrealistic idea of what it’s really like to be a Peeping Tom, as does reality TV. The problem with Eating the Dinosaur is its resistance to a specific market demographic. NFL fans and those patiently waiting for an (unlikely) ABBA reunion tour are probably not the same people.