I know it doesn't seem that way, but despite my sputtering start, I am committed to the challenge. I thought after my marathon finish last year, I would maintain a similar pace and therefore be ahead rather than behind. Instead, I've been distracted by other things, and have been neglecting my reading. I hope to catch up soon.
I have to admit, the thing that most attracted me to this book was the title. In fact, it was the name of this and an earlier book, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, which drew me to Klosterman's work. Despite the fact that he's written for the The NY Times, The Washington Post, Esquire and Spin, I had never knowingly experienced his work. However, I had an eleven hour train ride last week, and I had just picked up the book at the library, so I decided to dive in.
In Eating the Dinosaur, Klosterman writes mostly about popular culture and sports. I had heard from others about the pop culture part, but I was unaware of the sports element. Klosterman is a basketball and football fanatic. He spends almost twenty pages explaining why despite his failed career, Ralph Sampson was the best basketball player that ever lived, but he ties it to the satisfaction we get as a society when a celebrity - sports or otherwise - fails. He spends another twenty pages on the game of football, but he does so by exploring the dichotomy between football's image of conservatism, and the fact that the game is constantly evolving due to out-of-the-box thinking by radical coaches.
But the essays are not all about sports. The enigmatic title of the book comes from what Klosterman feels would be one of the only practical uses for time travel - to eat a dinosaur. In the book's opening essay, he interviews interviewers in order to explore the nature of being interviewed. In another essay, he explores parallels between David Koresh and the Branch Davidians of Waco, and Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. He explains why the critical irrelevance of bands like AC/DC and ABBA is irrelevant itself, and he uses Vertigo, Body Double, The Real World, and personal experience to explore what he feels is the true nature of voyeurism.
It's funny what kind of preconceptions you can form about an author when you've heard of him or her but never read his or her work. Based on the title, I thought this would be a funnier book. While it is quirky in its subject matter, and the writing is not devoid of humor, Klosterman's insights are often more thought-provoking than they are laugh-inducing. The reader might chuckle a bit before realizing he or she had never thought about a particular subject in that particular way.
I'm not sure I'm going to run out and grab another of Klosterman's books right away. For one thing, his bibliography seems a bit jumbled, running the gamut between novels, essays, and memoirs. Also, the other book of pop culture essays (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs) might be a little dated (2003). However, I think I'll keep my eyes open for his magazine pieces, and hope they share the same level of insight as the essays of this book.
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