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Eating the Dinosaur

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About this listen

 After a bestselling and acclaimed diversion into fiction, Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, returns to the form in which he’s been spectacularly successful with a collection of essays about our consumption of pop culture and sports.

Q: What is this book about?

A: Well, that’s difficult to say. I haven’t read it yet—I’ve just picked it up and casually glanced at the back cover. There clearly isn’t a plot. I’ve heard there’s a lot of stuff about time travel in this book, and quite a bit about violence and Garth Brooks and why Germans don’t laugh when they’re inside grocery stores. Ralph Nader and Ralph Sampson play significant roles. I think there are several pages about Rear Window and college football and Mad Men and why Rivers Cuomo prefers having sex with Asian women. Supposedly there’s a chapter outlining all the things the Unabomber was right about, but perhaps I’m misinformed.

Q: Is there a larger theme?

A: Oh, something about reality. “What is reality,” maybe? No, that’s not it. Not exactly. I get the sense that most of the core questions dwell on the way media perception constructs a fake reality that ends up becoming more meaningful than whatever actually happened. Also, Lady Gaga.

Q: Should I read this book?

A: Probably. Do you see a clear relationship between the Branch Davidian disaster and the recording of Nirvana’s In Utero? Does Barack Obama make you want to drink Pepsi? Does ABBA remind you of AC/DC? If so, you probably don’t need to read this book. You probably wrote this book. But I suspect everybody else will totally love it, except for the ones who totally hate it.©2009 Chuck Klosterman; (P)2009 Simon & Schuster Art Essays Music Social Sciences Nonfiction Funny
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This is a collection of essays published in 2009 covering topics such as Kurt Cobain, voyeurism, the Unabomber, American football, canned laughter, and the weirdness of giving interviews. This audiobook version is read by the author, Chuck Klosterman, whose voice is comforting and familiar from his many rambling conversations about sports and pop culture on the Bill Simmons podcast. It also features the voices of Errol Morris and Ira Glass, but their sections are a little odd because they seem to be reading out their own transcribed answers from a previous interview. The book was exactly what I wanted and needed: more than six hours in the amiable company of Klosterman and his geeky, intellectual insights into American culture.

American pop culture essays by Chuck Klosterman

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