It is uniquely fitting that the man who is being called the voice of Generation X uses cultural debris the way a flasher uses a trench coat. Eloquence suddenly emerges from his deceptively chatty prose, imparting momentous meaning from sources that can usually be called humble. Chuck Klosterman’s voice is compelling to the extent that he writes convincingly about the significance of cereal commercials. It isn’t a case of making something out of nothing, the conclusions he arrives at are frighteningly substantial, somehow managing to be funny at the same time.
What fascinates me about Chuck is that every time he speaks it’s like he’s tossing out new material. The Klosterman process is operating constantly: A casual mixture of hedonic mirth and profundity that veers to the edge of neurosis and pulls back triumphantly. This is how he has managed , I assume, to write for Spin, Esquire, and ESPN while churning out a steady stream of book titles. I suspect that it would be hard for him to turn it off.
His latest book is rolling out in paperback. Killing Yourself to Live is theoretically about Chuck’s cross-country pilgrimage to the death-places of Rock stars, but that’s kind of like saying that tennis is about balls. The real journey is a relentless tour of one of America’s more original minds.
You have a unique ability to bring significance out of minutiae. What draws you to the original ideas?
I’m always interested in doing two kinds of cultural criticism: Taking really big ideas and trying to make them very specific and personal, or taking very small ideas and trying to look at them in a much larger context. I use my own life as a literary device. I’m working under the premise that under the right circumstances, to the right person, anything can have social meaning to somebody. I just take the things that I’m naturally interested in, and use those as a starting point. I’m much more effective writing about things that I’m actually interested in, than trying to figure out what other people might be interested in.
Pop culture has begun to gain parity with higher art forms. I think you’re doing a lot more to evoke its significance than other people are willing to do.
I think that almost everybody wants to think critically about the things in their life that are important to them. I think there are a lot of people who want to understand why things are important to them; what is the meaning outside of themselves? Some media does that very well: The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, National Public Radio. The problem is that a lot of the people reading about these things have no real relationship to the actual cultural artifact. They may not have listened to those records or seen those films. I want to apply that same sort of critical approach to popular culture; the universal things that people have a relationship with. When I write about Saved by the Bell I’m not trying to say that it’s a really important television show, I was thinking that it was a show that a lot of people of a certain age will have a relationship with. Maybe they enjoy watching it and they understand things about the characters, but it almost seems ridiculous to take this inherently bad show seriously. I’m going to be the person who does that.
I think that people sometimes view this stuff backwards. They think that something begins the process of being important by being great. That isn’t really how the world works. Something becomes important because of the way the audience reacts, not because of what it is inherently.
One of the things that you achieve is to imply that low culture is formative in ways that people wouldn’t want to admit.
Yes and no. To say formative is to say that it shapes the way people look at life. That might be true, might not be true. A statement I agree with more is that life and this show have some commonalties. I try to look at this poorly written but somehow entertaining program and find the elements that would make someone understand their own life better. That is the purpose of art.
Most of the people writing for the magazines you’re working with are writing with an implied audience of people like themselves. You seem to be writing for a broader audience, but without dumbing it down.
That is my hope. I’ve been fortunate. Besides book writing I’ve been able to write for Spin, for Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine, and ESPN. I don’t know how much crossover there is. I’d like to think that I’m writing cultural criticism for an audience of people who don’t normally read it.
Exactly. Do you think that it helps to have grown up in the mid-west?
Probably. It is odd to say that because it’s like I’m implying that because I’m from North Dakota I know what real people are like. That’s not how it is. The reason there might be a relationship is that culture gets there last. It starts on the east coast and on the west coast and gets to the middle of the country last. So all the culture I experienced growing up was the most populist stuff. It was the stuff that was universal to being alive in America during the 1980’s and early 90’s. It’s hard to live in North Dakota and be an elitist. You get used to the idea that there’s value in things that a lot of cultural critics would not see as valuable.
The single unifying characteristic in everything I write about is that I’m always more interested in the audience than the actual artifice. I’m always more interested in how people respond to Rock music opposed to the music itself. I’m more interested in how books or film affect peoples’ world view as opposed to the actual elements of that piece of art. You still have to break down the art itself, but what I’m interested in is the consequence.
You come to Rock and Roll from a Rock and Roll perspective, as opposed to an academic perspective. That makes your critical and interpretive work a little more authentic.
I hope it is. You can talk about music and authenticity. Talking about authenticity in criticism is more complex. There’s a certain element to any performing art that is inherently inauthentic. Bob Dylan knows he’s onstage. He’s acting the character of Bob Dylan onstage. When you’re a writer it’s a little different. If you accuse someone of being an inauthentic Rock Critic it’s almost like they’re pretending to like or dislike bands. What’s weird, is that there’s tons of people who do that. I never thought to myself as a kid that I was going to be a Rock Critic. I didn’t really think of that as a job, it never even occurred to me. We had Rolling Stone in the library and the only thing I remember about it is that they hated all the bands I liked. It’s so interesting to be in New York now because I meet people whose career goal is to become a Rock Critic. They were listening to The Velvet Underground in the sixth grade. They were in the mindset that this is what they were going to do. Until I got to college I had a completely normative experience of Rock music. I was really into it, but my interest was entirely based on my own personal interests and the culture I was in. I wasn’t into the canonized, dogmatic qualities of what was good or bad about Rock music. You say authentic. My response would have had to be authentic. I had nothing else to base my experience on.
That word does have to be suspect in any context, but what I mean is that it helps to perceive music as an experience rather than interpreting it as a cultural artifact.
The key is being able to do both. Take a band like Radiohead. There’s a visceral experience to seeing them live. The there’s also elements of Radiohead that are fun to think about- that have nothing to do with being there in concert, or even listening to the album. There are ideas not just in the lyrics but in the construction of the song and the way the band has positioned itself. I think that people who write about music want to go in one of two directions. They either want to look at these songs as math and prove that Pet Sounds is the best record from that year based on that criteria, or go in the exact opposite way; if you think about music at all, you’re missing the point. It just has to blow your mind away. I try to be exactly in the middle. You try to think about things intellectually and write about them emotionally.
You’re the only Rock Critic I know of who is willing to admit that you like bands that aren’t cool.
I suspect my book Fargo, Rock City helped perpetuate this in a back-handed way, but actually, writing about bands that aren’t cool now is half of the criticism I read. It used to be really hard to write about music and get it published for any audience larger than a `zine. There were only a few publications. The people who wrote about rock music thought they were in this rarified class, so they came up with these shared opinions. Now there are lots of places and ways to get published, it’s just hard to get paid for it. There are so many people writing now, the only way to stand out is to have insanely contrarian perspectives. I see this more and more. People base their aesthetic on whatever appears might become something. Or if something is getting big, their position is going to be the opposite, so you’ll see something like, “Wilco is Terrible.” I have no problem about somebody having that opinion, but it’s weird when someone has that opinion on purpose.
That’s what I mean I guess. There’s a sincerity level when you talk about a band that isn’t part of the cannon.
I’m lucky for two reasons. One: Because I never identified myself as a Rock Critic I never had the pressure to be accepted by the peers of Rock Criticism. The vast majority of Rock Critics are only writing for other rock critics. I’m not in that position because I didn’t know any of them until I moved to New York.
The other thing is that I’ve been able to write books. I’m really a generalist at this point. I can write about sports or religion or politics. I do happen to write about music a lot. I can write about Creed or Yo La Tengo and since I’m not a Rock Critic I don’t have to worry about someone looking at my perspective and saying that I’m just accepting what everyone else believes or is just trying to disagree with people. I don’t have to worry about them anymore. I will be able to publish books regardless.
I do have one Rock Criticism question I’m dying to ask you. Granted, the recent Red Hot Chili Peppers album is god, but no one had anything less than worship for it..
Those guys are so annoying. I was just thinking that today in fact. I had just woken up and one of those VH1 top video shows was on. ” Dani California” is actually a pretty good song. I liked that song more than the vast majority of their catalogue, but they’re one band where watching the video makes me dislike the song because those guys are just idiots. They remind me of when you’re in college and some guys start a band and they go out of their way to make sure at all times that everyone knows they’re in a band. And, because they’re in this band they’re in this artistic venture- they’re allowed to embrace the most obviously eccentric public posturing and act like they’re on drugs all the time even when they’re not. They’re like that college band that’s now super successful.
This reminds me of your idea of what I would call personality templates: People who say they’re creative are not creative.
If you tell someone to act spontaneously they’re going to act the way they assume spontaneity is represented- which is the opposite. For the most part, people are bad at understanding their own dominant quality. In fact they assume the complete opposite. When I think about the things that accelerate culture -the proliferation of media- has had a positive effect on people, but there’s a negative effect too. There’s less self-awareness among people. Their recognition of their own insecurities and their own failures leads them to identify themselves the opposite of the way people perceive them. My biggest fear in life is that there’s something about me that absolutely everyone knows except me. I’ve seen other people like this. Their dominant quality is clear to everyone and they’re absolutely oblivious to it. You never know the things you don’t know.
There’s things that we know we know, and there’s things that we know we don’t know. We don’t know what’s going to happen when we die, the big existential questions. Then there’s all these questions we don’t even know to ask. A lot of people are unaware of the things that construct who they are.
I think that a lot of your most important work revolves around that. Most people who think about culture believe that there’s some social engineer out there trying to mass produce contemporary consciousness. It’s more likely that a good deal of contemporary mass consciousness is a byproduct of selling soda.
The hardest thing about cultural criticism is dealing with the element of chance. I was working on this column about Snakes on a Plane, Esquire wanted it. They went back and shot scenes based on what people wanted on the internet. They changed the name of the movie and changed it back based on what they thought people wanted.
I think this is a bad direction for filmmaking to go for two reasons. One: If you look at the entire blogisphere as a focus group the movies are going to become less personal and more idiotic. The other problem -and I wonder if the movie studios even realize- is not only will it make the movies worse, but even if they do their research perfectly it will only work half the time. It’s the same as having one guy pick. If you asked 100,000,000 people everything they wanted from a film, and made that movie, it might be popular and it might not. There’s still that element that people don’t know what they want until they get it. Whenever you’re writing about culture you always face that mystery, like why is Led Zeppelin huge?
I can give a whole bunch of reasons why Led Zeppelin is great. I can use musical reasons, reasons about their iconography, timing, the world-view of youth in the 70’s- all those things, but there’s still the question of why it was them. Why not Blue Cheer? Was it because the music was inherently better? I would argue that it is, but I don’t really know. There are tons of examples where the opposite is true.
My wife read the passage in Killing Yourself to Live about Led Zeppelin and she said that you hit the nail on the head except for one thing: Why are there generations of female fans obsessing over Zep?
Some people have brought that up, that it was a somewhat sexist point. I wasn’t saying that only guys like Led Zeppelin, I’m just saying it’s a really formative part of being a guy. Every guy will, for whatever reason, find the music of Led Zeppelin to be, at least briefly, the only good music in the world. Whether it’s for eight days, or eight weeks, or their whole lives. I’d guess women would like Led Zeppelin for less gender-specific reasons. Maybe they just think it’s good.
Especially for guys who were totally into Zeppelin for like six weeks in tenth grade, in all likelihood it wasn’t their most successful romantic era. I don’t know if any guys have ever gotten laid because they like Led Zeppelin.
You’re working on a new book project?
The soft cover of Killing Yourself [came out] in June, so [I toured] for that. Then in September an anthology [came] out called Chuck Klosterman IV, like Led Zeppelin IV. It’s a collection of things previously published plus some new material. There’s a 40 page novella at the end. There’s a story, half true, half fiction, and I added some new questions. Most of this book, 85%, is previously published. I’m working on a novel right now.
I’ve been saving this one up. What if a sumo wrestler joined Kiss?
What instrument?
Doesn’t matter, but I would have to say drums.
Would I be enthused about that? No. But if any band was going to attempt to add a sumo wrestler to the lineup, and somehow not destroy their fan base, or the iconic meaning of the group, Kiss is the only one who could do it. Somehow Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley could convince me and all the other idiots who love kiss, that bringing in the sumo wrestler would encompass the history of Kiss being super popular in Japan. They’d represent the idea that Kiss was always larger than life, and who’s larger than a sumo wrestler, that their music was always written with that sort of Godzilla mentality.
I thought I was the only person in the world who though that Ace Frehley’s solo album was not only listenable, but fun.
In the world of Kiss people, that’s a given. We all think Ace Frehley has the best delivery. Basically he made a normal Kiss album out of songs that he couldn’t get on Kiss records because Paul and Gene wouldn’t let him. It’s comparable to the first George Harrison solo record, which is all stuff he saved up when the Beatles wouldn’t let him put it on a record, a comparison can be drawn there, except Ace Frehley is not George Harrison. Both geniuses, but in very different ways.
Do you think there’s an inverse ratio between the fame of the people you interview, and the value of the things they have to say?
One thing about this job is that people want to know what Britney Spears is like, what’s Bono like? For the most part, celebrities are less interesting than normal people. They have a vested interest in not being interesting. When you talk to Britney Spears, she’s working. I don’t know what she’s like at all. She’s doing something to promote the idea of Britney Spears. It’s hard to get these people to say what people want to know about them, or something outside the character of what they’ve already constructed. In my experience, the best interviews are old Rock guys like Robert Plant or Ozzy Osbourne, Donald Fagan or Bono, because they’ve done this a whole bunch of times. They don’t care anymore. The best people to interview are super famous super established, and know that journalists don’t really affect their career that much, or bands who have just begun and are still in the process of creating who they think they want to be.
The worst people are really successful bands who are on their second album. They’re doing media all the time, and they’re sick of it. This is when the record company decides that they have to become Pearl Jam and do thousands of interviews a day. Being interesting can only hurt them. Also, it’s hard to get a pro athlete to say something interesting because it’s impossible to convince them that they have a motive to do so.
Bono was very interesting to talk to, and he loves being interviewed, but he’s different from most musicians. I suppose it is a case-by-case situation.
I’d interview someone like Poe, who disappeared off the face of the earth, and they’d be consistently brilliant.
When somebody falls off the map like that they tend to learn a lot of life lessons, and they have a lot to say about the way the music industry works.
When I interviewed Britney Spears for Esquire something dawned on me in the middle of it: It was probably her first real interview. She’d been talking to media for like ten years. However it was always either Teen People asking her questions like “why are you so awesome’ or she was surrounded by her handlers who dictated what she said. I’m asking her these questions that seem almost too obvious, and she was completely oblivious to them. She had never even considered that there might be this dichotomy between being a virgin and being a sexual object at the same time. She didn’t think about things like that. I suppose, if she did, she’d go insane. If she really thought about her iconography and the bizarre impact she has on the world- she’d go insane. To be that famous, maybe you have to be the kind of person who doesn’t understand the meaning of what they do, whereas someone like Poe is not in that position.
I wonder if you can be an icon and think on any level of complexity.
The degree of complexity isn’t as overwhelming as the degree to which it has to consume you. If you’re Bob Dylan or Madonna or any of these super famous people, I assume that there’s no aspect of their lives that they don’t see through the prism of their fame. No matter how much they say that they’re just a normal person. If they perceive that going to a convenient to buy a box of cookies or a Pepsi will be perceived as interesting to people they’ve never met, that would alter the way they perceive the act themselves.
I suspect that the relationship between a person and their favorite celebrities bypasses the parts of the brain that have evolved in the past 10,000,000 years.
It depends on what point you consider celebrity starting. What’s so weird now -and media like Us Weekly have really accelerated this- is that there are so many celebrities that are famous to people who really don’t care about them at all. There’s a difference between the way Joe DiMaggio was famous, and the way Nick Lachey is famous. There are all these people who know that Nick Lachey is a famous guy and would actively identify themselves as not being a fan of him, or actually disliking him. They’re the same people who read the magazines that make him a celebrity. He’s on a television show, but there’s shows that are more popular than that, and there’s people who are more popular than that. He exists in this world where he’s famous for being famous. The people who drive that industry, the people who care about who he’s dating and things like that, very often don’t like him. He’s in this weird position of being beloved by people who hate him.
