As part of our Summer Reading blog series this week we are highlighting a book by one of my favorite entertainment industry personalities, Chuck Klosterman.
In Eating The Dinosaur Klosterman does not necessarily explain how to get a gig for your band or how to keep up with the ever changing trends in the music industry as some of our past Summer Readings have, rather he takes the time to look at the bigger picture of American pop culture. When my brother gave me this book as a graduation gift he wrote on the front page “Don’t look at this as a book; it’s more like a series of philosophical prompts revolving around music/current events/pop culture.” And that is EXACTLY what it is.
There may not be one singular message that Klosterman is trying to convey through his writings, but it does make you think really hard about things that may have previously seemed inconsequential. Armed with his witty yet precise diction, Klosterman draws connections between things that the average pop culture pundit wouldn’t even consider to be mildly related. Klosterman investigates the similarities between Nirvana’s In Utero and the Branch Davidian Cult and takes a philosophical perspective on how the leader of the former, Kurt Cobain, and the leader of the latter, David Koresh, may be much more similar than one might think.
In his hilarious yet thought-provoking chapter on voyeurism Klosterman explains that, “To look through the window of a meaningless stranger proves that we are likewise meaningless; the roles could just as easily be reversed with the same net effect.”
This chapter was especially interesting as I was reading it on the T ride into work, and who can help but to stare at the other passengers and wonder who they are or where they are going?
Nearly every chapter in the book provides the reader with questions that could be pondered for a lifetime, my favorite coming from his chapter on time travel-- What would you say to yourself if you had the ability to speak on the phone with your fifteen-year-old self, but only had fifteen seconds to talk to your former self?
As you can see from the portions of the book that I described above, each chapter is not really related to the next but that is the beauty of the book as a whole, it is not meant to be one fluid storyline but a conglomeration of pop culture musings. So if you like to ponder your existence while laughing your ass off at the same time then this book is for you.
