Eating the Dinosaur

Klosterman does not go for the easy joke here; although he is consistently and absurdly amusing. Neither is Eating the Dinosaur a mere collection of pop culture references; although Mad Men, Nirvana, ABBA, The Fog of War and other mentions abound. What raises this book to a 5 star rating is the author's ability to weave humor and pop culture into genuinely insightful analyses of issues both important and sublime.

He starts with a very funny and equally revealing essay about why people answer questions during interviews. Just as the reader recognizes that this is not nearly as obvious a matter as it seems on first blush, Klosterman enters into a discussion of the nature of truth and of selfhood. Errol Morris contributes this gem: "I think we're always trying to create a consistent narrative for ourselves. I think truth always takes a backseat to narrative." (This would explain why each of my satellite radio news channels tells me about events in seemingly different worlds.)

Klosterman is less serious but just as interesting in exploring the challenges inherent in time travel. Even it were possible, he argues, the only reason to do so would be to eat a dinosaur.

His dissection of advertising through the medium of Mad Men and Pepsi is subtle and persuasive. He tries to convince us that we understand we are being conned by the ad. However, we reward the message that does the best job of setting the hook because we want to be a part of the process.

His best piece finishes the book and rather courageously tries to resurrect the Unabomber's arguments in Industrial Society for the Future without creating any sympathy for Ted Kaczynski. Klosterman shows how 130,000 years of psychological evolution, in which men observed actual images, have been replaced in one century by mediated experience. The media that the author has made a living writing about has created a new and false reality. "We are latently enslaved by our own ingenuity, and we have unknowingly constructed a simulated world, " concludes the author. "As a species, we have never been less human than we are right now."

Eating the Dinosaur is a lot to swallow. Whether the reader accepts its conclusions or not, however, consumption is both fun and enlightening.

On its face, just like the best of his other books, Eating the Dinosaur appears to be a book about the mundane and the fleeting. However, underneath that glossy surface, there are insights into our cultural ethos that are unmatched by other modern works. The essays include:

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Something Instead of Nothing: Why do people answer questions? For who's sake? What does that say about us? This is far more interesting than it sounds at first and, I think, provides insight into the current human condition. Interviews and answering questions are odder than you would think.

Oh, the Guilt: What do David Koresh and Kurt Cobaine have in common? Really interesting look at what makes self-made cultic leaders and culturally-created messianic figures different. Great examination of the Waco disaster as well - definitely want to read more about it after reading the little bit included here.

Tomorrow Rarely Knows: An essay about why time travel is impossible. Good, but the information is not very original. I had heard most of this before, but interesting none the less.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Ralph Sampson: Society's Reactions to Public Failures. As a lifelong Houston Rockets fan, I was excited to see this essay. Though the premise and the conclusions are valid, this essay on failure and how it is viewed by society ultimately comes up short. The circuitous route that Klosterman takes to get to his point has a few too many curves.

Through a Glass, Blindly: Voyeurism. The most interesting part of this essay were the discussions of the Hitchcock movies Vertigo and Rear Window. An understanding look at why we watch other's lives. The conclusion that Klosterman comes up with here is right on. This, along with the first essay in the book, deftly describes an individual's desire to be recognized and validated.

The Passion of the Garth: Fictional Reality. I am not a big country music fan and barely remember Garth Brooks' attempt to break into the rock world as Chris Gaines. After three slower essays, this one is great fun. The underlying discussion of created personas and how fiction can be truer than reality takes a back seat to the sheer entertainment value of the piece.

The Best Response. This one is just filler really. The one area that fell very short of Klosterman's best work (Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs, IV) are the filler questions. There really was not anything worthwhile in between the chapters, and though this grouping of questions is a little better then the filler in the rest of the book, its not by much.

Football: Liberal or Conservative? Great. As an avid football fan, one of my favorites in the book. Not much to say about it besides the fact that if you are a football fan, this one is a must read and almost worth the price of the book. This, along with the soccer essay (S,D, & CP, I think) is the best of his sports essays.

ABBA 1, World 0. Not great. Unclear about the point of this one, and I don't particularly care for ABBA's music.

"Ha, Ha," he said. "Ha, Ha." Canned Laughter. Very good. I always hated canned laughter, but now I know why. Your perception of canned laughter, both on television and in everyday conversations, will change after reading this.

It Will Shock You How Much It Never Happened. Advertising. As a Mad Men fan, this one was good. Though confused about the direction he was headed at times, the conclusion results in a great question about the nature of advertising in today's society.

T is For True: Irony and Its Pervasiveness. A look at the lack of literalism in today's society and what that means for us in the future. This one is a must read and will change the way you think about irony and its effects. One of the best in the book.

FAIL: Technology, Good or Bad. Worth reading for a couple of good points, but one of the weakest chapters in the book. Hard to take even one philosophical insight from the Unabomber and point out its value, but Klosterman succeeds (barely.)
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Chuck Klosterman has a unique talent to turn discussions about Nirvana, David Koresh, and Mad Men into philosophical treatises worth reading. Even if you disagree with many, or even all, of his conclusions you cannot ignore Klosterman's insight into pop culture and society. He is the best writer of the "educational & entertaining non-fiction" genre, and Eating the Dinosaur is one of his best.

I've read (and generally enjoyed) all of Klosterman's books (even the novel), so whenever he has a new one, I pick it up right away. I tore through this skimpy one in about two days, and on first read was disappointed to find it to be among the least engaging of his work. I say "first read" because I'm kind of tempted to set it aside to revisit in a year or so. The problem with Klosterman is that he is usually so entertaining that one tends to read him quickly, eager to come across the next clever line or hilarious juxtaposition. But in the case of this book I realize that I may not have wholly engaged with the larger ideas he's writing about. And since many of the essays in this book take on bigger themes than those his previous books, it might be worth a second, slower read.

That caveat established, my initial impression is that this is Klosterman's weakest collection. Yes, is has the trademark humor, clever turns of phrase, and entertaining contrarian pronouncements. But the humor's not as everpresent, more of the pronouncements struck me as definitively wrong, and the level of navel-gazing seems to be ratcheted up. What I mean by that is most of his earlier work felt like the ideas and observations were just gushing out of his head, almost uncontrolled. Here, he seems to be working a great deal harder to figure out just what it is he's trying to say, and what that says about him. On the plus side are essays like "Something Instead of Nothing," a genuine attempt to understand why people answer interview questions. Another good one is "Oh, the Guilt," a rambling but interesting attempt to link the personalities of Kurt Cobain and David Koresh with the concept of authenticity and their resulting fates. I also quite liked the final piece, "Fail," which is a reconsideration of the Unabomber Manifesto and its relevance to our current internet-addicted society. There's a bit about ABBA ("ABBA 1, World 0.") that's quite in line with much of his earlier work and a good analysis of a pop culture phenomenon.

However, many of the essays simply don't work. For example, in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Ralph Sampson" Klosterman attempts to parse how people react to the failures of public figures. I was really curious to see what he had to say about the basketball player who was my favorite player during his college years (Klosterman and I are the same age). But his conclusions are pretty facile and the route he takes to get to them is awfully convoluted and muddled. Similarly, as a lifelong pro football fan, I was curious to see what he has to say in "Football: Liberal or Conservative?" Unfortunately, his conclusion that football is somehow "liberal" because it embraces change is arrived at through some various dubious logical leaps that dont' stand up to anything beyond a cursory examination. His bit on time travel ("Tomorrow Rarely Knows") has nothing new or interesting to say on the topic, ditto for his one on voyeurism ("Through a Glass, Blindly") and the one on laugh tracks. And his bit on modern advertising ("It Will Shock You How Much It Never Happened") just struck me as completely wrong.

My guess is that if you really like Klosterman, you'll pretty much like this collection. If you mostly like him (like me), you'll read this and find some choice nuggets to extract. If you don't like him, this book won't change your opinion one iota. And if you've never heard of him, start with one of his earlier books, like Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

Chuck seems more aware of his own celebrity and status as a writer in this book than his previous ones. This comes, alongside the welcome addition of an index, making it all the easier to look up his culturally mundane references for a second time, if need be. The following is a sampling of the first 10 things referenced in the index (in alphabetical order, of course): Abba (pgs. 147-158), ABC, Abdul (Paula), AC/DC, Ace of Base, Across the Sea (Weezer), advertising, A-11 offense, Aerosmith, Aero-Zepplin, Against the Machine, and the Akron Beacon Journal.

If you're a fan of his previous works, and particularly Sex Drugs Cocoa Puffs, you should check this out. But if you're reading this, you probably already knew that.

*P.S. the page count here says 255 pages, but in actuality, it is 229 pages, plus the index from p. 233 to p.245... so it's shorter than has been listed. I ripped through it yesterday afternoon, and will probably read it a second time come Holiday break.

On the back of EATING THE DINOSAUR, a question is posed: "Should I read this book?" The answer really does sum up what you will find between these covers: "Probably. Do you see a clear relationship between the Branch Davidian massacre 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." And since I know and you know that you didn't, you might just need to read this book.

Rivers Cuomo of Weezer and his fascination with a particular group of women, Garth Brooks and his doppelganger, "Mad Men," football, Ralph Nader --- anything that makes up some semblance of pop culture within the scope of the last decade is viable fodder for Chuck Klosterman's famously erudite take on what makes our commercial world go around. It includes politics, the arts, sports and advertising --- nothing is out of his reach. Like the Gorillaz's song "Clint Eastwood," "the future is coming on," and Klosterman lays out his clean, shiny instruments, ready to dissect whatever comes his way.

There's a good chance that you won't read all the essays in one sitting --- like a great magazine article, you will want to savor one at a time, delving into it several times to soak up all the multivarious responses Klosterman has to simple questions such as the ones posed above. Using Aristotelian logic to understand a new Pepsi campaign is fascinating stuff in his hands. Like a Lego master, he takes each little issue apart and really looks at it, ending up with a snarky but intelligent creation, standing on its own as a little bit of pop culture enthusiasm to which we can all refer in 10 years' time when we're trying to remember why something made such a big imprint on all of us (like "Mad Men").

Personally, I most like Klosterman because he gives weight and credence to things that I like to think about but that may not seem like the types of things adults should spend their precious time considering. But advertising campaigns, TV shows and alternative rock albums are so much a part of my daily life, my personal quilt of culture, that I appreciate greatly the import that Klosterman provides. He makes me feel not quite as ridiculous as I can, as the world collapses around me and I spend time reading the Twitter feed of Betty Draper, a character I feel like I know but who doesn't really exist.

Am I an idiot? No, just a plugged-in member of the general pop culture, just like the Unabomber and The Foo Fighters and the new coach of the Notre Dame football team. Klosterman may be EATING THE DINOSAUR, but really we're just savoring the fossils of our own time; like Pepsi, it's fun AND delicious.

--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano