Eating the Dinosaur
Selected Book Details
- Hardcover
- Edition: 1
- Author: Chuck Klosterman
- Publisher: Scribner
- Release Date: October 2009
- ISBN-10: 1416544208
- ISBN-13: 9781416544203
- List Price: $25.00
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryA Book of All-New Pop Culture Pieces by Chuck Klosterman Chuck Klosterman has chronicled rock music, film, and sports for almost fifteen years. He's covered extreme metal, extreme nostalgia, disposable art, disposable heroes, life on the road, life through the television, urban uncertainty and small-town weirdness. Through a variety of mediums and with a multitude of motives, he's written about everything he can think of (and a lot that he's forgotten). The world keeps accelerating, but the pop ideas keep coming. In Eating the Dinosaur, Klosterman is more entertaining and incisive than ever. Whether he's dissecting the boredom of voyeurism, the reason why music fan's inevitably hate their favorite band's latest album, or why we love watching can't-miss superstars fail spectacularly, Klosterman remains obsessed with the relationship between expectation, reality, and living history. It's amateur anthropology for the present tense, and sometimes it's incredibly funny. Q: What is this book about? A: Well, that's difficult to say. I haven't read it yet - I've just clicked on it and casually glanced at this webpage. 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 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. 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 absolutely hate it. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Another enjoyable read
Rating:
I've enjoyed all of Chuck Klosterman's books (have yet to read Downtown Owl)and articles in Spin and Esquire. This is no exception. Brought it on vacation and found myself cursing Chuck Klosterman because I read it so fast I had nothing to read on the flight home. Really looking forward to showing my friends who are Michigan State Spartan football fans the chapter on "The Best Response".
Authentic? LOL Who cares.
Rating:
I always pick up the new Chuck Klosterman even if there is too much sports for my taste (and no those essays are not for people that don't like sports Chuck! lol). Regardless, they're always worth the money. This was no exception. The idea of Garth Brooks' success being hinged on the absence of Bruck Springsteen sparked a long lunch conversation, which is what I love about these books. I totally disagree, but I'm apparently the minority! Chuck rights for people that aren't embarrassed to love popular things (Mad Men for instance). Great read.
Klosterman looks for sincerity and authenticity everwhere
Rating:
Chuck Klosterman is very critical in this collection of essays. But that's what he is: A critic. I'm more of a music fan than a sports fan, so the subjects of the sports essays were often foreign to me. Still, Klosterman's insights cross over to other aspects of life. Other reviewers have summarized the essays, so I won't repeat the summaries. A common theme throughout the essays is Klosterman's obsession with sincerity. Whether it is music or sports, sincerity and authenticity are paramount to Klosterman. He's like Linus looking for the most sincere pumpkin patch. And in FAIL, Klosterman turns on himself. He acknowledges his own lack of sincerity by explaining how he agrees with critics of technology, but cannot get enough of technology himself.
Klosterman's references to very current events will likely impair this book's longevity, so read it now. It's a short book and a quick read. I read it over a two-day business trip.
Not as good as the rest of Klosterman's stuff
Rating:
I just finished reading Chuck Klosterman's latest book, Eating the Dinosaur and i didn't like it. Before i get into why i didn't like it, i do want to say that i thought his essays about Kurt Cobain (Oh, the Guilt) and Garth Brooks (The Passion of Garth) to be really interesting. Also, the Time Machine and Abba essays were okay. I then had somewhat of a problem with the rest. I have 4 main reasons.
The first and main reason i didn't like the book is this: Chuck writes about what he's interested in. His past books were about Rock N Roll, Reality TV, Billy Joel, Dixie Chicks and other things. They had an interesting take on items i liked and were very familiar with. These essays expanded my thinking on these topics. For example, i had never realized that the Dixie Chicks were that similar to 80's Van Halen, nor had i thought about how Billy Joels was a unique kind of cool different than almost all other rock stars (on a coolness range from white to black, he's an orange). Also, past essays celebrated both the subjects and the concepts. The current essays are about philosophical views on the world. He asks questions and makes statements about society such as,
* Why we like or hate people who fail
* Why we interact with popular advertising in the manner we do
* Why Chuck hates laugh tracks in TV shows and america's approach to humor
* Why NFL Football is great
* Why watching people (voyeurism) is exciting: (because there's a possibility for anything to happen)
These are the topics of this book and they are just nowhere close to as interesting as his previous topics. His book of interviews, IV, had a great interview with Val Kilmer. Nothing here touches that.
Reason number 2 for not liking this book is that there are lots of quotes in the book. For some reason my Kindle never shows who says these quotes. That makes them WAY less interesting and just frustrating. Don't read this book on a kindle.
My third reason is that I didn't like the prose. I think i know why this is. I've tracked down Kloserman on podcasts and now seen him speak twice. I know what he sounds like in person. So much so that i now hear his voice talking when i read his text. Do you know when you notice someone is saying the word "like" too much and all of the sudden you find yourself pay attention to them actually say the work "like" over and over instead of whatever it is they are trying to say? Well, this happens with me and Chuck. He uses the words "idiom' and italicizes his word "must" and i can hear his emphasis. It bothers me. Maybe i've just read too much of his stuff.
Finally, the last essay in the book is about his dislike of technology and I completely disagree with his opinion regarding the Internet. He has a part in the book where he criticizes anyone who publicly praises the internet because he argues they only like it because it now makes them relevant. He says,"the only people who insist the internet is wonderful are those who need it to give the life meaning." I can't begin to say how wrong that stance is.
At the end, Klosterman comes off as a guy who is just bitter that the world is changing. He reminds me of people who refuse to watch television, won't own cell phones and only listen to music on vinyl. Grow up.
Sorry..but this is "rubbish"
Rating:
Wow...this was bad. A friend turned me on to Fargo Rock City, which, for the most part, I enjoyed. So I tried this one and was very disappointed. Very self-indulgent and I feel that he tries to come across like he's some know-it-all intellectual...when actually he knows very little about about life in general. He chatters on in a manner in which he believes the narrow life he has lead could somehow relate to the rest of us on the planet...sorry Chuck...there's a billion of us out here who have experienced life and have beliefs far from you. All the best and until you come out with something better...I will stay far away from your writings...Dave in Mass.
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