as you may have seen in a previous klosterman post, i used to love him. i use the word "used" because his last novel was horrible. i thought he would redeem himself with this new book but sadly this new collection of stories added more to my dislike then my love.
in his first book "sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs", he discussed a theory on growing up and mtv's "the real world". if you watched "the real world" there was always a season in which the cast was horrible and you stopped watching. klosterman's theory was that the cast wasn't bad (mtv had the same stereotypes in every season) but the viewer matured and outgrew the show. when i read that back in the day, i had a total oh! moment, because i realized that i had in fact outgrown "the real world". the season for me was "new york", i couldn't handle loudmouth coral, who in the past would have been one of my favorites. i did love melissa from miami. and then when vegas happened i was like what the hell is wrong with these people? but lets be honest, 16 year old me, would have loved trishelle.
i really hate to admit this, but i disliked this book. i guess dislike is the wrong book, i didn't offend me, and it wasn't horrible. there were many moments where i secretly laughed or admired klosterman for his random pop culture references, but i didn't love it like i normally love his works. his articles normally leave me with ah-ha moments were i ponder my life with a new perspesctive thanks to his article but this time i found myself disagreeing with him. his arguments were weak and i felt like he kept on stating his opinions as fact. for example, he wrote about kareem abdul-jabbar, being hated. i grew up in a family where they loved him so i kept on wondering what public hated him? i mean he was on an episode of "full house", would those producers have on a hated basketball star? i mean dennis rodman was never asked to be on. i felt klosterman constructed things to fit the scenario he needed, which i guess essayists do, but his felt far-fetch. i can admit this change of opinion can be that i this was the first time i disagreed with him whereas with his previous books i agreed with him so saw his perspective.
another thing that rubbed me the wrong way was his hatred of the yeah yeah yeahs. i love karen o! he wrote:
the yyys aren't faking anything, they are that brilliant!!! (this also could have put me in the mindset to hate this book out of loyalty to the yyys.)
but anyway; this book was about evil and pretty much klosterman's attempt to show that evil people can be good and good people can be evil and that he is neither evil or good just a person. it wasn't interesting the whole time just during parts of it. i enjoyed his articles on clinton and his sex scandal, o.j. simpson (i didn't know he wrote a book about how he couldn't have murdered nicole only to theoretically include how he would have killed her), n.w.a., and a vigilantes. but nothing completely enthralling, probably because there were a lot of sport references, i didn't get.
i will add i am sad my love him is fading, i am going to go back and read "sex, drugs and coco puffs" to remind myself why i love him. hmm, i should prolly take him off of my likes on my okcupid profile.
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