We all rely on gimmicks. We discover actions that please us—a particular manner of speaking with hand gestures, crossing a left leg over a right knee, incessantly quoting The Hangover—then copy and repeat those actions because they give us identifiable personalities. Gimmicks are an attempt to shape ourselves as we see fit. For writers, gimmicks are the lifeblood that enhances prose: Cormac McCarthy never uses quotation marks or commas, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously compared the use of exclamation points to “laughing at your own joke,” and Dan Brown writes at a fourth-grade reading level. But what happens after a gimmick is accepted and praised, when it becomes trite and predictable? Chuck Klosterman tackles the problem in his newest collection of essays, Eating the Dinosaur, out October 20 through Scribner Publishing.
Eating the Dinosaur is a strange book. Since publishing Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto in 2003, Klosterman can no longer quietly observe pop culture phenomena from the sidelines. He now writes for Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, Spin, and the A.V. Club, among other media outlets. His celebrity, in a postmodern clusterfuck, is a direct result of a lifetime talking about celebrities. It should be no surprise, then, that a significant chunk of Eating the Dinosaur reveals what Klosterman thinks about Klosterman as a cultural tastemaker. As an audience, we gain rare perspective into the life of a reporter who now sits on the other end of the microphone.
Klosterman’s gimmick is unique because it doesn’t garnish his work, it dictates it. By comparing seemingly unrelated topics—such as River Cuomo’s discography, Ralph Nader’s political philosophy, and Warner Herzog’s filmography—he makes incisive observations about culture at-large. He’s damn good at it most of the time, but Klosterman is at his best when discussing the concept of the real. What is the difference between watching reality television and spying through a neighbor’s window? Why was the Unabomber (sometimes) right? Why the hell do sitcoms use laugh tracks? And most importantly, why should we care about any of these things?
While some of Eating the Dinosaur’s comparisons fail—nobody will ever confuse Kurt Cobain with David Koresh, no matter how many copies of In Utero Nirvana sold or how many Branch Davidians died in Waco, Texas in 1993—Klosterman doesn’t make the mistake of mimicking his method to a fault. He offers just enough to make us wonder if we’ll be listening to ABBA decades from now.
