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Chuck Klosterman In Winter (Okay, Mid-Autumn)
The rock critic and author talks with GEN about his new book of micro-fictions and the changing nature of cultural consumption
For a certain kind of young man in his 20s (and less young men in their 40s, like me) Chuck Klosterman functions as the closest thing we have to a literary oracle. He came out of nowhere — North Dakota, if you want to be precise — and turned his experiences as a Midwestern metal obsessive into his debut memoir Fargo Rock City. After moving to New York in 2002 at the height of the city’s rock revival, Klosterman established himself as a hyperverbal, endlessly inventive critic slash music celebrity profilist. His story on a slightly depressed Billy Joel, bumming around his mansion in the Hamptons, is very good. Klosterman is probably the only music critic to get his own Onion story — “Chuck Klosterman Corners Guy at Party Wearing Dio Shirt” — that parodies his tendency to apply inexhaustible intellectual firepower to the musical doings of long-haired men in spandex.
Along the way, though, Klosterman has evolved. He moved to Portland and is now married with two young children. He has written novels and books of essays on pop culture, helped launch the dearly departed website Grantland, penned the Ethicist column for the New York Times Magazine, and has gotten very into college football. Now he’s published his first collection of short stories, the trippy, mind-bending Raised in Captivity: Fictional Nonfiction. Dozens of quick pieces — rarely longer than a few pages — revolve around startling premises. A man flying first-class for the first time discovers what appears to be a live puma in the bathroom; a rising pop band wrestles with the fact that their hit single is beloved — for reasons no one can understand — by white supremacists; a father pushing his young child on the swing (and trying not to look at his phone while doing so) becomes embroiled in a sudden tragedy. These are stories that capture our mad world, turned up to 11.
I spoke to Klosterman from his home in Portland about his new book, the disappearing art of daydreaming, and why social media has turned him off journalism.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
