Chuck Klosterman: Pop-Culture Therapist 

 

After interviewing the notoriously neurotic Chuck Klosterman, I was struck by, yes, how neurotic he seems (although, he really stutters and stammers about the same amount as I do), but also, how not ridiculous he is.  What I was impressed most with was the fluidity and sharpness of his ability to dissect and articulate just about any pop culture conundrum.  It may seem to some that for someone as brilliant as Klosterman, his talents lie in the apparently shallow end of the intellectual pool, but the most obvious thing that occurred to me during our discussion is that I’ve never encountered anyone who can really do what he does, or even could do what he does. 

We also discussed his first fully-fictional novel, Downtown Owl, which comes out this month.  He definitely brings some pop-culture poignancy to the story, but this really never takes away from the literary quality of the work.  It more serves to ground it.  And, in the end he does what he’s really best at, creating thoughtful work that is both at one point esoteric and at another point, completely lacking in pretension.  That he is able to maintain this very fine balance, is perhaps what makes him so notable.   
 
 

Aimee DeLong: I was thinking the best thing to talk about would be really random shit. 

Chuck Klosterman: OK.  

What do you think about the current state of irony?  Do you think it’s overly-created? 

I think it confuses people, because irony has sort of become normative comedy for people our age.  So, I think the only way they can understand is kind of through the prism of irony, and that’s why they have a very, very difficult time understanding literal messages.  It’s now assumed that anytime anyone consumes any type of media that’s not just straight news…anytime they’re consuming anything that’s written through the perspective of someone else’s voice, there’s just this assumption that there must be an ironic distance to it.   

Do you find that as a writer… I don’t know if you consider writing non-fiction art… I mean, it’s definitely artistic, but do you feel like as an artist it’s important for you to stay above context?  But, yet you write about pop culture, so it’s really relevant.  How do you maintain an artistic detachment from being overly immersed in this specific context, yet constantly writing about it?  

I don’t know if the work I do can really even be consumed outside of context.  I know what you’re saying…that you could write something in a vacuum and someone could read it with no reference to anything in there and still understand the ideas.  Well, of course one hopes that happens.  This is sort of true for almost all non-fiction…that it’s a more reactive art form.  Fiction is more of a creative thing where you’re starting with nothing and you have to create it.  If there’s a barstool in the book I have to build the barstool in my mind in order to write about it.  So, it’s a very different thing.  It’s a good question, but it’s sort of hard to answer.  I always think about how context changes.  I mean, writing about The Strokes now is different than writing about The Strokes in 2002.  So, if one writes about that band then, the context means one thing.  Today the context means something else.  But, a lot of times that can actually make the information more interesting.  You can view the ideas not just as information, but a reflection of whatever was going on in the world at that time.  When you write do you think of context?  Do you think to yourself, I need this to be non-contextual? 

I was definitely trained to think that your work should have ontological value, but it seems very difficult to do.  You just can’t be conscious of the effect of it when you’re writing.  I think language is part of the reason why you have to be somewhat immersed in your cultural context…I mean, you’re using language.  It’s very limiting.   

If someone’s classically trained they almost have an adversarial relationship with modernity.  There’s this idea that if you write, especially a novel, with classical constructs, it almost inherently can’t be popular in the present day.  It’s supposed to have a resonance that’s not going to even be recognized until you’re dead or whatever, you know?  I don’t write anything with the idea that it’s going to outlive me.  I mean, of course, it would be great if it did.  Everybody would love that, but that is some self-confidence that becomes almost about arrogance, and I think it’s probably detrimental to the writing. 

Yeah, I think so.  It’s something that I’m not aware of when I’m writing, but later I would maybe think about.  But, yeah, I don’t think you can be aware of stuff like that when you’re writing.   

Also, I think that people are more aware of it in other writers than in themselves.  I can read somebody else’s work and say that the problem with this is that it’s just too tied to contemporary culture and is going to seem dated or whatever, but when I’m doing my own writing I don’t think like that.  I mean, I almost think the opposite.  Sometimes I think to myself that I like the idea that in twenty-five or fifty years that if this book still does exist that people are going to feel like they’re getting a real present tense example of how people actually were thinking at that time.  It almost becomes like an artifact then, you know, because we always look at history retrospectively and change its meaning.  When people talk about the nineteen-eighties now or they write about the seventies or the sixties, they sort of change their memory, and they change the history of what happened to fit their present tense idea.  So, those books that I wrote, those non-fiction books that just came out around the turn of the century or whatever…I like the fact that if they do exist in the future they will be a pretty real time experience of what it was like to think about being engaged in culture.  

I want to talk to you about being from the Midwest 

Where are you from? 

I’m from Iowa and Kansas.  It seems like you’re very interested in kind of…new archetypes.  Do you think that when you’re in the Midwest that living out your life according to some pop culture archetype is even more intensified, because you’re not really anywhere that you see the world sort of happening in front of you on a larger scale? 

That’s an interesting question.  What you’re talking about…there is certainly a difference between North Dakota or Iowa than New York or Boston in the sense that in the Midwest the primary means of culture is mass culture.  And, I think that people in the Midwest look at mass consumer culture less negatively than say a writer on the East Coast who always wants to position himself or herself as kind of opposed to that.  Of course, that’s not to say that there aren’t subcultures in the Midwest.  Of course there are.  I think that a large reason that I’m interested in things that are popular is that I didn’t see it as a negative thing.  I didn’t even know anybody who viewed it that negatively till I got to college.   

Yeah, that’s interesting.  I can kind of remember not relating to things that way…not having this other idea that it was bad if I liked certain things…like even if I look at a Vogue on the train I feel like I have to conceal it because that’s somehow shallow or something.   

Well, I mean that is totally a product of specifically New York.  I mean, that’s not even how it is in Los Angeles.  New York…and really beyond New York...it’s sort of the lower half of Manhattan and Brooklyn, where there’s this idea that you have to constantly be aware of…that what you’re consuming is sort of positioning yourself in culture.  People in New York are constantly worried about heir position in the popular culture, which is the idea that if you don’t live in New York…I mean, that not only seems confusing, but absurd.  I think that I’ve changed a lot as a consumer from living in New York, because I’m more wary of the meaning of my consumerism to other people.   

But, not necessarily to you, specifically?   

It still seems idiotic to me.  I just am aware of it because it seems so normal among everybody else.  I mean, you just know that in New York there’s a meaning to liking Weezer.  It’s not really true in other places.  And even though I think that’s ridiculous I know that it’s true.  

When you moved to New York did you feel like you were home or did you feel it was surreal, because people are always asking me if New York is so big that I can’t handle it or something. 

I had a little bit of an in-between stop between North Dakota and New York, in Ohio.  I lived in Akron Ohio for four years, which is certainly more like North Dakota than New York, but at the same time it’s close to Cleveland, and I started writing books there, and I would come to New York because of that.  It wasn’t that jarring.  People always said that it would take about six months to get used to living here.  It actually took me about six days.  I must say that I felt less weird living in New York than in any other place I ever lived, because I found other people who were exactly like me.  So, I was actually not that freaked out when I came to New York.  I was confused, because it’s harder to live there.  

Logistically?  

Yeah.  I was much more comfortable in New York right when I moved there, probably than I am now.   

I had the exact same experience.  I felt, when I was ten that the Midwest was a surreal place and I wasn’t supposed to be there.  As soon as I came to New York, I was like, “yeah, this kind of makes sense”…but almost more because it doesn’t make sense, because it’s a crazy place.  You mentioned sports.  What are your reasons for being so into sports?   

Sometimes I say that sports was the first thing I was ever interested in.  That’s not really true.  I guess dinosaurs were the first things I was really interested in, but then sports.  When I was nine and ten years old, I would get a book about the Super Bowl, and I would read it fourteen times.  I mean, I don’t know if all kids do this, but when I liked a book or a magazine I would just read it over and over and over again.  I would essentially memorize it.  And, I played sports.  I played in high school. You know, and to this day it really is the only thing I feel like I really understand.  I mean, the only thing in my life that I think I understand and can kind of look at and have expert knowledge in both a literal and a figurative understanding are these constructed games.   

What would you say is the figurative understanding of what’s going on with sports?  I mean, sports journalism...it’s very sentimental.  You think it would be this highly macho thing, but whenever…like if I watch a sports documentary or like a sports biography, it always has this very sentimental…   

Sports writers are the most reactionary, conservative people in the world…maybe not politically, but absolutely as it applies to sports.  When there’s a steroids scandal or a gambling scandal nobody is more self righteous about it than sports writers.  It’s really the only thing in the culture where there is this understood belief that it’s going to appeal to adults, the elderly and to, like, a six year old.  So, it has this different sort of meaning.  It’s one of the only unifying elements there is.  When I was growing up, the main relationship I had with my dad was through watching sports and talking about sports.  When I hear the opening music for Monday Night Football, I feel nostalgic and emotional for reasons that have nothing to do with the game.  But, when I talk about the figurative understanding…the world is a confusing place.  Relationships are confusing.  Writing is confusing.  Working is confusing.  You don’t really understand what people’s motives are.  There are no rules.  But, when I watch a football game, I do understand, figuratively, what’s really happening.  Like, if one team is dominating, I know they’re dominating.  I know the clues, the signs and all the symbols.  So, I feel like I’m watching something I can understand.  I don’t suddenly think to myself…I think Kobe Bryant is better than this guy coming off the bench for the Jazz, but I don’t really know.  That never happens.  It’s not like in life, where you think something is obviously true or inherently true, but it’s completely false.  Sports isn’t like that.  You can quantify it.   

Could you make any comparison between sports journalism and rock journalism? 
 

I guess there are not a lot of people who have done both.  They’re different.  In some ways they’re similar.  They’re both incredibly insular cultures.  Sports writing tends to be more conservative in that there’s a greater emphasis placed on having paid your dues, having put your time in, having proved to the other sports writers that you’re a valid voice.  Music is different in the sense that now, the most important part of it is your fluency with technology and your ability to network with other writers.  Rock writing has changed so much in ten years that it almost seems alien to me.  There again, though…is that one is completely abstract, and one is more objective.  I could say to you right now that the best band in the world is a three-piece band in Jacksonville, Florida.  No one has ever heard of them. They’re unsigned…don’t even have a MySpace page, but they’re the best sort of psychedelic blues metal band that’s ever existed, better than Zeppelin or Cream.  They’re the best band ever.  You’d probably be skeptical, but you might think that may be.  But, if I said to you…“Do you know who the best quarterback in the world is?  He works for a car wash in Seattle.  He didn’t even play high school football, but he’s the best quarterback.”  No one would believe that.  There are certain things in sports that we can understand.  So, there’s more of an agreed upon language in sports writing than rock writing, whereas in rock writing the best way to succeed is to be contrary with every move that you make.    

What do you think about the whole Facebook/MySpace phenomenon…people presenting themselves on this page?  Then you’re collecting friends and you want people to see you as this composite. 

Well, I think it’s both predictable and problematic.  It became this thing that no one even thought was odd…to aspire to sort of be a known figure.  So, the technology gives people the ability to create their own personality, and then to sort of edit how they look and who interacts with them.  The good part of this is…say there was a really uncomfortable fifteen year-old girl in the seventies.  She couldn’t decide how she was viewed.  She could try to change the way she appeared or the way she acted, but her peers would see through that.  There was no escaping that.  She’s a certain kind of person, and unless she’s incredibly creative or incredibly intelligent, she’s basically sort of stuck as this person.  That doesn’t happen anymore.  If there’s a fifteen year-old person who’s uncomfortable in life, they can create a cyber life for themselves that is their own meaning…their own making.  They can decide who their friends are.  And, they can sort of live this life that maybe makes them feel better about themselves.  But, of course, that these people start viewing themselves the way that authentic celebrities do is a problem. They start viewing their actions as having a meaning outside of themselves because there’s an audience giving them feedback.  And, because this technology is so heavily weighted toward youth and to people who are still trying to figure out who they are, I do think it makes people vaguely depressed and alienated about things that they don’t even fully understand.  There’s no upside to that kind of fame, if you want to call it fame.  It’s one thing for Angelina Jolie to feel weird about being watched, and to feel as though her private life no longer exists…that people use her as a kind of conversational currency.  She’s also very wealthy and she can sort of have a dream life in a sense, or someone’s dream.  She can have some influence on people with the work she does and with the charity she does.  She sort of paid for giving up the benefits of her privacy.  When people are doing that on Facebook, uh, they’re ultimately giving up with no benefit the same kind of privacy.  The only benefit they’re getting is the validation, someone telling them that they exist. 

Do you think there’s something profound about trying to have a one-dimensional personality?  I don’t mean that there’s something profound in its meaning…like why would someone want to do that?  But, is there something really useful about it…I don’t know if that makes sense?  I know I’ve spent a lot of time trying to be as one-dimensional as possible.  

Well, OK.  That’s interesting.  What do you mean? When you say one-dimensional, what dimension?   

Yeah, that’s a good question. 

Here’s what I assume you mean…you’ve tried to have a personality that’s some sort of a caricature.  And, what is the caricature?    

I don’t know.  It could be anything.  It changes.  It’s just whatever’s in my head at the time.  It seems like it will make things simpler, but it doesn’t really.  One time I was obsessed with having a sailboat, and for a month I rolled my pants up to this really awkward length because I operated out of this reality that I was like a sail-boater.  I mean, I do that all the time.  It really bothers me if I go to a restaurant and order different things.  I want to be the type of person who always orders the same thing, but I just can’t, because I get bored.   

OK, now what is your motive for that?  Is your motive that you want to be a person that self-identifies with one thing, or is your motive that you want to be recognized and perceived as someone who does one thing?  That’s a huge difference. 

Yeah, it is…um…well, I think that it’s actually more for my benefit, although I know that sounds really unbelievable.  But, it’s just mostly because it simplifies things for me kind of, but it doesn’t ever work. 

Oh, well I can understand that, although what’s interesting about that is that you would prefer a simpler life.   

Right. 

Most people would prefer a more complex life.  Anytime anyone talks about personality they’re kind of talking about solipsism and narcissism.  We kind of use those words interchangeably, but they’re not the same.  Solipsism is more like you’re obsessed with one’s self.  Narcissism is you’re obsessed with how you are perceived by other people.  Like in the narcissistic fable…the guy, the protagonist, wasn’t obsessed with himself.  He was obsessed with his image in the water; and, a lot of these extensions on the Internet that you’re talking about, like with Facebook or MySpace…that’s a narcissistic urge.  It’s not necessarily who am I, or what am I to me?  It’s almost kind of…in a way self-absorption makes a degree of sense.  Every person should be focused on making him or herself better.  But, narcissism is different.  The only thing that matters is how your manifestation of that is perceived by somebody else.  Now, what you’re talking about doesn’t seem narcissistic.  It seems solipsistic…that you kind of want to be the type of person who owns a sailboat.  So, you construct a fantasy where you already do.   

Right.  Do you thinks there’s anything profound about that?  Maybe I’m hoping that there is.  

Profound?  Uh, I don’t know.  It doesn’t surprise me.  You’re a writer.     

OK.  Now, I’m thinking about how I can edit out later in the interview that I said that I wanted to be a sail-boater (Laughing). 

No, you have to leave it in (Laughing). 

I will.  I will.  I just kind of wish I hadn’t mentioned it now.  OK, this is kind of specific… in Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs when you were talking about comparing bands to sitcoms and solo artists to spin-off series…I was wondering if you had any ideas for what would compare to A Different World…because I’m obsessed with Dwayne Wayne.  

OK.  Well, A Different World was a spin off of The Cosby Show, and The Cosby Show probably would have been the mainstreaming of black culture for white audiences.  So, uh, well, I guess The Commodores.  So, A Different World would be Lionel Richie’s solo career.   

Holy shit, that’s good.  Thank you.  OK let’s talk about your novel.  

OK 

Um…it’s really good.  I mean, in my opinion it’s really good.   

Oh.  Thanks. 

I’m really interested in the Midwest and the way that you wrote about it.  It seems like the Midwest could be like the new Southern Gothic.  And, it’s kind of like Winesburg, Ohio, in the sense that the characters also kind of seem like grotesques, but I don’t know what their motivation is.  Like Horace, I don’t know what his motivation was. 

I know what you’re sort of saying and actually it’s a good question, because one of the things…OK, I feel like that period of time…the early part of the nineteen-eighties is going to be sort of a lost period, because when people look back to the last half of the twentieth century, I have a feeling that they’re going to think about how the country changed in the sixties, after sort of having this false world in the fifties.  The seventies, especially, the later half, and the eighties are going to kind of be this skipped over period before we get to technology, because there was this big speed up in technology.  Everybody had a cell phone, and the Internet was everywhere and cable was everywhere.  So, I wanted to write about this period that I feel is going to kind of be skipped over by cultural historians.  And, of course I just never read a book about the place I was from.  I never read a book about rural North Dakota in my life.  So, I wanted to do that as well.  But, the motive thing…what are these character’s motives?  What I was sort of interested in is the idea that I don’t feel like the average person is conscious of their motives.  I think a guy who is in his seventies, in the early nineteen-eighties in North Dakota, a working class person, who worked on farms and had this relatively simple life…his concerns were elsewhere.  They were not in the self-reflective.  The idea of motive would be totally lost to him.  I feel that if this person existed and was asked what his motive for being alive was, I think it would have seemed idiotic.  Now, as a writer when I create this character I get to generate what his motive might be.  I wanted characters in this book that were thinking about their lives, but not in a literary or artistic way. They were thinking about their lives in a practical way.  And, even though they may be driven by abstractions, they’re not conscious of those.  I wanted to make them realistic, and I don’t know if it’s realistic to have a person who’s so self-aware of what they’re doing.   

I think this would be kind of an asinine thing to suggest, but I just want to know what you would say if someone suggested it.  There’s a lot of narration.  And, the sections are kind of designated to be about or through one particular person at a time, but usually what it’s really about is how that particular person views other people around him or her… or, it could even just be about another person entirely.   It’s hard to talk about your book without talking about the ending, so I’m trying to talk around it, but I really did think that the way you wrote it, the style and every thing mirrored the action of the book.  I thought it was good.  I thought it was accurate, and that it achieved its purpose.  If someone suggested, however…and it’s almost cliché, but if someone suggested that you were telling instead of showing how would you respond? 

Uh…maybe.  It doesn’t bother me.  I mean, I think that coming from a journalistic perspective, I am interested in that.  I’m interested in the idea of starting with something and moving backward.  Of course, I understand that traditionally…that the traditional thing is that you learn information through the action of the character, and, of course, that’s great writing.  I’m not criticizing that.  I don’t worry about those traditional rules when I write.  The way I think of it is that I want to get ideas across, and do it in the most effective way.   Sometimes, that is presenting an action, not placing it in a context and not explaining anything…you know, letting the reader sort of decide what it means.  Sometimes to get the idea across I will have a character actively say it, or as the narrator, I will actually position what is going on.  There is some direct narration, but if that’s someone’s criticism of it, they’re probably not going to like the book.   

Do you think it’s kind of becoming unrealistic for writing to happen that way anymore…the whole everything should be explained through action…because there’s so much distance between everyone now that…I mean, the way you presented the characters and how they see themselves through other people more than anything else.  They really didn’t know the other people but they still had this concept of everyone…that seems more realistic to me.  If you can think of writers as all having this unconscious collective thing or whatever…do you think it’s going to turn into this thing where most writing is almost more like story telling to a certain extent, because people don’t really learn that much about each other from just speaking out loud…not in average situations anyway.   

Like, do I think this is going to become a trend in literature?  

Uh, yeah, I guess you could say that.  I mean, though, more organically…they won’t be able to express themselves literarily anymore because they have less of a point of reference for it, because there’s so much distance between all of us that it’s kind of hard to understand people in the way people used to gain insight about each other.   

Hmm…I don’t know.  I’m not sure if I agree or disagree with that.  I will say that in some ways it’s almost easier to just show some action without saying what it means and let people kind of just guess.  When I say it’s easier…I mean that I think there are less universals and less commonalities in life.  It’s probably going to be more rare for people to look at an action and be able to come to some consensus about what it means.   
 
 

Chuck Klosterman is a critically acclaimed rock and sports journalist.  He is also the author of several books, including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, and his new novel, Downtown Owl: A Novel.   

Aimee Delong writes fiction. Her work has appeared in such places as Hotel St. George Press, Cherry Bleeds, and Lit Chaos. Check out her website at www.aimeedelong.com. It will change the way you think about pseudo-professional marginally published writer-websites.