An Exercise in Narcissism: Russell on Klosterman--4/4/07

This morning I picked up Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, a book of essays that's been chilling on my dresser for a couple months collecting dust. I sat at my desk and read the first 30 pages of it, the same thought persisting in my head from the first paragraph of the introduction: I could have written this book.

To some, at first glance, this could be considered a presumptuous, if not downright arrogant, statement. Who am I, of all people, to think I could possibly write a book that is "wickedly funny"1, or perhaps be considered a writer that is "an unparalleled chronicler of the Zeitgeist"2? But the truth of the matter is that the aforementioned review statements are about half right in their accuracy of description. SDACP is, in a word, "funny", and I guess it is also "wicked", but neither term is present within the work as related to one another. In the postmodern sense(Klosterman would love this), SDACP is subversive and "wicked", as they say, only in a particular context. My mother would think this book was hilarious. The implication in that not being that my mother's opinion of literature is of less merit than my own, but she possesses a mindset to which Klosterman unknowingly caters: that of a middle-aged somewhat "hip" lady, who wears shirts with a lot of sequins on them unironically and reads The New Yorker. It's a very specific context, but it does allow for the term "wicked" to be attributed to Klosterman's work. Pseudo-hipsters from Petoskey, MI might feel the same way as my mother, due to some inexplicable similarity of approach to literature.

Of the 90 pages of this book that I have read thus far(I'll probably finish it either in a fit of insomnia sometime tonight or in the midafternoon tomorrow before my voice lesson. Either way I will finish reading it in a mindset the polar opposite of my mother's or a Petoskey hipster's. I will be feeling bitter. Very bitter), Klosterman makes a total of three attempts at Eggersian self-awareness amid a sea of savvy and well-practiced diatribes or ulalations of pop culture. He even goes so far as to reference Eggers directly, quoting A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but the quotation is out of context from his attempts at replication. So the influence is clearly there, but not executed well. Poor Chuck. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

Which, to get back to my previous statement, is a reason why I could have written this book, an issue I never really addressed in this first paragraph as I got distracted dissecting reviews from noted publications which will never have a chance to misspell my name because no manuscript of mine will ever so much as come into contact with the scratchy maroon carpeting beneath the mail slot of their office door. I, too, as a child of the postmodern era, am loudly influenced by numerous writers before me, even notably Dave Eggers, and I, too, fail at emulating them in my own words. I could also have written this book because, I don't know if you kids have been paying attention or not, but I use way too many words. I use way to many words all the time, in an effort to intellectualize the vacuousness of my life and the way I live my life, and, more evident here, the way I write about my life. Klosterman does the same thing. And his aim is the same: the last lines of his introduction are: "In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever 'in and of itself.'" A statement I agree with. Although the quotation is not the best example of Klosterman's wordiness, it is applicable to what I am going to say next: Klosterman and I write about the same shit. We think about the same shit. We talk, incessantly, about the same shit. So although I may not have the incisive intellectual delivery Klosterman has, or the excellent timing(let's be honest, some of the things I write and say can sound downright autistic), we both care about the same things, are obsessed with ideas of unity and connection, are constantly on a quest for opportunities to connect the mundane with the gory or extravagant. I could have written this fucking book. I could have been a contender. I could have...been doing my goddamned homework instead of rambling on about a book I haven't even finished yet.

1. Quoth The Philadelphia Inquirer
2. Quoth the Philadelphia City Paper