Downtown Owl

Downtown Owl is Chuck Klosterman's first fiction novel, so I'm assuming everything he wrote previously was more along the lines of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, and I'm ok with that. It was a fun book full of interesting pop culture analysis. Downtown Owl however reached some momentary highs but ends up altogether pretty forgettable aside from an interesting deus ex machina. Klosterman grew up in a very small town in North Dakota, and as such I can identify that at least two of his books take place in the most boring state- this and Fargo Rock City. While I feel like he does hold this rural upbringing close to his heart, he doesn't exactly paint a beautiful portrait of small town life in the fictional Owl, North Dakota. We witness three slightly intersecting stories in this small town in the 80's. First up is Mitch, the high school football team's third-string quarterback whose only real interest is being lazy; then Julia, the recent college grad from the big city who comes to town for a teaching job and slowly descends into alcoholism; finally Horace, the old widower with nothing to do but chat with his friends at the local coffeeshop. Each chapter switches focus between the three of them, and at times a fourth and fifth character get their own chapters. I have to wonder why Chuck focused a full third of the book on Mitch, as I found him to be at best boring and at worst completely unlikable, while Julia's questionable happiness and Horace's recounting of his life's stories were much more interesting and seemed to give off the small-town vibe I think Chuck was going for. Still though the book kind of plods along for a bit and the characters at times just feel like blank mouthpieces for Chuck, and then along comes a major disaster and the characters react in their different ways. Something tells me that a few months from now if asked to remember this novel I'll probably just remember that ending, and nothing from the previous ~230 pages. Oh well. A quick look at Klosterman's other books tells me that all of them are more along the lines of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, so I won't let this stop me from reading more of his stuff.