Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

Chuck Klosterman IV is a bit of a grab-bag of essays and other short works by the author, and it would make little sense to discuss the book as a whole when its parts are so clearly different. So let me break it down into the three sub-sections that Chuck decided on, starting off with "Things That Are True." This section consisted entirely of articles Chuck wrote on pop culture for different magazines and newspapers over the years with a definite slant towards music. Unlike the essays found in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck isn't after 'big picture' questions, but his blunt style is still shown off in full. For instance, he's not writing about what U2's success says about society, but rather interviewing Bono with the sole intent of determining whether the guy's full of shit. So yeah, if you're interested in just how weird Radiohead is (only somewhat) or why Jeff Tweedy won't reform Uncle Tupelo (the songs are too hard to play!), these make for some decent reads.

The second section, "Things That Might Be True" consists more of opinion pieces Chuck wrote for the magazine Spin and probably some others. These were also decent reads but unfortunately none stood out as being truly memorable to me other than an essay on the importance of being liked, and taking it to a global scale. Chuck makes a pretty decent point about how pathetic it is to 'apologize' for your country's actions (specifically the re-election of George W. Bush) and how it makes no sense to hold yourself up to ridiculous standards you wouldn't expect of someone else just to be liked. I guess this essay stood out to me because it was the only one that seemed to take a small idea and draw some big conclusions from it; the rest of the essays were about robots and whether the term 'guilty pleasure' is a misnomer, shit like that. So yeah, mixed bag.

The third section is "Something That Isn't True At All", the beginning of a novel Chuck never finished. Unfortunately this just felt like a condensed version of Downtown Owl. An obvious stand-in for Chuck works at a newspaper and is bored by the town he's living in, eventually finding himself in a disaster. It didn't really go anywhere, but I guess that's why Chuck never really went back to finish it. On the whole that's basically what you're getting with Chuck Klosterman IV- a collection of lots of Chuck's older writing now in book form. Results may vary.