Thanks to Simon & Schuster, I recently got to meet the estimable Chuck Klosterman, via his recent novel, Killing Yourself To Live.
The genesis of Killing Yourself to Live was an assignment for Spin magazine, where he toils as a senior writer, as well as being a columnist for Esquire, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, authoring Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, a collection of musings on popular culture, and Rock City, Fargo.
Mr. Klosterman has a engaging, breezy narrative style, reminiscent of Cameron Crowe, and occasionally Chuck himself reminds one of nothing so much as a Cameron Crowe character come to life.
We set off with Mr. Klosterman behind the wheel, traveling across America in his rented Ford Taurus, liberally supplied with CDs, on a search for locations where music personalities have either met their end, or are interred. Among other spots, he visits Graceland, goes to the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil, finds the crash site of Buddy Holly's plane in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, spends a couple of days in West Warwick, RI, the scene of the Great White club tragedy.
Along the way, Chuck encounters a plethora of interesting characters, visits his family in North Dakota, hooks up (or tries to) with significant others, and entertains us with his internal diaglogue for 235 pages, with an additional 4 pages of Index.
In summation, I quote Mr. Klosterman, in a discussion with his editor at Spin, at journey's end.
"But you know what? After I write this story for Spin, I think I'm going to try and expand it into a book ... I met this amazingly daring rock girl who climbed up a roof in Minneapolis, and I talked with this interesting waitress in North Carolina who reads Kafka but lacks awareness of the Allman Brothers ,,, And it suddenly feels like I've been inside a car for 1,000 years worrying about women and thinking about death and playing KISS and Radiohead and all this other shit, and - for some reason - I keep writing all this stuff down and I don't know exactly why. But it all feels the same, you know? It seems like love, death and rock 'n' roll are the same experience."
His editor begs him to rethink the idea, telling him not to write a book about the women he is in love with.
Fortunately for us, he ignores her.