INTERVIEW: Chuck Klosterman

Heartburn and Brain Freeze

Pop culture needs more people like Chuck Klosterman.

Klosterman seems to have that rarefied ability to make astute, observational stances for any number of subjects. From football plays to deconstructing the time he spent with Val Kilmer, he is possessed with an uncanny knack for indulging a wide variety of subjects and making them relevant, most of the time insightful, to a reader who may never have thought to ask the question that seems to drive Chuck: How can I say something original about this? He may not ask himself that but I would dare any reader of his new book, Eating the Dinosaur, to try and work through why he would spend as much time in the opening salvo in this new collection of short essays to talk about the nature of interviews when he himself is an interviewer and one who is interviewed. It’s all very meta but Klosterman makes the subject fascinating to delve into and it’s like this throughout the rest of the book. He’s possessed like an animator who flips between sketches to see how to slightly change the art that came before it; it’s a continuation of what he’s always done before but it does show forward movement in the way he strives to keep evolving as an artist.