Good Klosterman story in Esquire

I thought it was interesting that the mag had two pieces tied to sports media (this and Jones' piece on Chris Snow) in the same issue that contained the giant survey on sex. I don't know what that says, but it says something ...

 

The difference between Simmons and Klosterman is that Klosterman is actually a good writer. Their e-mail battles clearly show that. Count me among the guys who love Klosterman.

 

Well, I dislike Klosterman's work in the context that it craps up what's been my favorite magazine since I was 14. If his work were appearing in a venue I don't read -- Spin and espn.com, for instance -- no harm, no foul, as far as I'm concerned. But for me it's as if my favorite band got a new bass player or my favorite baseball team got a new third baseman; it's still my favorite band/team, but I don't have to like it. Klosterman brings down the collective intelligence of Esquire magazine the way A-Rod brings down the collective attitude of the Yankees. David Granger is George Steinbrenner as far as I'm concerned, and sometimes I wish he'd have left well enough alone. Since it's been my magazine longer than it's been his, in a sense.

I sent Granger a letter shortly after he took over, saying that he should change Esquire's motto from "Man At His Best" to "Man Falling Off A Barstool" or "Man Peeing On A Subway Platform." I believe I wrote this a day after seeing the headline that called Rudy Giuliani an "asshole." Now I've disliked Giuliani from the get-go and didn't even give him much of a pass during 9/11, but still. The magazine that I had long sought out as a place of sophistication and taste sometimes disappoints me. And Klosterman and Junod are merely the most glaring signs of the Apocolypse, the beginning of the end of intelligent life on Planet Esquire.

And, yes, I take the advice I've given others here about writers such as Rhoden: I Just Say No (Eighties Reference!) to Chuck Klosterman. I tried to like him, even tried to fight my way through one of his books two summers ago, and now I just don't read him. Unless he's been brought up as a topic here.

So yesterday I take a look, and what do I see? A piece that begins: "Jazz-Age drunkard F. Scott Fitzgerald." Now I happen to be reading a history of Spy magazine, which gave us the flippant label, such as "Bosomy Dirty-Book Writer." So the start to the piece is highly unoriginal, for one thing. Second, it's laughable to make a snide reference to a popular culture that has outlived its intended consumers when one has made a living writing about a culture that most likely won't.

A "cynical detachment to it, pretending you don't really care," is the way the normally spot-on Double Down describes it. Sorry. Whether we are talking writers or third basemen, I prefer someone who appears to give a shit.

 

This is the first time I've read a Klosterman piece, so someone please tell me: Does he always use $10 words when writing about $2 ideas?

Not that a broad vocabulary is a bad thing, just struck me as pretentious -- and it lost me after the first graf.

 

First time I read him as well and I thought the same thing. If you have the vocab, show it off I guess. I wish I had one to show off. ;D ;D ;D

 

Most of us do, otherwise we wouldn't be in this business. I just found that piece to be the wrong place and time to use it. Totally kills the flow.

 

That's fair, Friend. I think Double Down nails it, though - "CK writes in a style that younger people can relate to, I think. It's all about being obsessed with stuff, having to share your opinion about that stuff, but also having a cynical detachment to it, pretending you don't really care, and you definitely don't care if other people don't care about your opinion, because it's just bullshit anyway."

I think that's what might make him generationally divisive.

 

Here's the first graph for those not wanting to go back and look at it again:

Jazz-Age drunkard F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote many trenchant thoughts in the somber days before his 1940 death, but few remain more famous than this one: "There are no second acts in American lives." It is the kind of sentence that defines an ethos. Many less-talented writers have since echoed this sentiment in stories of their own, typically in the introductory paragraphs of celebrity profiles and inevitably as a means for pointing out how inaccurate Fitzgerald actually was. In reality, there are lots of second acts in American life; it's what happens to everybody who isn't a) hyperprecocious and b) prone to drinking oneself into the boneyard. It's not that second acts are nonexistent; they're usually just less interesting than the first. If your life's first act is "hospital administrator," your life's second act will typically be "veteran hospital administrator." Such a narrative arc lacks panache.

I immediately laughed at "Jazz-age drunkard" and then immediately groaned at the "No second acts" thing. But he got me right back with this: "Many less-talented writers have since echoed this sentiment in stories of their own, typically in the introductory paragraphs of celebrity profiles and inevitably as a means for pointing out how inaccurate Fitzgerald actually was ... "

Klosterman is obviously extremely self-aware in this situation and it's not like he didn't know what he was doing. A different spin on cliche might still be a cliche but I think it works when the author is self-aware, lets the reader know he's aware and is able to do it in an amusing way.

Even if you don't like him, you at least have to give the guy credit for the closing dig on Sean Salisbury.

 

http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/between_the_covers/01252_chuck_klosterman_own_worst_metaphor.html