Eating the Dinosaur

      Eating the Dinosaur (2009) is a collection of humorous, existential essays by Chuck Klosterman written through a pop culture paradigm. I, not having $25 to spend on the hard-cover at Barnes & Noble, chased it down through my local library. After having read it, I’m still not sure I would have bought the hard-cover. Maybe if I’d had the patience to wait for the paperback.
      I’ve read Chuck Klosterman before, reading his Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low-Culture Manifesto earlier this year. It’s his most well-known work, and sort of developed his reputation for spending entirely too much brainpower on disposable culture like Guns ‘N Roses, Saved by the Bell, The Real World, and the like. The stuff he was talking about wasn’t brand new then, and its relevancy hasn’t aged well. Nevertheless, I could tell the guy’s a thinker. His last essay about the Second Coming (spoiler: he’s not a believer, but he takes the subject seriously). That’s Klosterman’s strength really, being serious about a subject, but never quite being serious about himself and his certitude.
      I can see his growth as a writer six years later, and he’s often sharper in his analysis. I read several essays at least twice, and they stayed engaging. My favorites were “Football,” “ABBA 1, World 0,” and “Oh, the Guilt.”
      “Football” redefined something I thought I knew very well, which was kind of the point of the essay. Although I will say this: I was knowledgeable enough to know when he was used generalities, as he undoubtedly usually does to come to sweeping opinions. In other places, I wouldn’t see it. “ABBA 1, World 0” just made me laugh. I hate ABBA (my mother loves the Momma Mia soundtrack), but Klosterman explains, in winningly comical fashion, why it’s a force. “Oh, the Guilt,” makes a surprising but convincing connection between the psychological and aesthetic decline of Kurt Cobain and the Branch Davidian disaster in Waco.
      My least favorites are toward the end of the book, “It Will Shock You How Much It Never Happened” and “T is for True.” “Shock You,” an exploration of how advertising still wins hearts and minds now that, in modern times, its duplicity is intellectually transparent. Are you confused? I sure was. I’m not saying that because’s something esoteric, its less valuable. Klosterman always offers half-entertainment, half-philosophy. I just think the philosophy’s a little hazy here.
      The same goes for “T is for True,” which uses Weezer, Ralph Nader, and film direction Warner Herzog as counter-examples of the non-literal society we now live in. I disagree with what I believe is his conclusion: that when all is figurative, all will lose meaning. I mean, maybe he’s right, but I don’t believe we’re all completely non-literal.
      So, in conclusion: is this book worth your time? When reviewing books, I want to be more clear here, as the time investment is necessarily greater than with movies. My answer: probably only if you think he’s funny. As a sort of litmus test, I’ll share with you one of my biggest laughs of the book (of which there were many).
      The joke comes from a non-sequitar fictional interview about salesmenship. The interviewer asks, “Do you have any advice for aspiring salesmen?” The salesman replies, “People always say, ‘Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer,’ but that’s wrong. That’s how rapists think. You’ll waste a thousand afternoons if that’s your attitude. However, never take ‘maybe’ for an answer. Ninety perecent fo the time, ‘maybe’ means ‘probably.’ Just keep talking.”