Since writing Fargo Rock City, a memoir of growing up as a heavy-metal fan in rural North Dakota, Chuck Klosterman has become one of the few pop-culture critics to become part of pop culture himself. His essay and reportage collections Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs; Killing Yourself To Live; and Chuck Klosterman IV (his latest) are popular among college students and rock-music devotees, and hated by some colleagues who find Klosterman glib and distastefully middle-of-the-road in his opinions. Klosterman recently spoke with The A.V. Club about his working habits, his reputation, and his growing disillusion with the art of criticism.
The A.V. Club: What's a typical working day like for you?
Chuck Klosterman: Well, I haven't really done much of anything today. I got up at 10:30, tried to do a little writing, but really didn't do anything. I went running, then I had to buy a Syd Barrett Pink Floyd record for something I'm working on, so I walked to the store and bought that. Then I came back here and I've been watching an NFL Films documentary on Lawrence Taylor. That's basically been my day. Not too strenuous.
AVC: Generally speaking, how much time do you spend writing, as opposed to listening, watching, experiencing and so on?
CK: It's confusing. I write pretty fast, probably faster than most people. But I might think about something for six hours, then write it in 20 minutes. So did I write for six hours and 20 minutes, or just 20 minutes? I never know how to answer the question. I used to write absolutely every day, except for days when I had to travel or something, but that's not the case now. There are days now where I don't do anything.
AVC: Are you much of a rewriter? Or do you bang it out and it's done, ready to go?
CK: If I'm doing an Esquire column, I'll write it on a Monday night, then go through it Tuesday afternoon. That's about it. If somebody asked for the first draft of something I'd written, it'd probably be pretty close to whatever got published. I get enjoyment out of writing, but I get absolutely no enjoyment out of rewriting, so I don't do much of it. The more you work on something, certainly, the better it gets. But there's also a pretty clear law of diminishing returns. It drives me crazy to do readings of my books, because if I read anything I've written in the past, I'd like to almost rewrite everything. If I could, I'd completely rewrite Fargo Rock City, and every sentence would be just slightly different. In all likelihood, most of them wouldn't be any better. Some of them would just be changed back to whatever form they used to be, before I second-guessed myself the first time.
AVC: When you read other people, do you unconsciously edit what you read, or just take it in?
CK: I sometimes find myself thinking, "I wish I could write like this." Or "I would have done this differently." I've been asked to do book reviews, but I don't do them. Whenever I read a book, if it's better than what I could do, I think it's fucking awesome, and if it's even a fraction not as good, I think it's terrible. I think anyone who's not as good a writer as me is absolutely a hack, and I think anybody who's a slightly better writer than me is brilliant. So of course that makes me a horrible critic when it comes to books, because I can't distance my own experience from what I'm doing.
AVC: When you're reading reviews of your work, do you generally find them fair, as someone who's done a lot of criticism yourself?
CK: The people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books, or write opinion pieces about what they think of Neil Young, or why they quit watching ER or whatever. And because of that, I think there's a lot of people who write about my books with the premise of, "Why this guy? Why not me?" The thing is, if I write about Van Halen, no one really thinks I'm writing this because, in truth, I would rather be a successful guitar player. And if I wrote about Marie Antoinette, no one thinks, "Well actually, he wishes he were Sofia Coppola." But when someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.
And it's kind of my own fault too, in the sense that I've used my own life as a literary device so much. I think people feel very comfortable reviewing the idea of me, as opposed to what I've actually written. I find that most of the time, when people write about one of my books, they're really just writing about what they think I may or may not represent, as sort of this abstract entity. Is that unfair? Not really. If I put myself in this position where I'm going to kind of weave elements of memoir into almost everything, well, I suppose that's going to happen.
AVC: A lot of people actively dislike you.
CK: I know, yeah, yeah.
AVC: Are you okay with that?
CK: I basically made a decision long before any of this happened that you can't allow yourself to be affected by positive or negative feedback. The problem a lot of writers have is that they really, really enjoy people saying, "You're brilliant." They let their self-perception be dictated by reader response. But if you're going to let other people make you feel good, you're going to end up feeling bad when they say the opposite. You've got to be a cultural stoic. Then you won't be devastated by people who respond negatively. Of course, the downside is that it sort of stops you from being able to enjoy people liking your work.
Anyway, the amount of response I get, in both a negative and a positive context, is completely related to the amount of books I sell, I think. It seems to have nothing to do with what I'm writing, but what degree of success I'm perceived to have. It's really weird, especially since I spent so much of my life covering people who are famous. It's interesting to actually have it happen to me on some level.
AVC: Your most recent book features a lot of celebrity profiles, some of which are pretty savage. When you go into these peoples' homes and hang out with them, do you feel any responsibility to convey the warm personal encounter you had?
CK: I feel like a lot of people involved with celebrity journalism have interesting ideas about the people they want to write about going into the interview. Then as soon as they actually sit down with that person, they basically ask the questions they think journalists are supposed to ask, and they start viewing themselves almost as a peer of the subject. Like they're going to become friends. That's why most celebrity journalism is so terrible.
I can tell when I've met a bad journalist when they say, "I've met Madonna," or "I know Marilyn Manson." Because I haven't met anyone I've ever interviewed. I've sat down in the position of an interviewer, and they've sat down in the position of an artist trying to promote a product. We have no relationship. I'm able to ask them questions I'd never be allowed to ask them if we were casual friends. It's a completely constructed kind of situation. I just try to ask questions that I'd be legitimately interested in if I were reading this article. What's the only thing in this day and age that people in the media can offer the average person? Access, essentially. We can say, "This is how it feels to be in the room with Taye Diggs."
But I'm surprised you think my interviews were that critical. If anything, I kind of worry that they're maybe, I don't know… I'd hate to think that anybody I did a piece on felt it was unfair. Because it's obviously very disenchanting to give your time to a journalist and then realize that they basically came into the piece with set ideas, and all they intended to do was talk to you long enough to validate their hypothesis. I'd like to think I haven't done that, but I'm sure people disagree. I think Billy Joel feels otherwise. I feel that was a pretty objective piece, but my sense of objectivity is subjective, because I'm talking about myself.
By the way, try not to make me sound too pretentious in this interview.
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