Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Diga lo que diga Lucy, ha sido justo el hecho de no hallarme ante un libro que alimente mi morbosidad, o me dote de una información, medianamente exhaustiva, sobre fama/música /muertes trágicas, lo que ha hecho que me sintiera plenamente a gusto con esta historia. Klosterman me habla de sí mismo, de su percepción de las cosas, me habla como un tipo viejo, cuando no lo es, pero todo encaja en su mente :amor/muerte/música, todo se mezcla y se apoya. Evidentemente no puede evitar, como muchos de nosotros (creo que todos tenemos una banda sonora que acompaña nuestra vida ), que los albumes que escucha y venera, pongan música a todo lo que vive, e incluso, dirijan parte de ella.
Una novela que es una road movie, íntima, sin tapujos, coloquial, humana.

¿Qué puedo decir? Quizás me estoy haciendo mayor para el rock'n'roll, o quizás es que me cuesta leer un libro sobre las angustias existenciales (sexuales) de alguien de la generación X (mi generación), utilizando como excusa un viaje por carretera visitando lugares donde murieron músicos (que el autor no quiere hacer, como repite una y otra vez).

Lo que cuenta sobre música no tiene gran relevancia para alguien que esté mínimamente interesado sobre la historia del rock -o que quiera consultar la wikipedia-, tampoco profundiza más allá en las historias de los fans o de los propios músicos aparte de cuatro tópicos simplones. Sus historias de frustración sexual o sobre con quién debe acostarse (que no enamorarse), son más bien propias de un adolescente sin muchas luces. Su teoría sobre la inconsciente banda sonora del 11-S por Radiohead parece su forma de meter el asunto en el libro de alguna manera (y es un peñazo).

Terminé el libro por pura fuerza de voluntar y esperando que al menos el final justificara el dinero y tiempo invertido... ¡fue un error! El final es pésimo, con otro de los desvarios del autor con una compañera de la revista donde trabaja.

Aburrido, egocéntrico, misógino... y encima se habla muy superficialmente ¡de música! Una pena porque la editorial (en España "Es Pop ediciones") es más que recomendable y ha publicado otros excelentes ensayos. Yo no sé qué hacer con él, darlo a la biblioteca sería darle la posibilidad de aburrir a otros lectores y conservarlo hace que ocupe lugar y peso en las próximas mudanzas.

PD: lo vendí en wallapop, no sentí mucho empaquetarlo y verlo marchar.

Chuck Klosterman makes you think, probably none of which is significant thought but it's good exercise, fast and entertaining.

I got a comment on an article once that said "Fuck Chuck Klostermand and his bullshit intellectualism, Cook is the new crown prince of music journalism" and who am I to disagree with SeductiveBarry's astute assessment? Ever since then, though, I've had a weird rivalry with Chuck Klosterman that, much like the romances exacted and protracted in this book, is completely one sided with myself as the hopeless loser, so outclassed that my opponent is likely unaware there is even a contest going on.

I read this book in spurts over the last 6 months, basically a chapter or two every time I found myself at the bookstore for an extended period of time which has allowed me to slowly digest what is wrong with it:
1) For a critic, he has rather pedestrian tastes in music. His insight is honest and dead-on, but his subject matter generally seems undeserving of the pedestal he erects.
2) This book is near wholesale rip-off of Ross McElwee's rather singular film Sherman's March, which came out 20 years before this book. Both follow through on a preposterous, dubious quest (Klosterman visits the sites of rock star deaths, McElwee retraces Sherman's march to Atlanta) only to use it as a vehicle for visiting old girlfriends and then sitting in hotel rooms reminiscing about them. But that is excusable, in that anyone with a soul and any creative talent wants to do their own Sherman's March after seeing it. McElwee is more insightful, but Klosterman is funnier and ultimately more human in the end.

What's right about it is more important:
1) He is funny as hell, up there with David Sedaris and John Waters as the funniest modern writers talking about their art/selves.
2) This book makes me want to write more, and write more about writing, and then write more about that unafraid of how meta one can go before one finally implodes. I wanted to tear through the ending so I could write this. but, most of all
3) He can project his heart with pinpoint accuracy on the reader. You fall in love with these woman that you feel you fail to know very well in the same way he fails to know them. He can make a Beckett scene out of being stoned in a Montana hotel laundromat and classical literature out of Def Lepperd .
4) He's a good enough writer that he made me write this in pathetic mimicry of the tone of the book.

n  

Somewhere, at some point, somehow, somebody decided that death equals credibility.

n
I read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs when it first came out, and even though that has lingered in my mind for a decade now as a funny and interesting skewering of pop culture, I didn't pick up another Chuck Klosterman book until now; and I think it would have been better if I had let him remain in my memory as a funny and interesting guy. Finishing Killing Yourself to Live, I can only report that this book felt forced and pointless, and even if Klosterman went on to write the next big thing, I don't know if I feel like giving him another chance. Maybe in another ten years.

The concept: Klosterman's editor at Spin magazine decides that he should write something epic, and she sends him on a road trip to the sites of famous Rock and Roll deaths, despite the fact that he hates driving, has contempt for sightseeing, and doesn't care very much about these particular dead rockers. The article that resulted from the trip was reprinted in August of 2015 (as part of Spin's 30th anniversary year), and Klosterman felt the need to add an introduction:

This is the piece that (eventually) became the skeletal structure for Killing Yourself to Live, a book some people love and many people hate. The principal reason certain readers dislike that book is that they feel betrayed — they go into the process assuming it’s going to be about the locations where rock musicians died, and that’s not the point. Killing Yourself to Live is a memoir about all the spaces in between, and the relationship between the past and the present and the imagined. Thematically, it’s totally different from this original story, which is only about the places I visited (as opposed to how I got there).

So, what actually happens in the book is that Klosterman drives to the various sites of crashes, ODs, and suicides, overtly searches for something metaphorical to tie these sites to higher truths, and arranges the road trip so that he can visit his family back in Minnesota and spend time with the three great loves of his life, scattered as they are across the country. He is so focused on these three women that he includes a longish imagined scene in which he is having an argument with all three of them in the car; each of them explaining why he's incapable of an authentic relationship; Klosterman himself getting the last word; of course. (And I suppose this is what he means by the book being about “the relationship between the past and the present and the imagined”?) In the end, he realises that these women explain his abiding love for KISS as they (and another, older, woman to whom he lost his virginity in college) represent the founding members of the “discometal” band, and he's able to extend the metaphor by explaining how every other woman he's had a relationship with is just like one of the other, temporary, members of KISS; including a one night stand that can be perfectly represented by Anton Fig (of Letterman's Late Show band) who sat in on one KISS track. Does that seem deep or even interesting to the average reader? Because that's the climax of his thought process here.

As a rock critic, Klosterman has expectedly strong opinions on music that he's not afraid to state as fact (Elvis only had one good song; Rod Stewart had the greatest male rock voice of all times; Eric Clapton was incredibly boring and a mediocre guitar player), and while he annoyed me with every reference to obscure bands, there were a few pearls in the muck (and I don't regret Googling “Camel Walk” by Southern Culture On The Skids; that's pure fun.) And I know that the subtitle of this book is “85% of a True Story”, but whether the following actually happened or not, it felt too cutesy to have included:

n  

Flipping back and forth on the car radio between an “80s Retro Weekend” and an uber-conventional classic-rock station, I hear the following three songs in sequence: “Mr. Roboto”, “Jumpin' Jack Flash”, and a popular ballad from the defunct hair-metal band Extreme. Well, that settles it: Styx and Stones may break my bones but “More Than Words” will never hurt me.

n
And I know my final complaint makes me look totally square – as I am, after all – but I could have done without all the drug use in this book. After explaining that the office of Spin magazine divides itself into the cocaine camp and the marijuana camp (Klosterman is in the latter and thinks of himself as superior for it), he's happy to do a few bumps of coke off his car key when it's offered to him at the site of the Great White tragedy; despite explaining that pot is nonaddictive, Klosterman outlines how to get a decent (and desperately wanted) high off of the “shake” in the bottom of his baggy with a car lighter and a plastic straw from the hotel lounge. And the following scene (a recounting of his only bad drug experience) reads like the medical report from a Rock and Roll overdose:

n  

Having never taken Dexedrine before, I expected big things; unfortunately nothing happened. And since I was drinking beer quite heavily at this party, I decided to take two Ritalins as well. After I swallowed the Ritalin, the host of the party began serving some kind of elaborate rum punch, of which I consumed several glasses. Around midnight, a woman named Sharon showed up, and she told me she had a great deal of cocaine in her purse; not surprisingly, a few of us went into the bathroom and did rails of coke every twenty minutes for the next three hours. I also switched over to brandy and ginger ale, ostensibly so I'd be better at arguing. At 3:00 AM, someone decided we all needed to chill out, so everyone who was still partying stood around the kitchen and smoked four bowls of dope.

n
This was only a “bad” experience because the coke left him depressed, the pot wouldn't let him fall asleep, and he was so dehydrated from the booze that his legs cramped up and he couldn't even cry about it. Yes, yes, I'm square, but a chapter like this doesn't make me say, “Right on dude, you so know how to party!”, it makes me say, “What a loser this guy is, mixing chemicals like DuPont.” I don't tend toward judging people who use recreational drugs (we're not talking about heroin or meth here), and I especially don't tend to judge people who write about drug use in books, but something about the way that Klosterman casually wrote about his frequent attempts to get high (while on the road, alone) seemed like he was daring the reader to react negatively; and I did.

In the end, I can understand why even Klosterman himself acknowledges that this is “a book some people love and many people hate”; and it's not because it's not the book I expected it to be: when he removed the point of it being about visiting the sites of rock deaths, Klosterman wasn't left with much of a point at all.

It took me a while to get through this book, but I found it entertaining and lol-ed at parts. It was unlike my usual type of book, not your typical autobiography/biography either. I loved the premise and the different sites the author visited were cool. The author is very blunt and doesn’t hesitate to give his opinion, which I find refreshing!

A pesar de las cuatro estrellas me esperaba más de la premisa de este libro. La cosa se queda en poco rock y mucho romance. Le salva que el tipo sabe escribir lo que hace muy llevadero el viaje (se lee de corrido) pero sus aventuras amorosas me sobran... todas. Sí, es como "Alta fidelidad" pero esta ya se sabía que era una novela sin embargo lo de Chuck se supone que era un ensayo sobre muertos del rock.

De todas maneras cualquier libro de esta editorial (Espop) se puede comprar a ciegas porque nunca defrauda.

Dead people are simply dead. Everything else is human construction; everything else has nothing to do with the individual who died and everything to do with the people who are left behind

Near the end of the book I couldn't help comparing the way Klosterman writes to a slightly more mature version of Hornby's High Fidelity, so I'm glad Chuck actually decided to mention the resemblance in the last chapter in the form of a conversation.

Hornby spoke to the adolescent (almost) 30 year-old in me the same way Klosterman does in this book. However, here Klosterman does include a lot more contemplation of death (that's what the book is about, people dying), as well as a more mature (and as such, resigned and depressed) view of love and relationships.

Just loved it. Great piece of work.

I know shit about music, though.