Reads like a love-sick, 13-year-old's memoir. Still, funny in parts, but not as good as Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.

Mi aspettavo più o meno un saggio. Invece, no: cioè, sì, lo è, ma non propriamente.
Bel libro, più profondo di quanto possa sembrare, o forse sono io che...
Vabbè, la recensione completa è qui:
https://sentireascoltare.com/recensio...

I really like Klosterman's writing, but this made me hate the man. The ending is fascile and lazy. Read "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs" instead. For a better description of what is to hate about this book that serves also as a cautionary tale for would-be writers about what an audience most definitely ain't interested in reading about, read "Mike's" review here (he gives the book a star):

Mike rated it: 12/05/07
bookshelves: nonfiction
Read in April, 2005

As a longtime admirer of Chuck Klosterman’s writing on pop music and culture, it pains me to report that his latest book, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, is a dismal, shoddy piece of work. The premise is promising: Klosterman sets out on a cross-country road trip to visit all of the sites of rock ’n’ roll’s long, rich history of death. It seems a brilliant idea — Klosterman’s combination of irreverence and curiosity make him the perfect candidate to unseat the holy-pilgrimage seriousness (and pathos) of most writing on rock ’n’ roll tragedy.

It doesn’t take long for the project to turn sour. Here’s the problem: Klosterman is used to skating by on the wit and originality of his own personal world-view; in his last collection, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, his observations on MTV, pornography, video games, and so on, emerged from a perspective that led him to some surprising conclusions. There was a sense of play, of intellectual gamesmanship, that was fresh and engaging. In Killing Yourself, however, he’s become self-reflexive to the point where he can no longer discriminate between what is valuable and what is piffle; it’s all self-narrative. If he’s looking at something, he thinks his reaction to it — how it affects him — automatically matters simply because it’s him, Chuck Klosterman, looking at it. He has become too lazy and uninterested to make any serious effort at thinking or observing and analyzing what a specific site or incident might mean, and falls back on relaying what it means to him, at that moment.

The most devastating element here is the incomprehensible decision to let Klosterman devote much of the book to pseudo-Hornby writhing about the three (!) women with whom he’s currently involved (that is, either sleeping with or wanting to sleep with). Aside from being, at times, downright creepy, it’s both lazy and irrelevant: as smart and funny and interesting as Chuck Klosterman is, I couldn’t really give two shits about his love life. His self-absorption on this count goes so far as to include a chapter-long conversation between the three women and himself that takes place entirely in his head. What’s sad is that he seems to realize this; the book closes with an actual, real-world conversation between the author and one of his female colleagues at Spin, who urges him not to become “the female Elizabeth Wurtzel.” At this point, one tends to agree wholeheartedly with the criticism, and Klosterman’s only retort is to tell her that “her disdain can only be voiced if I do the opposite of what you suggest.” It’s pre-emptive critical damage control. It’s embarrassing.

It is unsettling to see how turning Klosterman loose on such a promising theme brings out his worst instincts as a writer, because his feature pieces for Spin are often brilliant. A perfect example was his reporting on the Rock Cruise, one of those only-in-America phenomena wherein 40-year-old couples pay to hear REO Speedwagon and Styx perform on a boat. It is hard to imagine a riper opportunity for superiority and ridicule, yet Klosterman never condescends to these people — working-class Midwesterners who are paying money to see over-the-hill versions of the two of the most reviled bands in rock history — and in the end lends both the bands and fans an odd kind of dignity. It is frustrating to know that the author is capable of such insights and then to slog through 235 pages of crap that wouldn’t make it onto a Weezer B-side. One can only hope Killing Yourself was just something he needed to get out of his system.

From THE L MAGAZINE, July 20 2005...less

This was a quick read and appealed to my music nerd side. Minus one star for being a typical douchey boyfriend type.

Yay. I'm FINALLY done.

Interesting how Klosterman holds _the exact same_ opinions that some men I personally know do. For example, that the most overrated musician is Jim Morrison because he doesn’t sing, he is just drunkenly yelling

I don't know what all the fuss is about...He's a good writer, entertaining, and even those people who absolute hated this work admit they couldn't put it down.

Ya, it's self-centered, nihilistic, and one-sided. Yes, he has horrendous taste in music. The writing is unconventional train-of-thought banter, sometimes rambling, and occasionally difficult to follow. Agreed.

For making his living as a music writer, he really does endorse some God-awful bands. But honestly, do you know anyone that can tell you about the entire history of KISS? I don't, and the fact that he can makes me realize that there are people out there that actually buy such crap... the world explained! Not every writer has to speak so honestly, and the fact that this is a memoir (or 85% of one, at least) should allow him to divulge and relate to his personal life.

You will not gain deep insights about death or love or rock n roll from this book. What it offers is simply a conversation, with Chuck and about him. It's like talking to one of your roadtrip buddies... honest, simple, and probably forgettable. But you still enjoy the ride.

Witty, charming, hilarious and offbeat. Chuck Klosterman feels like the real life personification of Rob from High Fidelity. Eager to read more of his work!

In general, I read to learn something new or for vindication. I read Klosterman for vindication: I feel smarter when a real-life writer puts out things that I have been thinking to myself. It makes me feel deep even if by rule this is shallow thinking.

Oh, I don't know, it was just OK. This was my first time reading Klosterman, who I've avoided for a very long time, for no real reason. It was exactly what I expected: A bunch of somewhat pedestrian observations about music and pop culture. It left me feeling confused and conflicted, somewhat frustrated, and yet I enjoyed reading it. He's very easy to read, almost too easy, whatever that means. I can't decide whether I don't like the writer, or I don't like the writing. I found myself arguing with Klosterman throughout the whole book, which in retrospect was probably the most enjoyable part of reading this. I can't even decide if I would read another book by him, which probably means that I will, but probably not for a long while.

Imagine a 200 page inside joke that you don’t understand. Imagine a whole book where the only purpose seems to be the author trying to show how cool he is by name dropping CDs. Imagine a book that should be about the interesting and potentially life changing cross country trip to see where musicians died but never actually manages to be either. The one thing I liked was the dinner scene with his family. For a moment it captured a truly Midwest experience. For that, 2-stars.

I am going to start this review by saying that Chuck's friend was right. He shouldn't have published this book. I picked it up (or, rather, was given) thinking that it would be an exploration of sites where dead rockers perished. Growing up in Seattle, I was bred with an intense love of Kurt Cobain. Growing up goth, I have an intense love of death. So this book would have been a LOT better in my mind if it had either a) Actually talked more about dead rock stars or b) Been a little clearer that this book had nothing to do with dead rock stars. I spend the whole 250 or so pages listening to a man complain because he's getting too much tail. True, he is very quotable at times and brings up some valid points about god, infidelity, and the like, but other than that, he just whined for thousands of miles about how his girlfriends were like KISS. Maybe worth a read if you're a liberal arts major who watches Wes Anderson movies and thinks Ed Hardy is the most amazing form of popular art the fashion world has ever seen. This book should be on "Stuff White People Like".

Book 20/150