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

This is the book that got me hooked on Chuck Klosterman. However, none of his other books could compare to this one in my opinion. As soon as I finished this book I went right back to the beginning and read it all over again! So interesting and well written.

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 the early part of the last decade…well, maybe the last, last decade…Chuck Klosterman was sent out on a vaguely defined assignment by his employer, Spin Magazine. The assignment was to explore some of rock music’s more or less notorious sites of rock star deaths. He gets in a rental car and just goes. And on the way he pontificates on many things…his lost loves, his current loves, what it means to love, why Nirvana is totally misremembered, why Kurt Cobain’s death bumped PJ from being the much hotter band at the time…but most pointedly, he tackles death and what it means for the popularity of your band…

And it goes on this wild ride which goes across the country. It’s a digressionary style, flowing from thought to thought and there is no telling when he will take a turn and talk about Kiss or Falco or the Grand Canyon or what it’s like to talk to someone from Los Angeles…I at first compared it to a really well-written zine. Now I’m thinking I want to write a zine like Chuck Klosterman writes a book…maybe I already do….

And I’m sorry if my description of this book is so bad, but I just wanted to say that I loved it so much and I have to agree with one of the assessments on the back cover which compares reading this with going on a road trip with a really, really interesting dude. I found myself laughing out loud and nodding along with many of his observations. And I was indeed very sad to see it end.

After reading his book about the 90’s, I really wanted to read another Klosterman book. After now reading this, I want to read it again.

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.

Smarmy hipster irony with some amusing anecdotes mixed in.

if I had read it in English I would've dropped it or rated 1-star

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

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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:

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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.

There's really nothing I could say about this book that would make it sound appealing to anyone other than thirtysomething music nerds. Klosterman – on assignment from Spin magazine – travels cross-country visiting some of music most infamous death sites. In the course of his travels he ruminates on life, love, and KISS. Klosterman's takes on pop culture are unfailingly funny, usually right on the mark, and more often than not reflect things I wish I had said myself. The whole book was like catnip to me – but then again, I'm a thirtysomething music nerd.

Yikes. On bikes.

I picked this up (well, added it to the queue on Hoopla) because I was a teen in the early 2000s, and I lived for Spin magazine. I know. I thought Chuck Klosterman was so cool. I enjoyed his appearances on various VH1 shows. I tore through Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs back in high school. I thought this might be a fun look back. I was not correct.

This book, which came out in 2005 but was written throughout most of 2003, is a time capsule. An unflattering time-capsule. The straight-white-guy privilege screams off of the page within the first few moments. There is so much casual misogyny; women are described only by appearance- and CONSTANTLY! How specific women look (or do not look) appealing is the basis of their merit in this world. I thought maybe he would settle into a bearable state, but he did not.

This book is supposed to be an odyssey of traveling to different rock-and-roll death sites throughout the US, but instead it is a guy complaining about getting friend-zoned (while stepping out on other previously designated relationships) while he makes dumb ultimatums with various women across the US. There is a chapter early on where he tells a girl that she has three weeks to choose if she loves him or not, despite her telling him multiple times that she is not interested (while he continues to proclaim his love). Also, if she decides that she does not love him (duh) he will then refuse to have any form of friendship with him. Euuugh. I want to put a picture of Klosterman in here, but I don’t want to shame anyone based on appearance…but if you are interested, go ahead and google this goon and decide for yourself as to how appropriate it is (it is not) for this guy to be demanding female attention. There is also a jaunt where he tells you not to cheat on people not because it is wrong, but because you won’t enjoy the dalliance OR your committed relationship.

Sink this man into the sea.

By the time he finally gets to a destination other than dropping one woman off and picking up another while talking about yet another, it is for a brief moment. We learn a bit of the Great White fire tragedy in RI, before he goes off on how great it is to do cocaine (though he’s not really a cocaine guy, you guys) and how he didn’t understand why he was asked to pick up a pregnancy test “how is that my responsibility?” when he had possibly gotten a friend pregnant- who he immediately stops talking about again to comment on the weight of his female research assistant. THIS GUY. There is NO woman in this book that he does not first make a comment on their appearance before telling us anything else. He has also expressed romantic and/or sexual interest in ALL BUT ONE- a girlfriend of a friend that he called “terrible and fat”. What a prince.

Please forgive all of the run-on-sentences, this man just made me SO ANGRY!

While he’s supposed to be off researching Duane Allman’s death he stops at a Cracker Barrell, where he is immediately in love with his 19 year old waitress. He proceeds to mansplain rock music to her. She does not blink or make any acknowledgement of his statements, which he comments on and takes to mean that she is listening and interested! She brings up Kafka and dreaming, and he is BLOWN AWAY that this GIRL at a CRACKER BARREL reads books and has ideas. He is condescending and vile. She brings him his order without making any more small talk, then he goes back to his hotel room and fantasizes about fucking her. Or one of the other women brought up in this book.

Since this book was written some years ago, we do get some oddly relevant “current events”. A certain lionized and recently deceased basketball player is on trial for rape, and Klosterman wonders why-despite some damning evidence- the accuser should be protected, as “maybe she’s just crazy and does this all the time”. Yikes. He goes off for a bit on the mental state of accusers, then decides that-despite his misogyny- the guy is guilty ONLY because he is a professional basketball player. I was cringing so hard throughout this section I thought my molars would crack.

He goes on to spend a great deal of time reminiscing about playing high school sports, getting high at 31 and creeping on high school kids, and attempting to break up women from their fiances- because if they get married, he “loses”.

The final chapter is particularly terrible, as he attempts to make a whole meta thing about his friends telling him NOT to write this book, not to continue to talk about women who want nothing to do with him, and not to compare himself to Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. Acknowledging these things but doing it any way makes him so hip and ironic.

Avoid this like the plague.

I’d like to give this Zero Stars, but “unrated” doesn’t have the zing. One Star it is.

Meh.

My favorite part was the bit at the end where the lady discouraged the author from writing the book.