Sunday, January 04, 2009

Screw You, Chuck Klosterman

It is fitting that I read most of his book Downtown Owl while riding the stationary bike at the gym. Like the bike, the book goes nowhere.

Chuck Klosterman, whose essays I enjoy in Esquire magazine, creates a bunch of characters and does nothing with them.

Don't worry about me giving away the ending in which a monster blizzard kills all but one of the characters. It wasn't really a surprise. Klosterman had no way to go and the storm saves him having to contrive an ending from what was not really a story.

He did some OK character sketches but the backstories merely brought us to a town in North Dakota where all the characters basically do nothing, dream of little and aspire to less.

Glad I borrowed the book from the library. And the time I spent reading it wasn't totally wasted. I did get some cardio done. I only hope that the next time Chuck Klosterman wants write a novel for the exercise that no one is suckered into publishing it.

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