Killing Yourself to Live

huck Klosterman was not well liked by my contemporary American nonfiction classmates. At all. In fact, the first day of class, one of the Klosterman haters noticed he was on the syllabus and proclaimed her hatred of him to the entire class.

This reaction seemed odd to me after I finished Killing Yourself to Live, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Klosterman, in my mind, has this wonderfully penetrating and conversational voice. Reading his book felt like fun, which is not what reading always feels like. More than that, and unlike the fun of reading Meg Cabot novels (which I stopped doing many years ago, thank you), I felt like I actually learned something from the book.

Don’t worry, I’ll actually prove to you what I mean by that (because I hate when people make the statement that they like a book because they learned something from it, but never seem to be able to tell you what that thing is) but first I want to explain to you what this book is about. Chuck Klosterman is a rock and roll journalist, which is to say that he writes about music. He was a writer at Spin magazine for a while, and has written several books, the most popular of which is titled Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. Given my classmates negativity, and the fact that music journalism doesn’t particularly excite me, my first reaction to hearing that I had to read this book for class was to think, “ugh, the last thing I want to read right now is some hipster spouting about how every band is good until they’re popular, at which point they immediately suck.” No thank you.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Klosterman is nothing like this. In fact, if you’re looking to read a book that generally talks in depth about music and provides a bunch of music criticism, read something else. The premise of this book is that Klosterman goes on a road trip to a bunch of places across America where rock and roll stars died and writes about those places. The truth is, the book is as much about the people he meets, experiences he has and his own relationships and feelings than it is about the dead rock stars he mentions or the music he listens to. Sure, he does write a bit of music criticism, but it’s mostly a kind of creative criticism in which he relates the music to periods in his life, emotions he feels, and what the musicians themselves might have been thinking or doing when creating the music. This book is mostly just a road trip book that is sort of about music, sort of about America, and mostly about Klosterman and his ideas.

And, apparently, a bunch of people in my class really hated him for this. One girl who actually writes for a music magazine in town, denounced this as fake music criticism. Another girl called him a whiny white boy. A lot of people in the class seemed to agree with this sentiment, with one girl piping up and saying that, “I’m from south, and where I come from we would not call him a man for some of the things he says in here.”

I actually didn’t say anything in the class because I was kind of dumbfounded. First of all, I think that denying someone’s manliness because they write about relationships and emotions is a really terrible thing to do. Secondly, I really don’t understand how they were coming up with the whiny complaint. I mean, sure, Klosterman is going through some tough relationships that he talks about in this book, but that’s not being whiny, that’s being honest and being alive. I don’t think that he approaches any subject as a whiner, instead I think he approaches any subject, be it a relationship, an album, or a bizarre situation, pensively and honestly.

I particularly like his critique of rock and roll journalism halfway through the book. He begins by telling us that there are critics who actually believe that their opinion on an album is as true as, “the molecular structure of sulphur,” and that these people will inevitably argue that rock journalism is important. He, on the other hand, has always argued that rock journalism is unimportant, and comes to the conclusion that arguing about whether or not rock journalism is important is essentially arguing over the definition of important. He finishes by saying, “any opinion on the import of rock journalism is just a personal opinion on where the category of ‘essential things’ deserves to begin” (92). This is what I mean when I say I learned something from this book. I learned, from him, a way of thinking about the things I like, such as music, that will lead me into thinking more profound ideas about the nature of the way things work, the way humans work, the way our world works.

Perhaps, in all honesty, the reason I really like the book is that Klosterman reminds me of myself. He thinks a lot like I do. The above quotation is something I might have thought of myself, and it’s something that I certainly agree with. There is a moment during the book in which he has a hypothetical conversation, which he records, with all of the women he is in love with. This is also something I might do, and I enjoyed reading it.

But also, I think that he’s funny, which even some of the haters in my class admitted. He’s like a high David Sedaris at a rock concert, and I like that about him. The truth is, there’s nothing whiny and self-centered about writing about yourself and your life, because in many ways, that is the current definition of the American nonfiction voice. The majority of the most popular American nonfiction writers today are doing exactly what he does, and with a lot of success.

Though there are a lot of you out there who probably dislike Klosterman a lot too, and I’d love to hear your feedback on the book. As for me, I give this book an 8 | 10.