Chuck Klosterman Books In Order

Downtown Owl

New York Times Bestselling Author Chuck Klosterman’s First Novel Somewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn’t there. Disco is over, but punk never happened. They don’t have cable. They don’t really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that’s not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it’s perfect. Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. She gets free booze and falls in love with a self loathing bison farmer who listens to Goats Head Soup. Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy three years. He consumes a lot of coffee, thinks about his dead wife, and understands the truth. They all know each other completely, except that they’ve never met. Like a colder, Reagan era version of The Last Picture Show fused with Friday Night Lights, Chuck Klosterman’s Downtown Owl is the unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where rural mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing. Loaded with detail and unified by a very real blizzard, it’s technically about certain people in a certain place at a certain time…
but it’s really about a problem. And the problem is this: What does it mean to be a normal person? And there is no answer. But in Downtown Owl, what matters more is how you ask the question.

Fargo Rock City

The year is 1983, and Chuck Klosterman just wants to rock. The only problem is, he’s in the fifth grade, his hair’s too short, his pants are too denim, and the town’s too small. The Huey Lewis and the News song blaring out of the radio isn’t helping, either. That’s when Chuck’s brother arrives home with a cassette from hell M tley Cr e’s Shout at the Devil. And so the twisted journey begins…
In this hilarious, young man growing up with a soundtrack tradition, Fargo Rock City chronicles Klosterman’s formative years and the history of rock through the lens of ’80s heavy metal. He knows what it’s like to slow dance to a Poison tune; to sleep inno cently under satanic symbols; to confess your lust for Lita Ford; to understand that Bon Jovi sounds best in a pickup; to shoot baskets as a member of the KISS Army; to get intellectual about Guns N’ Roses; and, yes, to have a nasty relationship with your first ATM card. With a voice like Ace Frehley’s guitar, Chuck hacks and riffs his way through this savvy, deliriously funny memoir of growing up as a shameless metalhead in Wyndmere, North Dakota. Against all odds, he parties like a rock star. Your story may be exactly the same or completely different, but if you grew up anywhere close to the 1980s, then your life has been touched by hair metal. Chuck Klosterman is here to explain why this matters.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

From the kid who brought you Fargo Rock City the first book in history to garner the praise of Stephen King, David Byrne, Donna Gaines, Sebastian Bach, Jonathan Lethem, and Rivers Cuomo comes Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs the first book in history to examine breakfast cereal, reality television, tribute bands, Internet po*rn, serial killers, and the Dixie Chicks. Countless writers and artists have spoken for a generation, but no one has done it quite like Chuck Klosterman with an exhaustive knowledge of popular culture and a seemingly effortless ability to spin brilliant prose out of unlikely subject matter. Whether deconstructing Saved by the Bell episodes or the artistic legacy of Billy Joel, the symbolic importance of The Empire Strikes Back or the Celtics/Lakers rivalry of the 1980s, Chuck will make you think, he’ll make you laugh, and he’ll drive you insane usually all at once. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is ostensibly about movies, sports, television, music, books, video games, and kittens…
but, really, it’s about us. All of us. As Klosterman realizes late at night, in the moment before he falls asleep, ‘In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever ‘in and of itself.”

Killing Yourself to Live

For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock ‘n’ roll all the way. Within the span of twenty one days, Chuck had three relationships end one by choice, one by chance, and one by exhaustion. He snorted cocaine in a graveyard. He walked a half mile through a bean field. A man in Dickinson, North Dakota, explained to him why we have fewer windmills than we used to. He listened to the KISS solo albums and the Rod Stewart box set. At one point, poisonous snakes became involved. The road is hard. From the Chelsea Hotel to the swampland where Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane went down to the site where Kurt Cobain blew his head off, Chuck explored every brand of rock star demise. He wanted to know why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing…
and what this means for the rest of us.

Chuck Klosterman IV

Chuck Klosterman IV Consists of Three Parts:

THINGS THAT ARE TRUE

Profiles And Trend Stories: Britney Spears, Radiohead, Billy Joel, Metallica, Val Kilmer, Bono, Wilco, The White Stripes, Steve Nash, Morrissey, Robert Plant All With New Introductions And Footnotes.

THINGS THAT MIGHT BE TRUE

Opinions And Theories On Everything From Monogamy To Pirates To Robots To Super People To Guilt And Of Course Advancement All With New Hypothetical Questions And Footnotes.

SOMETHING THAT ISN’T TRUE AT ALL

This Is New Fiction. There’s An Introduction, But No Footnotes. Well, There’s A Footnote In The Introduction, But None In The Story.

Eating the Dinosaur

Q: What is this book about? A: Well, that’s difficult to say. I haven t read it yet I ve just picked it up and casually glanced at the back cover. There clearly isn t a plot. I ve heard there s a lot of stuff about time travel in this book, and quite a bit about violence and Garth Brooks and why Germans don t laugh when they re inside grocery stores. Ralph Nader and Ralph Sampson play significant roles. I think there are several pages about Rear Window and college football and Mad Men and why Rivers Cuomo prefers having sex with Asian women. Supposedly there s a chapter outlining all the things the Unabomber was right about, but perhaps I m misinformed. Q: Is there a larger theme? A: Oh, something about reality. ‘What is reality,’ maybe? No, that s not it. Not exactly. I get the sense that most of the core questions dwell on the way media perception constructs a fake reality that ends up becoming more meaningful than whatever actually happened. Also, Lady Gaga. Q: Should I read this book? A: Probably. Do you see a clear relationship between the Branch Davidian disaster and the recording of Nirvana s In Utero? Does Barack Obama make you want to drink Pepsi? Does ABBA remind you of AC/DC? If so, you probably don t need to read this book. You probably wrote this book. But I suspect everybody else will totally love it, except for the ones who totally hate it.