New Releases by Chuck Klosterman

Kaleidoscopic culture critic Chuck Klosterman rewrites the history of reality, built off a question that has never been asked or (in all likelihood) even considered: What if Phillip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle was actually about rock music? The Velvet Underground & Nico was released in the spring of 1967. For decades, the cliche has been that it initially only sold 10,000 copies, though everyone who bought it supposedly started a band. It is the definition of a record whose influence outstrips its mass popularity. But what if the opposite had transpired? What if instead of selling 10,000 copies, it had sold…10 million copies? What if it had sold 100 million copies? What would have happened if the Velvet Underground had inexplicably become the biggest group in the history of popular music, and everything about the rest of the 20th century was merely a footnote to that phenomenon? Whatever answer you imagine is an infinitesimal splinter, at least when compared to Rock*: A Mainstream Alternative History of Alternative Mainstream Music. In what’s guaranteed to be the most polarizing work of his already polarizing career, Chuck Klosterman has generated a fictitious universe where almost everything is different, except for the songs. The songs remain the same—the difference is how they are heard and what they now mean. Lou Reed is a messiah, reversing the monoculture and dictating the outcome of presidential elections. The Beatles disappear, though they never break up. The Rolling Stones collapse while Led Zeppelin goes bankrupt. Punk rock fills stadiums, undermined only by insouciant radicals like Boston and Van Halen. Disco is destroyed. Hip-hop becomes country. The 1980s are defined by disposable pop icons (like G.G. Allin) and Christian revivalists (like Madonna). Lenny Kravitz lets love rule, Oasis collides with a wonderwall, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are somehow blamed on the Strokes. “I have always felt,” Greil Marcus once remarked, “that when criticism really hits its stride, when it’s at its highest pitch, it’s fiction.” Marcus wasn’t talking about Rock* when he said that, but he accidentally describes it perfectly. Presented like The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll if written by Jorge Luis Borges and Patrick Bateman, it intermixes satiric contrarianism and Spinal Tap-ish absurdity with darker theories about what makes art popular, how success delineates perception, and the inescapable consensus of subjective history. It is not, nor does it claim to be, the greatest book ever written about rock and roll. But it’s probably the last one that ever needs to be written.

Idealmente incastonati tra il crollo del Muro di Berlino e la caduta delle Torri Gemelle, gli anni Novanta hanno innescato una trasformazione profonda nel nostro modo di stare al mondo, una rivoluzione i cui effetti ancora stentiamo a comprendere. L’ascesa di internet era inesorabile, ma silenziosa, fatto salvo il ronzio inconfondibile della connessione 56k. La politica americana aveva il sapore di un valzer tra la dinastia Bush e Clinton, ma alcuni personaggi ed eventi avrebbero dirottato per sempre il corso della Storia. La colonna sonora aveva il sentore di una ribellione, tra l’inquietudine grunge di «Smells Like Teen Spirit» e il rap di protesta afroamericano – entrambi spenti da un sottofondo di spari che sarebbero rimasti per sempre impressi nella memoria collettiva. I film si noleggiavano in videocassetta e a farla da padrone era l’occhio del regista, tra la violenza compiaciuta di «Pulp Fiction» e la megalomania di «Titanic». E naturalmente la televisione regnava incontrastata: in una sera qualunque degli anni Novanta, un episodio di «Friends» o «Seinfeld» radunava più spettatori del finale del «Trono di Spade». Ma a nessuno sembrava un evento epocale: se ti perdevi la messa in onda, te la perdevi e basta. Fu l’ultima èra aggrappata all’idea di un vero mainstream dominante prima che tutto iniziasse a frantumarsi, per la gioia di alcuni e la disperazione di altri. Chuck Klosterman, tra i più grandi critici culturali contemporanei, firma una guida indispensabile, divertente e geniale, per capire davvero i «mitici anni Novanta». Un decennio che rievochiamo con crescente nostalgia, un’epoca lontana e felice, ma non così lontana (e forse non così felice) come sembra.

PRÓLOGO DE JAVIER AZNAR Klosterman, el mejor cronista cultural de la generación X, nos sumerge en una década que, bajo su aire de intrascendencia, explica y define mejor que ninguna otra las obsesiones del presente. Entre la caída del Muro de Berlín y el atentado de las Torres Gemelas hubo un periodo en la historia que quienes lo vivieron creen recordar bien, porque no parece quedar tan lejos, y creen recordar sin nostalgia, porque no parece que pasara gran cosa. Para esas personas —los boomers y los integrantes de la Generación X—, los noventa son poco más que la época en la que Bill Clinton tuvo una aventura con una becaria e internet empezó a cambiar nuestras vidas. Pero del inicio de esa década han pasado más de treinta años, muchos de los fenómenos que la protagonizaron se han desdibujado en el recuerdo y apenas somos conscientes del giro copernicano que significó todo lo ocurrido en esos años. Tampoco de la evolución cultural que supone haber pasado de la apatía que reinaba en los noventa a una era como la actual, en la que las redes sociales han convertido a las personas en marcas. Este es un libro sobre el éxito de Nirvana mientras quien vendía discos era Garth Brooks, sobre los incomprensibles dieciocho meses que Michael Jordan dedicó a intentar triunfar en el béisbol, sobre Friends, David Foster Wallace y Titanic, y sobre por qué Matrix es la más perfecta metáfora sobre la televisión, y no sobre internet. Este es un libro sobre una década que nos hizo lo que somos, aunque, hasta ahora, no supiéramos por qué. «Chuck Klosterman es el mejor narrador del tiempo en que vivimos. Porque él mira hacia donde todos miramos, pero ve cosas distintas. Fue uno de los primeros escritores en entender el significado moderno de la cultura pop y se ha erigido como uno de los ensayistas más influyentes del siglo xxi por su destreza para diseccionar la condición humana en un mundo que cambia cada minuto, porque ha contribuido a borrar la frontera entre la alta y la baja cultura, entre la epifanía y la banalidad, y porque ha logrado explorar el consumo colectivo de cultura pop y extraer lecturas filosóficas.» Juan Sanguino «Un viaje fascinante por el carril de la memoria.» Time «Una mirada sutil y literaria a una generación tan dinámica como insegura.» The Washington Post «De la mano de uno de los grandes cronistas de la cultura pop surge este fascinante paseo por los años crepusculares del siglo xx.» Esquire

An instant New York Times bestseller! From the bestselling author of But What if We’re Wrong, a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history. It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was. The 90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job. Beyond epiphenomena like "Cop Killer" and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a 90’s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it. In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, “The video for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany” make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.

La terapeuta Vick viene contattata da un uomo misterioso che sostiene di essere alle prese con un problema decisamente singolare. Y_, come decide di chiamarlo, afferma di essere uno scienziato e aver sottratto una tecnologia di occultamento da un progetto governativo abbandonato: in questo modo riesce a rendersi quasi invisibile. L''uomo sostiene di utilizzare questa capacità esclusivamente per osservare, di nascosto, persone scelte a caso alle prese con la propria vita quotidiana, preferibilmente quando sono sole e maggiormente vulnerabili. Vick si lascia incuriosire sempre di più dal paziente, interrogandosi sulle reali motivazioni che lo spingono a muoversi e sulla veridicità delle sue parole, fino a diventare letteralmente ossessionata dal caso. Man mano che i racconti di Y_ si fanno più bizzarri e inquietanti, la terapeuta viene trascinata in un vortice che la porta a mettere e a rischio al carriera, il matrimonio e la sua stessa identità.

From the king of pop philosophy and renowned author of the runaway hit card game HYPERtheticals comes more wild conversation starters featuring a range of unique new prompts. This new card deck, infused with Klosterman''s trademark wit, asks you to take a stand on matters of morality, social taboo, and personal identity. - Each card features an outlandish scenario that begins with "Imagine a person," bound to prompt lively discussion in any environment: Imagine a person who is your genetic clone, a perfect replica of you raised by different people in a different place. It comes to your attention that your clone is trying to destroy you, and you have three options: go into hiding, find your clone and attempt to reason with it, or attempt to destroy your clone before it destroys you. What would you do? - The cards range in theme, allowing you to select the perfect cards for any audience, whether friends, coworkers, or family. - Each card is color-coded to distinguish between kid-friendly and adult-only topics, as well as to mark questions that might provoke the deepest discussion, making for a truly versatile and revealing experience.

A um só tempo lúcido, tenso e divertido, o romance O homem visível, de Chuck Klosterman, trata de diversos temas da modernidade – como a importância da cultura, a influência da mídia, o voyeurismo e a contradição existente em ser uma pessoa considerada "normal". Quando publicado nos Estados Unidos fez enorme sucesso, sendo aclamado pela crítica e pelos leitores. A terapeuta Victoria Vick é contatada por um homem que acredita viver uma situação ímpar e exige que suas sessões se deem por telefone. Ela aceita, mas, com o avançar das conversas, ele se revela um homem enigmático, o que a faz se convencer de que ele está delirando. Y____, como ela decide chamá-lo, é um homem inteligente, bem-educado e culto, e alega ser um cientista que vem utilizando uma tecnologia de camuflagem. Ele afirma que é impossível para qualquer pessoa vê-lo enquanto usa o traje que desenvolveu, mas foge do termo "invisibilidade". Mais do que um romance sobre um homem com uma possível habilidade especial, O homem visível analisa dois lados de uma mesma história: as atitudes das pessoas quando não estão sendo vistas, e a conduta ética de quem está observando sem ser visto. Klosterman criou um paralelismo entre o voyeurismo e desejo ardente de assistir o sofrimento alheio, ambos presentes tanto no livro quanto na sociedade. No fim, o livro fará o leitor refletir: é possível alguém se tornar invisível aos olhos de uma sociedade que busca cada vez mais descobrir, neste mundo midiático e repleto de informação, o que se passa na vida alheia? "Rico em detalhes e com um humor seco, O homem visível alia um autor inteligente a uma escrita única." (Los Angeles Times) "Um tour de force que explora a intimidade e o voyeurismo. Extremamente original, uma mistura vibrante de thriller, ficção científica e alta literatura." (Publishers Weekly) "Klosterman é capaz de expressar os sentimentos mais profundos. Tem uma escrita interessante, alegre e, ao mesmo tempo, capaz de provocar reflexões." (Entertainment Weekly)

Chuck Klosterman nasce nel Minnesota, cresce in una fattoria del North Dakota, diventa giornalista e nel 2002 compie il grande salto: si trasferisce a New York. Lì, a quasi trent''anni, la sua carriera di critico musicale decolla, scrive per riviste famose e raggiunge lo status di autorevole esperto di cultura pop. Spin gli affida progetti speciali come un reportage sui morti illustri del rock''n''roll. Questa la realtà dei fatti. Poi c''è questo libro, che è realtà vera all''85%: il frutto di una rielaborazione personale della lezione di David Foster Wallace, e di un cammino originale di scrittore. In Morire per sopravvivere Chuck viaggia per ventuno giorni e diecimila chilometri dentro l''America delle grandi metropoli e dentro l''America profonda. Visita il Chelsea Hotel e i campi di grano, Seattle e le paludi: cerca Duane Allman, Sid Vicious e John Lennon, cerca i Lynyrd Skynyrd e Kurt Cobain. Ma il suo non è un lugubre pellegrinaggio, una descrizione morbosa dei luoghi dove sono morte le rockstar. Perché le tombe gli interessano molto meno delle storie e dei miti. Questo romanzo dal vero e sulla strada narra così la leggenda della musica rock, e come questa leggenda viva e continui a rinnovarsi da decenni, in ogni ragazzino pronto a giurare sui Led Zeppelin o i Nirvana; ma Morire per sopravvivere ci racconta anche la storia di Chuck: la sua infanzia rurale, le sue teorie geniali sui Kiss e soprattutto i suoi amori complicati che irrompono ovunque e si rifiutano di lasciare incontaminato il lavoro del critico musicale.

„Jako většina lidí, i já s oblibou považuji sebe sama za skeptika. Přesto do značné míry nepochybuji o gravitaci. Moje důvěra v koncept gravitace je bezvýhradná a naprostá; jsem přesvědčen, že bude platný i v den mého odchodu z tohoto světa (a že moje mrtvé tělo, pokud by ho někdo vyhodil z okna, bude padat se zrychlením 9,8 m/s2). A nejspíš se pletu. Možná ne zcela, ale částečně. Možná ne dnes, ale nakonec tomu tak bude,“ říká autor knihy Chuck Klosterman. Mimořádně vtipně a čtivě napsaná kniha nám na mnoha příkladech ukazuje, jak jepičí život mají „věčné pravdy“ a jak často vycházíme při svých úvahách z předpokladů, které jsou od začátku chybné. Všichni, které baví přemýšlet, tady najdou spoustu potravy pro svůj mozek, a ještě se u toho dobře pobaví.

New York Times-bestselling author and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman sorts through the past decade and how we got to now. Chuck Klosterman has created an incomparable body of work in books, magazines, newspapers, and on the Web. His writing spans the realms of culture and sports, while also addressing interpersonal issues, social quandaries, and ethical boundaries. Klosterman has written nine previous books, helped found and establish Grantland, served as the New York Times Magazine Ethicist, worked on film and television productions, and contributed profiles and essays to outlets such as GQ, Esquire, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and The Guardian. Chuck Klosterman''s tenth book (aka Chuck Klosterman X) collects his most intriguing of those pieces, accompanied by fresh introductions and new footnotes throughout. Klosterman presents many of the articles in their original form, featuring previously unpublished passages and digressions. Subjects include Breaking Bad, Lou Reed, zombies, KISS, Jimmy Page, Stephen Malkmus, steroids, Mountain Dew, Chinese Democracy, The Beatles, Jonathan Franzen, Taylor Swift, Tim Tebow, Kobe Bryant, Usain Bolt, Eddie Van Halen, Charlie Brown, the Cleveland Browns, and many more cultural figures and pop phenomena. This is a tour of the past decade from one of the sharpest and most prolific observers of our unusual times.

But What If We''re Wrong? visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who''ll perceive it as the distant past. Chuck Klosterman asks questions that are profound in their simplicity: How certain are we about our understanding of gravity? How certain are we about our understanding of time? What will be the defining memory of rock music, five hundred years from today? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? How seriously should we view the content of television? Are all sports destined for extinction? Is it possible that the greatest artist of our era is currently unknown (or--weirder still--widely known, but entirely disrespected)? Is it possible that we "overrate" democracy? And perhaps most disturbing, is it possible that we''ve reached the end of knowledge? Kinetically slingshotting through a broad spectrum of objective and subjective problems, But What If We''re Wrong? is built on interviews with a variety of creative thinkers--George Saunders, David Byrne, Jonathan Lethem, Kathryn Schulz, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Junot Díaz, Amanda Petrusich, Ryan Adams, Nick Bostrom, Dan Carlin, and Richard Linklater, among others--interwoven with the type of high-wire humor and nontraditional analysis only Klosterman would dare to attempt. It''s a seemingly impossible achievement: a book about the things we cannot know, explained as if we did. It''s about how we live now, once "now" has become "then."

Qualcuno si ricorda di Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard e Judas Priest? C’è stato un tempo in cui cotonarsi i capelli, truccarsi, fare sesso sfrenato con groupie e pornostar, sbronzarsi di Jack Daniel’s tenendo gli amplificatori a manetta era la cosa più “cool”, spregiudicata e anticonformista che il mercato discografico chiedesse di fare a una rockstar. Ma farlo sotto i riflettori del Sunset Strip a Los Angeles era una cosa, rifarsi all’immaginario di quella way of life a Fargo, nella sperduta provincia americana, un’altra. Nella desolazione rurale del Midwest, un ragazzino sogna un’altra vita pur non sapendo bene quale, finché un fatidico giorno del 1983 suo fratello maggiore torna a casa con Shout at the Devil dei Crüe. Prima di farsi travolgere dall’età adulta, il ragazzo si scatenerà al ritmo liberatorio dei Guns N’ Roses, danzerà lenti pruriginosi sulle note dei Poison scoprendo il sesso, si invaghirà perdutamente di Lita Ford, dormirà beato sotto l’egida di un minaccioso pentacolo satanico e intavolerà ridicole conversazioni intellettuali su Slash e compagni, in una sarabanda comica e irresistibile che svela l’ingenuità ribelle ma verace di una generazione che ha trovato nel metal un’ancora di salvezza dalla mediocrità quotidiana. Fargo Rock City non è soltanto un ironico memoriale di un’epoca chiassosa, kitsch ed effimera (con tanto di esilaranti e inediti retroscena). Ma anche una personalissima critica sociale e culturale di band, fan e album “impagabili”, che si erge a orgogliosa difesa e apologia della dignità artistica e del significato intrinseco di quel “glam rock effeminato, sessista e superficiale” in cui migliaia di adolescenti inquieti si sono riconosciuti.

The year is 1983, and Chuck Klosterman just wants to rock. But he''s got problems. For one, he''s in the fifth grade. For another, he lives in rural North Dakota. Worst of all, his parents aren''t exactly down with the long hairstyle which rocking requires. Luckily, his brother saves the day when he brings home a bit of manna from metal heaven, SHOUT AT THE DEVIL, Motley Crue''s seminal paean to hair-band excess. And so Klosterman''s twisted odyssey begins, a journey spent worshipping at the heavy metal altar of Poison, Lita Ford and Guns N'' Roses. In the hilarious, young-man-growing-up-with-a-soundtrack-tradition, FARGO ROCK CITY chronicles Klosterman''s formative years through the lens of heavy metal, the irony-deficient genre that, for better or worse, dominated the pop charts throughout the 1980s. For readers of Dave Eggers, Lester Bangs, and Nick Hornby, Klosterman delivers all the goods: from his first dance (with a girl) and his eye-opening trip to Mandan with the debate team; to his list of ''essential'' albums; and his thoughtful analysis of the similarities between Guns ''n'' Roses'' ''Lies'' and the gospels of the New Testament.

Full of stories that are smart, bold, brazen, and unabashed, this fully illustrated debut issue features a candid interview with Klosterman and new work from Kevin Wilson, Padgett Powell, Curtis Dawkins, Sara Lippmann, Nick Bertelson, Jon Morgan Davies, Ryan Glenn Smith, Jared Yates Sexton, Tom Bonfiglio, Patrick Parr, Ethel Rohan, Dan Micklethwaite, and Joshua Kleinberg.

Originally collected in Eating the Dinosaur and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Sports, this essay is about football.

From Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Chuck Klosterman IV; and Eating the Dinosaur, these essays are now available in this ebook collection for fans of Klosterman’s writing on pop music.

From Fargo Rock City; Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Chuck Klosterman IV; and Eating the Dinosaur, these essays are now available in this ebook collection for fans of Klosterman’s writing on rock music.

Originally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Film and Television, this essay is about The Wonder Years.

Pop culture guru Chuck Klosterman''s assembly of his best work from Esquire, GQ, Spin, The New York Times Magazine, and newpapers around the country--including such hard-to-find treasures as the ground-breaking 1996 piece about his chicken McNuggets experiment, his uncensored Esquire profile of Brittany Spears, and a previously unpublished short-story--all recontextualized in the bestselling author''s unique voice with new intros, outros, segues, and masterful footnotes.

Originally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Pop, this essay is about Radiohead.

Originally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Living and Society, this essay is about nemeses.

Originally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Sports, this essay is about the Olympics.

Originally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Film and Television, this essay is about television advertising.

From Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Chuck Klosterman IV; and Eating the Dinosaur, these essays are now available in this ebook collection for fans of Klosterman’s writing on media and culture.

From Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Chuck Klosterman IV; and Eating the Dinosaur, these essays are now available in this ebook collection for fans of Klosterman’s writing on film and television.

Originally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Sports, this essay is about Barry Bonds.

From Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Chuck Klosterman IV; and Eating the Dinosaur, these essays are now available in this ebook collection for fans of Klosterman’s writing on living and society.

Originally collected in Eating the Dinosaur and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Living and Society, this essay is about voyeurism.

Originally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Media and Culture, this essay is about pirates.

Originally collected in Chuck Klosterman IV and now available both as a stand-alone essay and in the ebook collection Chuck Klosterman on Living and Society, this essay is about monogamy.