Review: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman
“Somewhere, at some point, somehow, somebody decided that death equals credibility.”

At first glance, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (Scribner), is a thanatological rock and roll death trip across the United States, stopping at sites of demise of musicians and fans. Chuck Klosterman visits Clear Lake, IA (where the “American Pie” was baked), Magnolia, GA (where Lynyrd Skynyrd ran out of gas, literally), and West Warwick, RI, where 101 people died in a club fire while watching Great White. Klosterman describes that incident without even a modicum of snark: “This was not a bunch of hipsters trying to be seen by other hipsters; these were blue collar people, all trying to unironically experience music that honestly meant something to them when they were teenagers.”)

However, Killing Yourself to Live is not a travel guide. Although Klosterman identifies the general location of the Skynyrd plane crash (watch out for snakes!), he has more pressing concerns to attend to, such as, but not limited to:

• Deciding which of the 2,233 CDs in his collection to take along for the ride


• Sucking ice, snapping the necks of deer, hitting cars with rocks and other teenage memories


• Foghat’s “Slow Ride” vs. Edgar Winter’s “Free Ride”


• Radiohead’s Kid A album as prognosticator of the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks: A hidden conspiracy?


• How everything that once mattered in your life doesn’t anymore (“When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago – and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail – it’s disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completely dead. They die long before you do.”)

Above all, Killing Yourself to Live is about girls, specifically: Diane, Lenore, Quincy and DeeDee, with a brief appearance from an Uma Thurman-esque rock critic. Klosterman has many miles to cover in solitude, so he spends endless amounts of time analyzing his relationships. Since this is Chuck Klosterman, he can’t write about his relationships with these girls (“Some Girls”?) without wrapping them all up in a messy, mobile musical package.

For example, it’s fairly common to find songs that relate to your relationships. But Klosterman takes this many steps further, assigning each of his great loves to a member of Kiss, both the original lineup and replacement members. Comparing a former girlfriend to post-makeup Kiss substitute guitarist Bruce Kulick is either fucking brilliant or fucking disturbed. (And while I feel it errs on the side of the former, I’d really personally rather not be compared to Gene Simmons, who was described as looking like “an aging Hasidic Johnny Cash” by a friend who went to his book signing.)

Klosterman’s writing is notoriously scattered. This is a precarious writing style, and can easily dissolve into a pile of self-indulgent verbal trots if not skilled at it. While his writing is not unlike the endless meandering stretches of highway he drives – including many seemingly unrelated, weird stream of thought diversions – he’s a much more coherent writer than Lester Bangs, and perhaps even more passionate about his subject matter. He’s a less snotty Robert Christgau, a less academic Greil Marcus. He’s not pretentious like David Sedaris, Dave Eggers and their ilk. He’ll admit both that he believes the 1978 Kiss solo albums actually had some musical merit, and that Quincy will always be the number one romantic relationship of his life, no matter what girls followed her.

Klosterman once wrote a ranting essay about women who fall in love with John Cusack based solely on his character of Lloyd Dobbler (from 1989’s Say Anything). Well, guess what, Chuck. You can swipe your book title from a Black Sabbath song, work on your Led Zeppelin swagger, continue to buy Kiss albums that no one else does, drive 5,667 miles to eulogize dead rock stars, but the undisputable truth is that you’ve turned into a romantic sap, just like Lloyd Dobbler. Killing Yourself to Live all but destroys any detached heavy metal dude / indie rock boy image you’ve been cultivating for years.

But that’s okay. Chicks dig that sortta thing.

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman, Scribner.
- posted by Synd-e @ 8:20 PM