Book Review: Eating the Dinosaur

This year I decided that I would make a resolution to read more essays because it is a genre in which I am completely lacking. It is for this reason that I picked up Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman. I had read Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs when it was first published and found it rather lacking. While many reviewers found his essays to be insightful and hilarious, I found them to be littered with swears and tangential to his established thesis. Therefore, it was with great trepidation that I started this book but once I did I could not put it down! I suddenly discovered everything that reviewers had written years ago.

Basically, Klosterman has written Freakonomics for pop culture. He tackles football, basketball, Kurt Cobain, Weezer, Ralph Nader, and Don Draper all in hardcover. Perhaps the greatest testament to his book is that since reading his essays I have rethought my dislike for Kurt Cobain and all things Nirvana. On my top ten list of pop icons that I host a strong aversion to, Steven Speilberg tops off the list but Kurt Cobain comes in as a close second. However, Klosterman has made me feel compassion and understanding for Cobain. Though I still hate his music and find his fans to be some of the most obnoxious people since Jaws fans, I can now appreciate what he did for music and his role in the 1990s.

Only Klosterman can do this! He has the ability to take pop culture icons and intellectualize them which allows people who feel alienated from their generation (such as myself) to think twice about casting aside Brangelina and The Hills as insipid and unworthy of attention. It is with the perfect mixture of insight, cynicism, sarcasm, and humor that makes Klosterman one of the greatest essayists of our time.

-DLP