Chuck Klosterman IV

A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

By: Chuck Klosterman

Narrated by: Chuck Klosterman

Coming off the breakthrough success of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Killing Yourself to Live, bestselling pop culture guru Chuck Klosterman assembles his best work previously unavailable in book form—including the groundbreaking 1996 piece about his chicken McNuggets experiment, his uncensored profile of Britney Spears, and a previously unpublished short story—all recontextualized in Chuck’s unique voice with new intros, outros, segues, and masterful footnotes.

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 old fiction. There’s a new introduction, but no footnotes. Well, there’s a footnote in the introduction, but none in the story.©2003, 2004 Chuck Klosterman. All rights reserved; (P)2006 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"One of America's top cultural critics." -- Entertainment Weekly

"Mr. Klosterman makes good, smart company." -- The New York Times

"He's perfect junk food for the soul." -- The Los Angeles Times Book Review

What's up with Chuck?

I enjoy this guy. He is charming is an acerbic kind of way. He keeps me engaged and often entertained, like a literary Howard Stern or a drunken David Sedaris. The fact that he read this himself makes this work (and also contributes to his own self-obsession). The ending story, though, really takes an odd turn, and not because of the one in a billion event that fictionally happens to him. Usually he reports on a fringe lifestyle or waxes on the virtues of some brainless celebrity, but here he shows us this life that I took to be basically his own-- and it is ugly and dispiriting. It was much like being forced to watch the sex tape of Dustin Diamond, better known as "Screech" from Saved by the Bell (a favorite of his).

Still, he is fun. Just perhaps start with "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" to fully understand his charrm first before you try to injest some of the discussion here.

This Guy Gets It..

If you're GenX, Kosterman is your guy. If not, you may not get it.

9.6 out of 10

Any additional comments?

Chuck Klosterman has quickly become one of my new favorite authors still currently doing work today. He ranks among the best. I especially recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of David Sedaris. Similar in many ways but Klosterman has a special charm to his writing that you can't find anywhere else.

Chuck is the Best...

But that Chris Ryan, what a Val Kilmer he is!

Great read and once again, a truly insightful look into snapshots of American pop culture.

If you’re not reading the greatest cultural essayist of Gen X and beyond.

Thanks Chuck for making us all better writers, observers, and cultural stewards.

Great content; odd decision to use actors

The use of actors to voice the celebrities in the interview section mostly doesn't work, but it's not a big deal. It's also a small percentage of the total audio, and maybe it wouldn't have worked to have Chuck reading the quotes either. Great listen. I was skeptical about the fiction part at the end, but I ended up enjoying it.

Chuck's magazine pieces are very much a time capsule of an era, and in the vein quite similar to Jon Ronson. I enjoy them both.