Eating the Dinosaur

More appealingly idle musings from the Gen-X Andy Rooney
Chuck Klosterman's Eating the Dinosaur is the newest installment in what has become a 21st-century genre: casual, applied anthropology. Klosterman is a generalist with the keen ability to provide accessible examples for complicated concepts. In the past, he has written about almost every conceivable element of our modern culture, from music to film to sports, and he approaches this newest work with his typical geeky humor and zeal for explaining the questions that tease and taunt our daily existence.

Each essay in the collection focuses on one particular illustration of "living history." Klosterman compares Nirvana's Kurt Cobain to cult leader David Koresh, defends Ted Kaczynski's Unabomber Manifesto as something worth reading and reflects upon why football is perhaps the last of mass American entertainments. He provides treatments on the ethics of time travel and the intolerability of sitcom laugh tracks. Pop icons like Britney Spears, Garth Brooks, Ralph Sampson and Werner Herzog all make appearances.

Klosterman's distinctive content — a blending of high-concept with mass-market — matches his post-modern style. He addresses the reader directly, maintains a self-deprecating referentiality, and even numbers his own paragraphs at times for especially easy access. Though clearly parts of a whole, each of the thirteen essays that subdivide Eating the Dinosaur can easily stand alone. This format is perfect for every kind of listener. Those who prefer more narrative audio experiences can treat it as a continuous book, while those to would rather listen in isolated entertain, revealing the oft-ignored quandaries we all idly mull over.