Book Review - GEEKY RIDER

Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself to Live is like a road film for rock geeks. Or it’s like a midlife crisis saga for those not really in midlife and in only the most existential of crises. In any event, it could very well be the geekiest travel narrative ever written.

Its premise is Rock Gonzo Journalism 101, though perhaps a tad more solemn: Rent a car - in this case what he rechristens a Ford Tauntan - drive across the country, and visit the famous places where American music has died. That’s to say, the way music tends to die in this country: young and hard. From the Rhode Island nightclub where 100 fans of the hair band Great White perished in a freak fire, to the Iowa field where the plane carrying Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper and Buddy Holly met its fiery end, Klosterman is on hand to “get his death on.” Along the way, he pontificates on the demise of bands and, oddly enough, the demise of his romantic entanglements. Death and sex, that sort of thing.

While he has a passion for music and its accompanying lore, Klosterman’s none too crazy about being behind the wheel.

“I hate driving,” Klosterman says from his office at Spin magazine in New York. In typical Klosterman fashion, he extends the act of steering a car into something at once bigger and smaller.

“I like the experience of living, I just hate the process of living. I’m a little agoraphobic; I like being in my apartment.”

Spoken like a true New Yorker.

For the unaware, Klosterman is the reigning king of nerdy pop culture criticism. How nerdy? Well, we’re talking about a man over 30 years old who proudly admits to having watched every Real World episode no less than three times. And who doesn’t find it even the least bit shameful to fess that he can only understand his romantic relationships as they relate to KISS albums.

North Dakota-born but now Manhattan-based, Klosterman’s brand of populist intellectualism encompasses everything from reality TV to the NBA to urban stereotypes. But he’s probably better known as the author of a heavy-metal memoir, Fargo Rock City, and an essay collection, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.

Part of the revelation of his 8,000-mile journey in Killing Yourself is that there was little revelation. “When I went to the place where the Allman brothers were killed. I realized [that] I had all these ideas in my mind about what these places mean, I’d have this expectation of what I should feel. When I got there I realized it was a road, just a road.” The larger point, as Chuck sees it, is the meaning people attach to these places.

For one who’s more than a little reverent about the music he loves (Motley Crüe, KISS, Guns N’ Roses), it’s surprising to see that he despises an American music sacred spot like Graceland. As he sees it, there’s a difference between a personal relationship with a band and deifying a pop star to fill a role once reserved for monarchs.

“I’m very careful not to say I like Motley Crüe because they’re great; it’s completely personal. I see people who really seem to be caught up in the idea of, ‘Boy, it would be great if we had some American pop royalty.’ They want to have universally shared idols. It was very similar to what happened with [Kurt] Cobain’s death. All of these people with a tangential relationship to the band wanted to have a shared experience of mourning. I think with Graceland, it’s the epitome of that - the glorification of, in some ways, the saddest parts of American culture. I like to think that I’m very populist, but I don’t see myself as a fan of ... the glorification of kitschiness as normalcy.”

Spoken like a true New York rock critic.

Killing Yourself To Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman. $23. Scribner. 245 pages.