Book #30: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Title: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story


Author: Chuck Klosterman


Killing Yourself to Live is a book that came into my hands in a very roundabout way. Eddie loves to read ESPN's Page 2 and mentioned once in passing that he really liked Chuck Klosterman's columns. Since Eddie never wants anything and is one of the hardest people in the world to shop for, I tucked the name "Chuck Klosterman" in the back of my mind and when the next holiday rolled around (I think it was Valentine's Day), I looked him up on half.com and bought this book, which happened to be the cheapest of Klosterman's titles at that moment. A few days ago, when I had exhausted my books from the library and couldn't bring myself to read anymore of Cinderella Man, I decided to give this book a whirl.


In the summer of 2003, Klosterman, who was a music critic (?) for Spin magazine at the time, was sent by his editor on a cross-country journey to write about places where famous musicians bit the dust. In the course of the book, among other places, Klosterman goes to the field in Iowa where Buddy Holly's plane crash, the stops at streetcorner where one of the Allman brothers (can't remember which one) crashed his motorcycle, tours Graceland, and visits the garden (formerly a greenhouse) where Kurt Cobain killed himself (?).


But of course, he does more than just visit the dying places of musicians. He has 600 cds in the back of his Ford Taurus, and his readers get enthusiastic details on practically every song he listens to along the way. We also learn about his current and former sort-of girlfriends, and how to freebase marajuana. If you liked Dave Eggers's memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (I did, sort of), you'll likely like this book too. Klosterman takes his laptop on the trip along with him and basically pounds out a chapter of the book each night, corresponding to what he did over the course of the day. Sometimes it's boring, sometimes it's wild, but it's pretty enteraining, even though it wore on me after a while.


The main thing that I kept puzzling over as I read the book is Klosterman himself. He's a couple of years older than I am, grew up in a tiny town in North Dakota, where he played high school football and loved Kiss and Led Zepplin,  and after college became a newspaper columnist and music critic. Eventually he moved to New York, and on the book jacket, he looks like a nerdy New York music lover (funky glasses, black t-shirt, brooding expression). But then you look at him more closely and notice the pretty decent arm muscles, which sort of throw me off. He's always talking about smoking pot and drinking a lot, yet he runs. He claims that he has listened to all but one of his collection of 3000 cds, but he's still interested enough in sports to be a columnist for ESPN. The book doesn't do much to sort out the complexities either-- Klosterman really does seem as contradictory and un-sterotypical in his writing as he does in the picture on the back of the book.


--originally published 5/16/06