Saying It Better Than I Ever Could: Chuck Klosterman Edition

So that was a long hiatus. But I'm back! My apologies to my legions and legions of fans for being so silent for awhile. Hopefully you will forgive me and trust that I have neglected you for so long because I have been extremely busy. Yes, I know, I'm just a "lazy grad student" but even we get overwhelmed sometimes.

Anyway, in today's episode of "Saying It Better Than I Ever Could", we look to the work of Chuck Klosterman.

Now, I rather enjoy reading Chuck Klosterman, having purchased a number of his books in the last year. He speaks to my weakness for intellectual arguments about (often trivial) pop-culture phenomenon. I must confess, I often don't even know what his point is, but the journey always keeps me engaged. I find myself following along feeling like his argument is important, even if I don't know why*. And I actually mean that as a compliment.

As the beginning of this post suggests, I am not a very prolific writer. Part of the reason for this is that I am busy. Another is captured in the following quote by Klosterman:

"Sometimes writing is like talking to a stranger who's exactly like yourself in every possible way, only (you) realize that this stranger is boring as shit."

- Chuck Klosterman, "Eating the Dinosaur". Scribner, 2009.

I've certainly started and canned a fair share posts. Which is particularly weird considering I have almost no expectation that anyone will actually read what I post. But there is something unsatisfying about posting something to the internet that even I am bored by. It just seems like I'm adding to the clutter.

And I will not stand for that. My standards are higher. At the very least, my fans deserve something like this post: a mediocre piece of work piggy-backing on someone else's talent.

* I am pretty sure Klosterman wrote something in this vein about Radiohead, but I spent the last 40 minutes looking for that quote and came up empty-handed. See, I'm even doing research for these blog posts!