i just read chuck klosterman’s killing yourself to live
and while i was semi-annoyed by the really obscure music references,
i enjoy books like this a lot.
chuck is/was(?) a music writer for spin magazine and makes me laugh out loud, but not in a way like he’s trying really hard to be funny.
it’s just like a friend making fun of what an idiot he was with some girl or just observing something kind of great and funny about people.
i realize this is a horrible explanation, but short of pulling out my library copy of the book (that i obviously and frustratingly couldn’t write in) and finding a quote, i really can’t express a book’s humor level. i feel like i’m saying, “OH, FRIEND, IT WAS SO FUNNY….hmmm, well i guess you just had to be there…” oh, wait, ohhhhh WAIT but you CAN be there! you can read this book! and then you can complain to me about how there were so many music references that there was a ten-page index at the back and the obscurity of it all was so distracting that you quit 50 pages in. i warned you. but still. i like chuck klosterman.
however, maybe you should maybe read sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs maybe instead because maybe it is maybe better.
i really like reading self-indulgent essay/creative nonfiction-y kinds of things.
i always feel a little stupid when i realize how much i write about myself,
but that’s really what i like to read about in other people’s writings -
the enlightening, the grotesque, the embarrassing, the sweet, the heavy, and the light.
i don’t like when bloggers get super melodramatic and i can’t pretend like i’ve never gone down THAT road of literary pain, but generally, i am a big giant huge fan of honest personal writing.
blogging is such a weirdo in-between land (purgatory??) somewhere floating between journalism and email and maybe even a diary.
sometimes i think to myself, “man, i’m going to forget what happened here, i feel like i should be writing it all down,”
but i AM writing,
it’s just that it’s not really edited or uh…that good. ok, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t.
but it’s public! anyone can read it! and they do!
it’s a little scary to see the “blog stats” and realize so many people i don’t know (250 on my record day!!) read something personal that i jotted off in a few minutes with maybe only one read-through.
i think the “publish” button should be “post” instead,
but “publish” makes me feel pretty la-di-da cool.
i like “publish.”
