Eating the Dinosaur

Chuck Klosterman

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781439168486
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Social Sciences

After a bestselling and acclaimed diversion into fiction, Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, returns to the form in which he’s been spectacularly successful with a collection of essays about our consumption of pop culture and sports.

Q: What is this book about?

A: Well, that’s difficult to say. I haven’t read it yet—I’ve just picked it up and casually glanced at the back cover. There clearly isn’t a plot. I’ve heard there’s a lot of stuff about time travel in this book, and quite a bit about violence and Garth Brooks and why Germans don’t laugh when they’re inside grocery stores. Ralph Nader and Ralph Sampson play significant roles. I think there are several pages about Rear Window and college football and Mad Men and why Rivers Cuomo prefers having sex with Asian women. Supposedly there’s a chapter outlining all the things the Unabomber was right about, but perhaps I’m misinformed.

Q: Is there a larger theme?

A: Oh, something about reality. “What is reality,” maybe? No, that’s not it. Not exactly. I get the sense that most of the core questions dwell on the way media perception constructs a fake reality that ends up becoming more meaningful than whatever actually happened. Also, Lady Gaga.

Q: Should I read this book?

A: Probably. Do you see a clear relationship between the Branch Davidian disaster and the recording of Nirvana’s In Utero? Does Barack Obama make you want to drink Pepsi? Does ABBA remind you of AC/DC? If so, you probably don’t need to read this book. You probably wrote this book. But I suspect everybody else will totally love it, except for the ones who totally hate it.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Description
• Author Bio
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Chapter 1: Something Instead of Nothing
• Chapter 2: Oh, the Guilt
• Chapter 3: Tomorrow Rarely Knows
• Chapter 4: What We Talk About When We Talk About Ralph Sampson
• Chapter 5: Through a Glass, Blindly
• Chapter 6: The Passion of the Garth
• Chapter 7: Going Nowhere and Getting There Never
• Chapter 8: “The Best Response”
• Chapter 9: Football
• Chapter 10: Abba 1, World 0
• Chapter 11: “Ha ha,” he said. “Ha ha.”
• Chapter 12: It Will Shock You How Much It Never Happened
• Chapter 13: All The Kids Are Right
• Chapter 14: T Is for True
• Chapter 15: FAIL
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Reading Group Guide
• ‘But What If We’re Wrong: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past’