The Cure for the Common Cusack

The reaction to a new Chuck Klosterman book is always more entertaining than the book itself—no matter how good of a book he writes. Just as with a Klosterman book, you can expect lots of gimmicks: long rhetorical questions ("You are offered a new book by Chuck Klosterman…"), physical cheap shots, and self-conscious non sequiturs.

There's something about his writing that asks to be imitated—that begs you to turn it on itself (guilty as charged). Thus, interviews with Klosterman always contain a variation on this question: How do you explain your own rise and celebrity? Klosterman always demurs, which is odd since this is exactly the kind of question he answers about everyone else.