Something Shiny

Actually, I just finished Fargo Rock City : A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota, and I went from laughing out loud, literally, to skimming. This is another book from Chuck Klosterman, but this is a autobiographical examination of 80′s heavy metal and some detailed analysis of why heavy metal should be taken more seriously.

While I’m not a metal-head myself, I do like some of it. As for the book, his reflection on his youth and how heavy metal fit into it was very entertaining. His in depth analysis of particular bands could get a little dry, particularly with bands I wasn’t particularly fond of.

If you’re a huge fan of 80′s metal, this really is a must read. If not, start with Klosterman’s Downtown Owl first and circle back to this if you like his style.

About Fargo Rock City : A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota
From Publishers Weekly

Klosterman’s highly touted debut has as much to do with Fargo, N.D., as the Coen brothers‘ slice of Americabre, Fargo. That is, nothing at all, really. Misleadingly titled to cash in on Fargo’s cinematic mystique, Klosterman’s memoir about growing up a sexually repressed metalhead, with a humiliating (mom-dictated) Richie Cunningham haircut is actually set in Wyndmere, N.D. Klosterman starts up with a bang (“You know, I’ve never had long hair”), shifts gears often (from memoir to music criticism, somewhat jarringly at times), and rarely idles. Ultimately, though, Klosterman, ironic throughout the book, does not write with enough sincerity to prove his thesis “that all that poofy, sexist, shallow glam rock was important.” Granted, it’s a daunting task to write a hymn of praise to the genre that spawned David Lee Roth so the author wisely stretches his pop-culture references like taffy. In the final chapter Klosterman, now an arts critic for Ohio’s Akron Beacon Journal, quotes a friend’s definition of a “guilty pleasure” “something I pretend to like ironically, but in truth is something I really just like” to explain how he really feels about glam metal. His closing summation of what metal means to isolated kids in the heartland will strike a power chord for many readers. (May)Forecast: Klosterman has tapped a gold mine. Fans of 1980s M”tley Cr?e, Poison and Ratt are pushing 30 and 40 and seeking a nostalgia trip. Also, Gear magazine will run an excerpt of the book along with a conversation between Klosterman and Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
–This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Let it be known that Fargo Rock City does not detail a burgeoning music scene in North Dakota’s largest city (population: 70,000). Nor is it a yarn about a heavy metal band gigging across the frozen tundra of the Red River Valley. Rather, it’s one Middle American’s memoir of growing up with and loving 1980s heavy metal (e.g., Ratt, Poison, and Guns ‘n’ Roses). In other words, this book is for the myriad metal-heads from Fargo to Phoenix who inked “M?tley Cr?e” on their notebooks during high school study halls. The music, film, and culture critic at Ohio’s Akron Beacon Journal, Klosterman uses refreshingly candid language: reading his debut is like overhearing a drunken discussion between two music fans. He nicely blends metal music theory with compelling tales of self-realization. Perhaps more than a memoir, this is a seriocomedic defense of a culture that was only cool to those who participated in it. Recommended for all public libraries, especially those in the heartland.
- Robert Morast, “Argus Leader Daily,” Sioux Falls, SD
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In Honor of Chuck’s love of the Crue…

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• Bostonist Talks With Chuck Klosterman… Sort Of (bostonist.com)

Mini summary: AWESOME!

No, it’s not about an Owl that lives downtown, but rather primarily about three individuals that live in a North Dakota town named Owl. Now, you city-folk, don’t let the setting scare you off, it’s not a hick-town in-joke. It is funny though. I really can’t recommend “Downtown Owl” strongly enough if you’re 20 to 30-something (although one of the plot lines follows an elderly male widower, so the appeal may well extend past ones 30s).

Apparently, Chuck Klosterman has been around for a while and he’s a funny guy. I’ve already queued up the rest of his stuff at my local library and am seriously considering picking up a copy of “Downtown Owl” to keep.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Klosterman, who has made a name for himself as an idiosyncratic pop-cultural commentator on rock music and sports, proves just as entertaining in his first novel. In or on the edge of nondescript Owl, North Dakota, live laid-back high-school football player Mitch Hrlicka, who stands out from his peers by being exceedingly normal; teacher Julia Rabia, who has fallen in love with buffalo farmer and Rolling Stones–exclusivist Vance Druid; and old Horace Jones, who mourns his wife and has a few painful secrets. Klosterman doesn’t follow them in a conventional narrative manner. Gifted with a superb ear for dialogue, a kind of perfect pitch for the way ordinary people talk, Klosterman is also capable of fine word-portraits of the three principals and the folks orbiting them in a town whose residents have nicknames like Vanna White, Bull Calf, Grendel, and Little Stevie Horse ’n’ Phone, and time exists on its own odd terms rather than those of the novel’s setting, the 1980s. Despite their eccentricities, or maybe because of them, one believes in these people and their often improbable yet always credible stories. Think of this as a literary relative of the movies Fargo and American Graffiti, sans the latter’s cruising Main Street and warm weather, with a poignant and tragic edge to it, conferred by a paralyzing and deadly blizzard in February 1984. –June Sawyers –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Boston Globe

“An astonishingly moving book, a minor masterpiece in the genre we might call small-town quirkiana.”

From The Washington Post

“It’s tempting to compare this novel with Sherwood Anderson’s classic portrait of small-town American life, Winesburg, Ohio. But no one in Winesburg listened to Ozzy Osbourne. And Klosterman is much funnier than Anderson.”