Dear Mark: Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs
By Chuck Klosterman.

I just finished reading Klosterman's Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. Ok, that's a lie. I finished reading SDCP a couple weeks ago but I was in no mood to read anything new just to write about something I didn't really care about.

These past few weeks have been a wonderful reminder of the academic roller coaster. I did not blog about an article last week because I had other things on my plate, such as an essay, a proposal, photo assignment and a Vancouver Canuck game. The point is, I have not had much time to read a dry clip from the Economist.

Klosterman is entertaining. His style of writing is easy to follow and his tone is wonderful. You learn a lot about his character through the numerous essays published in his book.

However, as the book progressed I often questioned why I enjoyed his work. I never really found a solid answer.

Klostermans humour is almost like the Fox hit Family Guy. Once you've watched a couple episodes, or read a couple chapters, you know what to expect. There were no twists in the plot or ground breaking revelations. There is just humour at the expense of pop-culture references.

Klosterman writes to an audience that had spent much of their youth idolizing characters from the TV, movies and music. These people, now much older and wiser, are able to look back at their pop-culture driven past and realize that they wasted much of their youth gathering useless information on reality TV show characters, one-hit-wonders and other trends that managed to fade in to obscurity.

Klosterman talks to these people like no one else has ever done before. He knows his audience because he is just like them.

Beyond the pop-culture references and the crack shots at celebrities the message of his writing is practically useless to society.

Klosterman really has nothing to say but at the same time he manages to touch on interesting parallels of art imitating life... or life imitating art...

Either way, I will eventually read something else by Klosterman but I hope it's not like the aimless bullshit I had read before.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy bullshit every now and then but there is a line that can be crossed... and besides, you are what you read...