Austinist Interviews Chuck Klosterman

What was your soundtrack for your trip to Austin?

My soundtrack for coming to Austin...On the plane I read "A Scanner Darkly" by Phillip K. Dick, so I don't know if I used my iPod at all on the trip. I may have listened to the Kinks a little bit on the plane, but it was mostly a sans music voyage.

It seems like "Killing yourself to Live" is more personal than your previous books. What was the reaction from your friends to this book, particularly the ones whom you mention and discuss in detail?

Well the people who are mentioned tangentially, they of course love it. Because people love being in a book if it mentions them in a superfluous situation.

The three women -- I changed their names and everything -- but it was weird for them. For one, she was initially upset but partially because I think she thought she should have been in the book more. Another was at first a little bit sad but then really excited and supportive about it. And the third I don't even think [she] read it. And it's kind of the reaction I expected from all three.

You say that your parents are unaware of the details of your private life. So does that mean that they don't read your books?

I don't really think they do. My dad is like 80; I'm the seventh kid in my family. So I think that a lot of the cultural references and the structure of the book loses them. So they're very supportive of my books, but they don't really understand them. BUT you know, maybe they do know more about my life now. Sometimes it's hard for me to talk about my life but it's very easy to write about it.

Right! Which brings us right to our next question. You've mentioned that in your books before...how it is easier to write about your feelings for these women in your life than it is to tell them how you feel. So how difficult is it for you to go on this book tour and talk about all these personal things in front of total strangers?

Somehow it's not hard, as long as they're not in the audience. I don't know. For me, there's a real chasm between writing about things publicly, speaking about them publicly and experiencing them personally. I'm somehow comfortable in a public setting in a way that I'm not always necessarily comfortable in a private setting.

How did you begin writing initially? Every day on your road trip is a chapter in your new book, which means you were writing a considerable amount daily. Is writing as natural for you as it appears to be?

I gotta say, I love writing and I always have. It's the only thing in my life that has ever come easy to me and I'm incredibly fortunate that somehow the one thing that I really love doing is also what I get to do for a living. I know a lot of people say that but it's really weird. Even a lot of the writers I know, the process is hard -- but I just don't get writers block. My favorite part of the process is the typing, it is the writing. A lot of people say, "You know I hate writing but I love having had written." I don't feel that way at all, I hate the things I've written. When I go back and read it later, it seems terrible to me. It seems great while I'm typing it. I love that experience. The only successful relationship I've ever had is with writing. The parts of my writing that make it successful is the voice. People think that my writing has voice. And that's something I never had to construct, it just sort of worked out that way. So I feel at times that I've just stumbled into this. The way sentences are constructed and the way narratives are put together -- that does seem natural to me, I didn't really have to figure it out.

That's neat. We meant to ask you this earlier, but you have extended family, like young nieces and nephews, right? So are they allowed to read your books?

Well I have four sisters and two brothers and about 9 or 10 nieces and nephews and they can read it. I worry about my mom and dad, but I don't really worry about my brothers and sisters -- they're adults.

And what about their kids?

Well that's [their parents] decision. I was reading crazy shit when I was 12. I don't think that's bad for kids. I think what's worse is telling people there's things that you can read and can't read because the things that they can't read they will inject with a certain amount of power. Then it becomes problematic. Then they start thinking that things like rock n' roll, drugs and sex are really problematic and if you get involved with them, your life is going to collapse. Because those people inevitably live their life, shielding themselves from it, and then when they cross over, the floodgates open.

Who are the kids who die from binge drinking in college? It's the kids who never drank in high school. They go to college and they're against it and then all of the sudden, 'Hey, I'm going to catch up on all these experiences!' It doesn't seem like being introduced to ideas ever hurt people.

We agree. How did the music industry or music journalism compare to your ideas of what it would be when you initially moved to New York from North Dakota?

It was much smaller. In the sense that I used to think when I read a rock magazine when they put somebody on the cover or if they did a piece on a certain band, or if they covered a certain trend really vociferously that there must have been a bunch of people who made that decision. There must have been a lot of people who had input and they came to this conclusion and there was a certain well-grounded accuracy in that. What I realize now, it's decided by a very small numbers of people and it's all force of personality. Such a small number of people make decisions that seem so sweeping.

What's been your reaction to Real World: Austin?

It doesn't seem very reflective of my experiences in Austin. It doesn't even look like Austin to me. The bars they're going to are bars I've never been to here.

I think that Melinda girl might be the most attractive girl I've ever seen on that show. And the girl who's in the military makes me very, very nervous about the United States' involvement in Iraq...more so. I think if I was in the military, I would be very upset by the fact that she is attempting to represent the military in the manner that she is.

She doesn't seem like she can think critically about anything. She seems to be making the show political in a way they couldn't have anticipated. Because I think that people who have no relationship with the military, regardless of how they feel about the war, still want to imagine that the people deployed there are a certain kind of person. There's a certain kind of person who feels a lot of responsibility and loyalty to their country, or maybe they come from a lower income situation, this is a risk they'll take to make a better life. You don't want to envision the person being like [Rachel].

You can purchase Klosterman's "Killing Yourself to Live" here, or get your ass down to Book People.