I read this on the plane. it was fantastic. it is a series of microstories, several pages long a piece. I think it does better than anything ive ever read at probing the nature of our current unrealityhttps://smile.amazon.com/dp/0735217939/
-
Show this thread
-
that it is really good at parsing social phenomena should not be surprising because of the author. now that David foster Wallace and Tom Wolfe are passed I think Klosterman remains our greatest living social critic. (he is genx. why have millenials produced none of their ilk?)
4 replies 1 retweet 40 likesShow this thread -
Klosterman is especially fun because even though he is now old he is also clearly extremely online and he weaves the current stylistic tics into his GenX prose his knowledge of pop ephemera is vast and he knows how to talk about memes too
2 replies 0 retweets 35 likesShow this thread -
I'm most familiar with his explicit essays (eg as in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs) but he chooses here instead to process things through magical realist science fiction strange technologies transfer pain, reality literally unravels in front of government spooks, robots are raised
2 replies 0 retweets 31 likesShow this thread -
he touches the object level maybe two or three times and his lens is apolitical or broader than political. not what is happening but who we are becoming because of what the world is becoming each story is a facet of this. mostly ambiguous. he is the last 20C writer
2 replies 0 retweets 33 likesShow this thread -
the overall effect is not the formation of an opinion but at least an opportunity for the reader to reprocess what has become. to feel it vicariously and anew through bizarre first person anecdotes that explain nothing but leaving one with the sense that something has condensed
1 reply 0 retweets 25 likesShow this thread -
this is a fantastic and much more detailed review he actually managed to get Klosterman on the phone and im glad to hear this in his words https://twitter.com/OtisGHouston/status/1401759400285511680?s=19 …pic.twitter.com/q3tenpc2af
2 replies 1 retweet 27 likesShow this thread
one more thing. seeing things being picked at like this by a prominent author of Serious Literature is really encouraging.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.