Chuck Klosterman Reads Tonight

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 21, 2009 6:20PM

Downtown Owl is the latest book from fellow Midwesterner Chuck Klosterman, a journalist and former writer for Spin magazine. A dark comedy set in a small town in North Dakota, the story focuses on the population of Owl, which consists mostly of hard-working people that hate the government, impregnate teenage girls and lack an understanding of pop culture.

Instead of watching cable television, the constituents drink. From the outside, the town of Owl may seem easy to criticize but inside, it’s a utopia. By following Klosterman’s snapshot of small-town life, the reader rethinks the definition of what is normal.

Known for his wit and knowledge of popular culture, Klosterman is the author of five books. His sixth, Eating the Dinosaur, is set for publication in October and a movie adaptation of his 2006 novel Killing Yourself to Live is currently in production.

In his 2003 bestseller Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Klosterman attempts to speak for the current generation as he wages war on, wait for it, pop culture. Klosterman uses pop culture to paint a portrait of our time using his comedic prose and our embarrassing guilty pleasures like Saved by the Bell and Billy Joel.

Klosterman reads from Downtown Owl tonight at the Barnes and Noble Bookstore at the DePaul Center on Jackson Boulevard and will be joined by Nathan Rabin, author of The Big Rewind: A Memoir Brought to You by Pop Culture, and Greg Kot, author of Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionaries Music. It starts at 5:30 p.m. and is free.

BY: Andrew McKeever