Killing Yourself To Live by Chuck Klosterman – The AudioSuede Book Club

The following is the first installment in our new series, The AudioSuede Book Club. For more information about this series, read the introduction here.

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Chuck Klosterman’s Killing Yourself To Live – The AudioSuede Book Club

By: Christian Hagen

Killing Yourself to Live, the third book from former Spin staffer and hilarious essayist Chuck Klosterman, isn’t really about its premise, which is to say that, while ostensibly it IS about the writer’s attempt to understand why rockstars become more famous after they die, it is, in reality, NOT.

Let me explain.

Back when he worked for Spin, a stint which, apparently, did not end especially well for him, Klosterman suggested to his editor that he do a piece about dead rock stars. His idea: Drive around the country to every place where a major musician died and maybe find some surprising or deep truth that somehow explains why fame becomes greater following a person’s death.  In many ways, it seems like the ultimate excuse for a road trip, and one for which he’d get paid, no less.

But what begins as a study into the meaning of death becomes and exploration of life, specifically how Klosterman’s life and relationships relate to pop culture. The result is a stirring, funny, and occasionally beautiful examination of an individual in the scope of a larger world that gives an impression of the author’s loneliness and incomprehension amidst a complex narrative.

Klosterman’s stops take him to the expected rock ‘n roll tragedy sites: the hotel where Sid stabbed Nancy, Kurt Cobain’s home, the site of the Great White nightclub fire, etc. But the most remarkable moments in the book never really involve these places, but rather the people that inhabit them and, especially, the people that are nowhere near them.

For example, when Klosterman makes his way into West Warwick, Rhode Island, site of the nightclub fire that killed 100 people when the band Great White’s pyrotechnics failed, he meets a pair of locals who tell of their personal losses, family or friends who’d been burned to death. Then, they proceed to snort cocaine in a Ford truck. Klosterman’s explanation for this turn of events? “Somehow-this seems reasonable.”

The ability to make the illogical seem reasonable is utilized throughout the book. In a striking and, one would imagination, potentially controversial passage, he explains how Radiohead’s Kid A unintentionally provided a moment-by-moment soundtrack of the 9/11 attacks with such eerie accuracy and attention to detail that one might think he’s actually on to something. In another humorous chapter, he explains how every woman he’s ever been with can be compared to the members of KISS…as well as their live backups and studio fill-ins. It’s funny, but what makes these essays so striking is how clearly alone the writer is the entire time. He’s so completely in his own head that his conversations read like a script no one would write. His prose is witty and sharp, but the stories he tells range from awkward to pathetic. At one point, he describes using his Ford Taurus’s cigarette lighter to smoke what he calls “the shake,” or the remaining bits of weed left at the bottom of the baggy.

And yet Klosterman’s potentially laughable flaws are met with endearment, rather than pity or loathing that lesser writers might receive, because ultimately, what Klosterman is looking for isn’t an answer to the aftermath of death but a solution to the problems of his own life.

Most blatantly important in the author’s life is his relationship with four women, women whose names he’s changed to protect their identities but whose personalities shine through in his descriptions of them. The effects they have on his life are clearly profound; he spends more than half of the book focused on their similarities and differences, the nuances of their time together, what being with them meant to and about him. As he defines himself by his music, he also defines himself by his loves. Of course, the two intermingle; many of his conversations with these mystery women focus on his or their musical tastes. But what is never lost on the reader, though it might be lost on Klosterman himself, is that the truth is always directly in front of him; his obsessions with art and love and death are all a smaller part of a larger personal and societal dilemma, one dealing with definition. In the end, that’s what the entirety of Klosterman’s journey is about: How do we define a person who is dead, and how does that define us?

Well, that’s what it’s supposed to be about. What it’s actually about is: When do definitions prevent us from finding the truth, and how do we overcome a world in which a love of art and a love of people get confused? Maybe. It’s up for debate, really, what this book is about. But maybe that’s what the book’s tagline, 85% of a True Story, really means. Maybe our labels hide the truth from us, maybe we, as music fans, are blind to our own truth. Maybe that last 15% is what’s really behind why we love musicians more after they’re dead: We never got the whole truth when they were alive, and now we’re left with pieces unfulfilled. If we can fill those pieces in for them, we can do it for ourselves.

Christian Hagen is the founder/editor-in-chief of AudioSuede. He lives in Minnesota.