Eating The Dinosaur
by Chuck Klosterman
An excerpt from the chapter titled “The Best Response”:
“The best response to being arrested for carrying an unlicensed handgun into a nightclub and accidentally shooting yourself in the leg, thereby jeopardizing your pro football career.
“First of all, you people probably don’t know anyone who’s been shot. I, however, know lots of people who’ve been shot. I know lots of people who claim they want to shoot me, and some of those people are technically my friends. So that’s why I carry a gun. Second, you people probably trust the government, and you probably trust it because your personal experience with law enforcement has been positive. I’ve had the opposite experience all my life. I’m afraid of the government. I’m afraid of the world, and you can’t give me one valid reason why I shouldn’t be. So that’s why I did not apply for a gun license. Third, I shot myself in the leg, which is both painful and humiliating. What else do I need to go through in order to satiate your desire to see me chastised? The penalty for carrying an unlicensed weapon is insane. How can carrying an unlicensed firearm be worse than firing a licensed one? I broke the law, but the law I broke is a bad law. Would you be satisfied if the penalty for unlawful gun possession was getting shot in the leg? Because that already fucking happened!”
If you are unfamiliar with the Plaxico Burress story from a few months ago this excerpt is probably lost on you. But if you knew what this excerpt was all about once you started reading it, you will probably agree with how perfectly written and well thought out it is (even if you agreed with the stance of the state of New York throughout the trial as it was happening). The chapter “The Best Response” probably best sums up Eating The Dinosaur, Klosterman’s fourth book of original essays that in many various ways aims to find out why people choose to reveal themselves in the way(s) that they do.
Or, as Klosterman states in the opening essay “Something Out Of Nothing”:
“For the past five years, I’ve spent more time being interviewed than conducting interviews with other people. I am not complaining about this, nor am I proud of it—it’s just the way things worked out, mostly by chance. But the experience has been confusing. Though I always understand why people ask the same collection of questions, I never know why I answer them. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone answers anything.”
What unfolds throughout the rest of the book is a collection of essays that deal with: the similarities between David Koresh and the Branch Davidians and the recording of Nirvana’s In Utero; why ABBA became popular again recently (and why they were never truly unpopular to begin with); the similarities between the NFL and the Fox News Channel, and why it escapes everyone—even hard-core NFL fans—that the NFL is constructed almost entirely on Socialist thought, yet is presented as the most Conservative sport in the country; why Americans love advertising; the morality of time travel, just to name a few.
And if you are wondering to yourself, “What the hell do any of the aforementioned essays have to do with trying to peel away the meaning of reality, or why people answer questions, or why we sometimes apply more weight to public opinion rather than private knowledge?” you will just have to read the book. While I still think Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs is his best book, Eating The Dinosaur shows that Klosterman is still in his prime and is showing no signs of falling out of it anytime soon. At his best (like with the aforementioned NFL essay), Klosterman is like a succinct and more humorous conglomeration of Malcolm Gladwell and David Foster Wallace.
This is one of the best non-fiction books of the ’00′s.
