Chuck Klosterman has been a name sorts
just off the edge of my radar. I recognized the name, but I wasn't
exactly sure why. Now I know! Chuck Klosterman's collection of essays
on the nature of villainy, I Wear the Black Hat:Grappling withVillains (Real and Imagined)
(Scribner, 2013, 224 pages, $25.00) examines with clarity and insight
the nature of villainy, why we come to admire some villains while
others remain despised, and the cultural forces that go to reinforce
our perceptions. In a series of essays that range over the popular
culture areas of music, sports, film, and politics, Klosterman looks
at the range from Machievelli to Snidely Whiplash, Mohammed Ali to
O.J. Simpson, and The Eagles to N.W.A, examining their postures
toward the world and seeking out why they are either admired or
despised. His major thesis is that the villain is “the one who
knows the most and cares the least.” In looking at the sad end to
the great Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, Klosterman remarks
“People are remembered for the sum of their accomplishments, but
defined by their singular failure.” The section on Paterno's fall
from grace boils the story down to its essentials and alone is worth
the price of the book.
In one
section he looks at all the bands he hated during various parts of
his life, only to conclude that he can no longer remember why he
hated them or summon up the ire to do so. He notes that each of the
groups he hated produced at least a few songs he's come to love, for
one reason or another. Klosterman says that everybody hates the
Eagles, except the public. He says, “Within any group conflict, my
loyalties rest with whichever person is the most obviously wrong.”
Taylor Swift, he notes writes good songs that can't be THAT good, so
pop culture demeans her and her very real ability, at a quite young
age, to write and deliver good songs. “Once you realize you can't
control how you feel, it's impossible to believe any of your own
opinions.” By making such seemingly contradictory, not to say
outrageous statements, Klosterman urges a reader to stop, think,
examine, and, often, nod one's head in assent. Klosterman's analysis
manages to conflate Machiavelli, George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, The
Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, Paterno, and many more figures from
historical and contemporary culture into a coherent argument about
how we understand ourselves, and the world as a whole.
Klosterman
analyzes Mohamed Ali's use of blatantly racist language to destroy
Joe Frazier before their storied “Thrilla in Manila” third fight,
Yet Ali has grown in popularity and become a potent cultural symbol
and beloved ex-champ, while Frazier never recovered from the
assaults. “Over time,” he says, “the winners are always the
progressives. Conservatism can only win in the short term, because
society cannot stop evolving.” The person who knows the most and
cares the least can combine this quality with confidence to yield a
positive public image, despite obvious evil doings or intent. D.B
Cooper and Mohamed Ali are popular heroes while Mohamed Atta (one of
the 9/11 culprits) and O.J. Simpson are not. He engages in a lengthy
thought experiment in which he supposes that Batman was real and that
all we know about him is what we read in the paper and not any of his
back story. Would we still root for him. He asks, “Is it acceptable
to act like a criminal to stop crime?” He explores the nature of
vigilantism by exploring Benard Goetz, who shot four black men in a
subway in New York during the 1980's, the Charles Bronson character
in the Death Wish,
and, if the book hadn't already been at the presses, would have
included George Zimmerman. “Vigilantism's profound contradiction is
that every socially aware person agrees that it cannot exist, even
though huge swaths of society would improve if it sometimes did.”
The desirable vigilante can only exist in fiction, but a real
vigilante, like Goetz or Zimmerman, can't be a hero, because he
doesn't care.
At
about the mid-point of I Wear the Black Hat,
Klosterman pauses to ask the reader to examine whether he,
Klosterman, is writing about villains in order to show he is seeking
to be one himself, thus presenting a self-referential argument. He
then concludes, for himself, that the opposite is true. A nice piece
of irony, a stylistic device that dominates the entire book.
Klosterman's argument is always presented in a logical, even gentle,
manner that never rises to the level of heated rhetoric, making even
the unpleasant characters who show up at least reasonable to hear
about. Thus, I learned some about hip-hop and rap music, an area of
culture in which I've been mostly uninterested, and thought some
about the importance of N.W.A., the evil design of the Oakland
Raiders as a reflection of owner Al Davis, and the humor of Andrew
Dice Clay, one of whose videos I managed to sit through 4:39 before
turning the nasty rant off. I felt bad that I had actually smiled at
a couple of his punch-lines.
This
book pre-figures the current world in weird and wonderful ways. Here
we read about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Michael Douglas and
Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct,
only to have that weirdest of present day villains, Anthony Weiner,
appear in our imaginations. And who appears now to be becoming the
villainess but his wife, the innocent Hillary Clinton advisor Huma
Abedin, a woman whose sole flaw appears to be trying to protect her
child through supporting her silly and desperate husband. People in
love, says Klosterman, make poor decisions. People in lust make no
decisions at all. And on the story goes, with more startling
connections and insights.
Chuck Klosterman
There's
a start of recognition, a jolt of energy, when one is first
introduced to a new mind. Such is the effect engendered on first
meeting and then getting to know the work of Chuck Klosterman. His
world view is so encompassing and seductive one reads in awe the
remarkable connections between seemingly irreconcilable differences
as he rambles, almost seamlessly, between mental islands. Klosterman
writes of a a world, part of which I consciously missed, and makes me
wish I'd paid more attention to it, because what he writes about the
parts I'm familiar with is so good – witty, insightful, filled with
surprising connections, and pointed to a non-ironic world view that
makes sense. There are many other examples which I want to write
about, but I'll leave it to readers to discover the richness of this
book. Chuck Klosterman is a New York Times bestselling author and a
featured columnist for Esquire, a contributor to The New York Times
Magazine, and has also written for Spin, The Washington Post, The
Guardian, The Believer, and ESPN. I received Klosterman's I Wear the Black Hat:Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined)
(Scribner, 2013, 224 pages, $25.00) from the publisher through
Edelweiss: Above the treeline. I read it on my Kindle.
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