Skip to main contentsex, drugs, and cocoa puffs: a low-culture manifesto
In 2002, Chuck Klosterman flashed onto the music-criticism map with his oddball exploration of youth, metal and the Midwest, Fargo Rock City. Hailed as a witty and irreverent savior of stagnant criticism, Klosterman was snatched up by Spin magazine and was soon named senior writer.
Klosterman became the heir apparent to the late Lester Bangs, the wildcat rock critic whom just about every aspiring music journalist attempts to mimic, generally failing miserably. But there's a hitch. Klosterman is not a rock critic, a fact made clear in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto.
A collection of previously unpublished essays, Klosterman's latest skirts music criticism and focuses on the many absurdities of popular culture, attempting to derive meaning from the seemingly trivial, all the while striking admittedly easy targets for laughs. Klosterman succeeds at both, whether he is exploring the existential crisis proposed by the video game the Sims, angrily explaining how John Cusack has destroyed his opportunity to experience real love, or mapping out the menacing futility of soccer.
It's obvious throughout Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs that Klosterman's understanding of pop culture is rooted in music, but he rarely writes about music, instead exploring cultural phenomena like VH1's Behind the Music and the heartwrenching tales of a touring Van Halen cover band. By leaving out the music, Klosterman is signaling a shift in "rock criticism." The first generation of critics like Bangs, Richard Meltzer and Nick Tosches wrote in a time when music, and rock 'n' roll more specifically, was its own culture. Klosterman, on the other hand, writes at a time when rock is no longer a counterculture, but a part of larger, and mostly novel, popular culture. Mark Baumgarten
carnet de voyage
Hopefully the day will come in the United States where the comic-book medium will be recognized as a legitimate art form. And when that finally does happen, among those recognized as true talents of the medium will be Craig Thompson.
In 2002 Thompson released the mammoth graphic novel Blankets, a not-quite-autobiographical tale of a young man from the Midwest coming of age amid religious fundamentalism. Heaped with critical praise, Blankets was an amazing achievement that lent proof to the belief that comic books could be as compelling as film or traditional literature.
With Carnet de Voyage, Thompson returns with a personal "travelogue diary" that recounts his three-month journey through France, Morocco, Barcelona and the Alps. Much of Thompson's trip was spent promoting Blankets and researching his upcoming graphic novel Habibi, but Carnet de Voyage is more than just a series of random sketches and standard journal entries. This is a quirky narrative that not only follows Thompson to various foreign places, but also delves deep into his psyche. He's a lone traveler who obsesses over his ex-girlfriend and spends more time sketching kittens and trees than sightseeing. And while Thompson points out that this book "should not necessarily be considered the truth with a capital 'T,'" it resonates with the same honesty that made Blankets so compelling.
Carnet de Voyage takes Thompson one step closer to being recognized as the talented cartoonist/author that he is. But more important, the book takes the comic-book medium itself one step closer to the elusive recognition it richly deserves. David Walker
By Chuck Klosterman(Scribner, 253 pages, $13)
Klosterman reads at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm Thursday, July 15.
carnet de voyageBy Craig Thompson(Top Shelf, 224 pages, $14.95)
Craig Thompson reads with James Kochalka (American Elf: James Kochalka's Collected Sketchbook Diaries) at Reading Frenzy, 921 SW Oak St., 274-1449. 6 pm Sunday, July 18.
WWeek 2015