As part of my sorta-off-from-work-though-not-really-because-I-have-an-article-due vacation (all those hyphens are going to really fuck up that line break), I just finished a rare non-political read in Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live. I'll vaguely disagree with Julian and say the book, which abandons its ostensible topic of Rock-and-Roll deaths in favor of hundreds of pages of quirky romantic ruminations, is really much better for the topic change. Indeed, until Julian's review made me aware this wasn't just some maudlin road trip, I was going to skip it. Glad I didn't: the journey actually proves itself quite fun (and occasionally trenchant), though if you'd asked me during the first hundred-or-so pages, I would have been considerably more enthusiastic (though not for any reason I can quite put my finger on).
The virtue of focusing on memories that are relatively mundane rather than rock trivia that's relatively specific is pretty well explained in Klosterman's brilliant essay on Saved By The Bell from Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Comparing the comforting predictability of Saved By The Bell with MASH's intellectual contrarianism, he argues in the former's favor because "important things are inevitably cliche," and that's no reason to dismiss them. That strikes me as a correct observation, though one that's disincentivized at multiple junctures in the creative process.
The first, obviously, is the reviewers, who've little time for staid topics. But critics aren't the only ones with a fetish for the fresh. Editors have an instinctual aversion to the cliche, and love nothing more than to ask how your concept is different than the similar concepts preceding it, so you tend to get a lot of writers with books on fairly specific and rare experiences** interspersed with a few that've managed to dress up the ordinary in a costume the publishing house doesn't recognize. Which is how you get Chuck Klosterman pitching a book about dead rock stars and writing a book about his obsessive attempts to understand his four major relationships. A road trip to the death sites of rock stars strike publishing houses as original. "Girls I've Loved" doesn't. But it happens to make a much better book.
