Chuck Klosterman X

The Audio Companion to a Highly Specific and Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

By: Chuck Klosterman

Narrated by: Chuck Klosterman

New York Times best-selling author and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman presents a unique audio companion for Chuck Klosterman X, in which he contextualizes and reads from the collection of his best articles and essays, providing both a fascinating tour of the past decade and an ideal introduction to the mind of one of the sharpest and most prolific observers of our unusual times.

Klosterman has created an incomparable body of work in books, magazines, and newspapers and on the Web. His writing spans the realms of culture and sports while also addressing interpersonal issues, social quandaries, and ethical boundaries. Klosterman has written nine previous books, helped found and establish Grantland, served as the New York Times Magazine ethicist, worked on film and television productions, and contributed profiles and essays to outlets such as GQ, Esquire, The A.V. Club, Billboard, and The Guardian.

Chuck Klosterman X collects the most intriguing of those pieces, and, for this audio companion, Klosterman offers intimate and exclusive commentary about each piece, telling stories about each one, reading excerpts, and relating unexpected asides and digressions. Subjects include Breaking Bad, Lou Reed, zombies, KISS, Jimmy Page, Stephen Malkmus, steroids, Mountain Dew, Chinese democracy, the Beatles, Jonathan Franzen, Taylor Swift, Tim Tebow, Kobe Bryant, Usain Bolt, Eddie Van Halen, Charlie Brown, the Cleveland Browns, and many more cultural figures and pop phenomena.

©2017 Chuck Klosterman (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Eh, It was nice.

This was cool. Just kinda wish he would've simply read the articles rather than talk about them. I guess thats my bad for not reading the description. Probably the worst Chuck Klosterman book I've listened to, which means it's still very good.

a fun companion by Chuck himself.

I'm sure people have already noted this is not the book itself; but as someone who will download and listen to any interview or podcast with Chuck Klosterman, I found it very enjoyable nonetheless.

Klosterman keeps me thinking

I continue to enjoy Chuck Klosterman not only because he is an entertaining writer but I see him as the thinking man's writer who doesn't just talk about the what but the why, the larger cultural context or significance behind the band Kiss, death, and celebrityism and how these ideas have evolved. Klosterman is able to draw connections between events and people that seem irrelevant at first until you think differently a little like Malcolm Gladwell. It's helpful how he summarizes certain articles down to their essence in this book but in audio form it all goes by a little too fast. I was left wishing this piece was longer.

Fantastic companion to the book

I love that Chuck recorded this himself.
This is a great companion to the book because its like a behind thebscenes of what his motivations were when he was writing these pieces. The cotext he gives is really great.

Companion to Full Collection

This is a audio companion, or more so summarized version of the essay collection. I would have preferred a straight read through, but the commentary was very enjoyable.

Retrospective for Fans

I love Chuck Klosterman, particularly is ability to tell thoughtful stories in articulate manners. This book certainly does that and informed me about a variety of his pieces that I hadn’t known existed. However, it’s not up to the level of his other book. This is mainly reviews of short pieces he has written in the early 2000s without the depth or narrative to tie them together. This is his Spaghetti Incident. For true fans only.

not entire book -analysis by chuck k himself

I've read all of chuck klosterman's books and this is my first audio experience. it was awesome since chuck klosterman, himself, presents a brief 3-5 minute segment about each of the 30ish essays in the hard copy. nearly all are available for free online if you want the original essay.

Not the full text

I am a huge fan of Klosterman and really enjoy listening to him talk, usually on a podcast these days. So discovering this was not actually him reading “X...” but more just providing commentary on the essays themselves was not totally disappointing, but I feel like I may have thought twice about buying the audiobook if I had realized this. I guess I felt a little cheated although I don’t think it was anyone’s intention. Right from the get-go he says that he is not going to read the book and I did observe that the length of this audiobook is considerably shorter than others I own, so I am sure this info is available. I would call this a fine companion to the book, probably best listened to after reading the full text.

Bait and Switch

I was expecting him to read the Essays not to talk about the Essays

Not the actual book

This is presented as the full book, but it's actually just an audio companion to the full book. It's cool that there's a different experience for audio, but when it's this much less content than the actual book, it should cost much less. Kind of feel topped off.