Chuck Klosterman is awesome. Not in the awe-inspiring way a hero might be awesome, but in the happy-accident way that a very seemingly regular guy with great writing talent became a best-selling author through some of the oddest series of circumstances is awesome.
He spoke on Tuesday to a crowded room of people, many of which had books in hand (I had Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs), nodding and laughing at Chuck's sense of humor. He's certainly odd, but oddly fascinating in that he reminds me of one of my good friends in manner and speech, yet he seems so different from anybody I know. I think that reading his book caused me to imprint an unreal image on him (as would reading any book by any author that you had never met previously), but now I can at least say that he's a pretty good speaker.
He read a selection from the section of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs in which he lists 23 questions that he would ask someone and, depending on their answers, decide if he could love them or not. He played this game with the audience, and it was a lot of fun (if long). I don't know that we gave enough good answers that he fell in love with us, but there was plenty of endearment for him on our parts.
After the talk, I thought long and hard about a question I wanted to ask him today (Wednesday), as I was going to participate in a roundtable with him. He was great, again, but I fumbled over all the questions I wanted to ask, remembered vaguely what it related to, and simply said, "Your essay on porn was one of my favorites," referring to such an essay in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. He nodded and seemed unsure of what to say to that, not because of the subject, but because there was actually no question. No point of discussion. When he was prompted again later by someone else, it became a commentary on the usability of the internet, which is interesting but not what I so feebly tried to dig out of my poor exhausted brain.
So, to make myself feel better, I am going to provide a list of five questions that, if I had the whole day to do over again, I would pick one (or two) questions to ask Mr. Klosterman. Without further ado:
FIVE THINGS I COULD AND/OR WOULD HAVE ASKED CHUCK KLOSTERMAN IF THERE WASN'T A GAP BETWEEN MY BRAIN AND SPINAL CORD- "You seem to be a pretty popular writer just from what I've seen and from your talk last night. By a pretty fair definition, you have become a part of pop culture. I think you're a great writer, but I am curious: do you think you're a good writer? Or do you think that you owe a large part of your success to your positioning of your writing in the spectrum of what is "cool" and what is "pop culture?"
- "Concept albums in music are often either grandiose or completely underwhelming -however, they give the bands another way to actually own their music. In your experience with interviewing quite a few musicians and encountering their egos, do you believe that the concept album is more a tribute to the self (musician) or social group (band), posturing for a place in music history, a service to the fans, or to simply intellectualize the music?"
- "Last night, you referred to the bleak outlook for the print media because of the technological age (which I feel was a very valid assessment of where things are going), but I was curious on how you think the Web 2.0 movement will affect other media, with the advent of sites like YouTube and Wikipedia and other advances like downloadable TV shows, media critique blogs, photo hosting, and news aggregators (like Digg)? We know our culture will never be the same, but in what way do you believe these things have affected the trajectory of our culture?"
- "What one cultural idea, statement, fashion, political ideology, fiction, meme, etc., have Americans adopted as part of their American identity and internalized, perhaps without realizing it? If it makes the question easier, you can look specifically at a generation."
- "Judging from your comments last night, you're not a huge fan of Family Guy. I'm just curious as to why it doesn't appeal to you, and whether or not you believe the show has actually raised awareness and perhaps saved some cultural bits and pieces from completely disappearing from memory?"
*sigh* If only. C'est la vie.
Feel free to answer some of the questions! At least someone will have put them to good use.
5-30-07
CT 7:44 P.M.
IT 2:44 A.M.
Yes, it’s really late. But I wanted to get this done before I went to bed so I didn’t leave anything out like I’m sure I did last time.
Today we got up at 8:00 to get to the university by 9. From there, we walked to the Piazza del Santissimo Annuziata. There they have an orphanage, which we’d actually seen beforehand in our wandering travels. What we hadn’t seen was the actual church Santissimo Annuziata. It was free, so we went ahead and wandered in, even though we had an reservation at the Accademia at 10:00.
At first when we walked into the Annuziata, it was a just a foyer with frescos (it sounds weird to say that, but in Florence frescos are everywhere). Then we walked into the sanctuary. I’ve never seen anything so ornate, so ostentatious, so beautiful, or perhaps even so sacred. Gilded from the bottom of the walls to the center of the ceiling, with inscriptions in the ceiling, a fresco, the tomb of a pope, the tomb of a martyr, and a painted dome, it was the singular most beautiful thing I’ve seen while I’ve been here thus far. And we haven’t even been in Santa Croce, where the master, Michelangelo, is buried.
Annuziata was extremely impressive. Something I saw that made me think was the actual painting in the dome of the church (ital.- chiesa). Unlike the Duomo and the Baptistery (which I said were different in style, but I found out they’re also different in theology – the Duomo includes room for purgatory while the Baptistery has the black and white of those saved and those condemned), the dome of Annuziata has no crux/apex painting. There is an obvious ascension of those involved, men and women clamoring for heaven, but heaven isn’t shown. It’s a yellow-to-white cloudiness, and then the bright light of the sun shining through the absolute center. No assumption, just an assertion.
From there, we hurried to the Accademia, which is where the David is held. They had old paintings and some statues, but that’s about it besides David. Interestingly enough, I saw an Andrea del Sarto painting (Browning wrote a poem about him that I really like). Even more interestingly, they had the incompletes, or the “slaves” that Michelangelo didn’t complete. These are blocks of marble, six and seven feet tall, that have the beginnings of statues coming out of them but were not finished. They were impressive, even if their description panels were a tad overdramatic. Calling an unfinished statue “human condition in finite and infinite” etc. etc. is avoiding calling a spade a spade. He didn’t like it so he dropped his chisel, had brunch, and then started another.
David was huge. If I hadn’t seen the movie Children of Men, I would have had no idea it was that large. But since that surprised was ruined for me, it wasn’t as impressive as it could have been. They had a 3D model of the statue that you could use virtual reality to move, but it wasn’t showing anything you couldn’t see by just looking at Il David. Interesting side note: he’s uncircumcised. Or at least, I was told he was. I wouldn’t have known how to tell, so I’ll take my friends’ words for it.
They also had a plaster museum for statues mostly built between the 18th and 19th centuries. These were the plaster models the sculptors used to do the huge stone statues around the Comune di Firenze. Then they had more paintings… And then they had the most expensive gift shop ever. Oh, did I mention you couldn’t take pictures? Yeah. That’s why. They make a killing off of selling stuff with him all over it. I bought stuff for Gran and Mama – I mean, really tiny stuff – and it cost me 16.80 Euros. That’s insane.
I saw some of my friends and we went upstairs to look at the XIV century stuffs. They even had some Russian saint paintings. Otherwise, it was a lot of gold and simplistic paintings. I’m more for the later stuff, which has depth, soul, and realism. It’s all impressive, but some of it is definitely more so.
After this, we went outside and waited on other people. I put on my sunglasses and nearly fell asleep – sitting on the sidewalk. We missed the other girl we were waiting on, so we went to catch up with her. They all started looking at bracelets. Since I had a whole 5 Euro and some Euro coins on me, I decided to head back. I stopped and got a 1.50 gelato (I’m not going to get to have them again, at least for a long time) and then stopped a grocery store that was strictly vegetables and got asparagus for my dinner for 1.90.
I went back to the apartment, downloaded pictures, and decided to “lay down and read.” I laid down, read two pages, and passed out on the couch. For four hours.
I woke up, refreshed at least, and got a call from Dr. Bane. He had my luggage and was going to drop it off at the school. I got my journal entries loaded on my memory stick and headed out. Shops close down from around 3-5 or 4-6 here and open again until whenever, usually 8, so the internet place wasn’t open. I went very slowly to the school (my right calf had been killing me for a few days now), explored a bit, went in the school, grabbed my bag, and came back (slowly) to the apartment. Dr. Bane tried to call me three times, but we couldn’t connect. We ended up texting each other. I told him everything was fine with my bag and he said to meet at the school at 11:00 for the Gli Uffizi tomorrow. I fixed my dinner, brought to you by 14 Euro, and had cinnamon peaches later on…. As well as another round of asparagus for my midnight reading snack.
The reason I’m up so late is because I’m behind reading for class. I found out on Tuesday that I had totally misunderstood the assignments and that I was supposed to read about three times what I thought I was going to have to, so I’m sharing with my roommate. I just read four chapters of the Aeneid and have one to go.
Hurrah! Off to bed. Kind of sad that’s all I did today, but when you take four hour naps because you’re just that exhausted, it severely limits what you actually do.
