Big Wangs Blog: IV

It is not very often the a young man such as myself finds a writer that he can connect to. You see, I have never been much of a reader. It was always hard for me to have interest in a book. They never really grabbed me. During the first quarter of this year, my good friend and the girl next door Annie Elizabeth Aries informed me that she was currently reading a book that the brilliant and dashing Mr. Potts turned her onto. It was called The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman. (see below for report) She talked this book up so much to me that I decided to read it for second quarter. I enjoyed the writing style so much that I looked for other books by this Author. Turns out, Klosterman has quite the track record. The book I landed on for this quarter Is called IV A Decade Of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas.

This novel is unlike most books I've ever read. It consists of three sections. Things that are true, Things that Might Be True, and Something that isn't true At All. The first section consists of interviews and profiles of everything ranging from athletes to actors to musicians. I really enjoy the way he constructs his interviews. He is able to provide multiple perspectives. He successfully befriends his subjects while simultaneously being able to ask critiquing questions. These pages are also loaded with footnotes and secondary thoughts Klosterman had after the fact. The second section is made up of opinion articles. These essays also have footnotes based on his present thought process. The cool part about this section, is that the stories are preceded with hypothetical questions. These questions are used to open your eyes to the section you are about to read. One of the Questions I found interesting was one in which Mr. Klosterman asked his readers to envision themselves away on business, and receiving news that the plane your spouse was on went down in the middle of the ocean. After a month of mourning, you see a national headline that there were survivors found from your spouses plane. After investigation, you find that your wife lived through the crash and survived on a nearby island with one other person. In the press conference you notice this person is very attractive, you also learn that these two only survived because they had each other. After finally reuniting with your spouse, you question the idea of asking if she stayed faithful. Would it be more appropriate to never ask? Would cheating be justified in these circumstances? Klosterman then rolls into a story relating relationships. In the third and final section, There is a beginning of a fictional short story. This is a departure for Klosterman in the sense that he usually writes in non-fiction. The main character, jack, is rumored to have similar traits to Klosterman. He claims the character is completely fictional.

All in all, this book is a solid read. I would strongly suggest this book to anybody that enjoys music. Klosterman loves to write about artists and their inside stories. Also if your a deep thinker, The rhetorical questions provide some cool situations to think about. I would give this book four Big Wangs out of five.