Minnesota Reads

It’s obvious where Chuck Klosterman came up with the premise for his novel The Visible Man. Old Red Beard’s 2009 book of essays Eating the Dinosaur includes a chapter about watching through the window a twentysomething woman who lived in an efficiency apartment similar to his own in Fargo. Making dinner, working out on a [...]

Here’s a confession: I did not read Chuck Klosterman’s entire book Eating the Dinosaur. This slighting came with his permission, nay, his insistence. Klosterman busts through the fourth wall in his essay about football to suggest that if you aren’t into football, you can jump this chapter: ” … I will understand if you skip [...]

Minn Post’s Amy Goetzman writes about the popularity of writing programs in trying financial times and talks to Amy Shearn a U of M MFA Graduate about her first novel, How Far is the Ocean From Here. Largehearted Boy’s Best Books of 2008 continues to grow and grow. I found this on Larghearted boy, and [...]

I really would like to write more about this book and display my academic prowess in dissecting Chuck’s message to the world. However, there is no message in this book to dissect. Is it a portrait of how depressing small town life is in North Dakota? Perhaps. I grew up in a small town in [...]

The Downtown Journal interviews Klosterman about Downtown Owl and some of his answers give me a heartattack. For example: “you got to make sure it’s interesting, entertaining and clear. It has to be interesting in the sense that it should try to affect the way people view themselves or view the world. It should be [...]

In a Pop Matters interview Chuck Klosterman says, “It was harder to write fiction, but maybe that was only because I’d never done it before. I can’t remember if writing Fargo Rock City was hard or easy.” The fact that he’s never written fiction before is painfully, achingly, stupefyingly, annoyingly obvious. First, there is the [...]

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman follows a few months in the lives of 17-year-old level-headed, slightly depressed, Mitch — a mediocre athlete who’s ideal bedroom would be as sterile as a hotel room. Julia, the 23-year-old recently-hired history teacher who’s resale value skyrockets because she’s new in town and she’s in a town of men [...]

GalleyCat has an interview with Jeffrey Friedman director of “Howl” a movie about the life and times of poet Allen Ginsberg. When I was in college I memorized large chunks of the poem. So enamored with the poem that I named my fictional magazine for a magazine writing class Howl. Also, the Wikipedia entry for [...]

A few weeks ago over at How Was The Show, the musicgeeks were getting all hopped up about all the great music coming to Minnesota in October, I mean Rocktober. I was just updating the Minnesota Reads calendar and noticed that booknerds can have just as much fun in Rocktober as their musicgeek brethren. Here [...]