Book Review: “I Wear The Black Hat” & “But What If We’re Wrong?” — Chuck Klosterman

I’ve got a good one for ya. A two banger. One author, two books, both supplied to me by a fellow co-worker.

The first being about villainy and the second being about almost the whole entire world and everything we know (or don’t know) to be in it. I do not go into as much detail for the first as I read it longer ago and failed to take adequate notes as it was on loan to me.. my guy needed his book back. The second, more fresh in memory.

These two books take what is life and flip I on it’s head. They really make you think. You can tell the author, Chuck Klosterman, really spends a lot of time thinking.

I spend a lot of time thinking. I’ve tended to say I ‘think’ the way other people ‘feel’.

I tend to see myself in his writing and I find that his writing mirrors mine in not just the way it is written, but especially in the way he gets his point across and then inevitably contradicts it in some way. He writes from a superficial and self elevated surface. I know that’s is how I feel when I write. I find this author’s arguments to be valid, solid, and well said (shoot, he even has an index and footnotes in his books), but I can’t help but find him a bit of a cock. And since I equate his writing style with my own, I also find my writing to be a bit intrinsic and self observed — and I tend to be a bit of a cock.

I mean he even makes it a point to say that he “gets fixated on the connotation and definition of specific words” and I know I do the exact same thing. There are times where I meticulously masticate (or should I have just kept it simple and said ‘rack my brain’) over the utilization of words in the exact right way in order to convey to the reader exactly what I want them to think. You can have intentions for how your point is to be interpreted, but in the end you cannot control how your point lands… (yet I continue to fuss over it). So much so and so to the point that it gets lost in the attempt, but in my own mind, I’ve always felt that there are exact words that need to be used. The English language is so broad in its definitions and multi-meanings of words that that it has taught me to scrutinize over the finite ability to use the perfect word and is particular meaning.

I forget these are meant to be book reviews of sort.

…

It’s funny, Chuck seems to go on and on and most of what he has to say awakens or enlightens me in some way. There are many things I agree with him on after he’s made his point. There are also many things that seem a little far stretched and chaotic — often, his takes on life that are stretched just a bit too thin. But mostly his profound ability to express new and unequivocal ideas (at lease from how I attempt interpret them) gets lost when it comes time to make his final point — to summarize it all and make it all make sense. To wrap it up with one final all-encompassing blow that really hits home. But he doesn’t. Many of his arguments or theories or future possibilities of the human condition (whatever you want to call them) lack solid ground. They lack a definitive standpoint.

A usual note of a good argument includes at lease one paragraph addressing any anti-theses that might contradict the point being thrown forward. But here in Klostermans writing, the anti-theses seem to fly in at the end of every argument and thought. And again I’ll say this, most of what he’s saying makes sense, it’s comprehensible, and it’s intriguing. It genuinely makes you think. But at the end of it I’m left feeling as though I’ve not actually read anything. Mumbo jumbo… the type of stuff you might find yourself talking about with some random at a bar (the type of convo that gets old fast and you look to escape it from the start).

The staggering lack of punctuality make reading it relatively meaningless. None of it really matters when you consistently hedge your bet the entire way through. And it’s not just the way I feel lost in the medley of which standpoint I’m thinking he’ll side on… it’s also in the way it’s organized and laid out physically in the pages. His chapters are reasonably pieced together, but they are broken up into so many sections (1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6…..) that it never really comes to fruition. By 6 I can’t even remember what the original argument was, especially since 3 and 4 had absolutely nothing to do with anything. Don’t get me wrong 3 and 4 were interested, but they took my attention off of what I think I was really supposed to focus on — on the connection between what he said at 1 and again at 6. And it’s chapter after chapter of this.

Yet Chuck still intrigues me. For example in I Wear The Black Hat, He says he doesn’t like LeBron James, but wants him to succeed. He does like Kanye West, but wants him to fail… There’s a good chapter on this and its very interesting if you like those two superstars, but by the end of it, I still don’t really understand why. Reading Klosterman is like reading the thoughts of someone who’s trying to read the thoughts of their own mind before and after they occur (and this person knows a lot about a lot of things). Its slightly maddening but damn is it interesting. Come on, let’s go down the rabbit hole.

Here are some examples which I think sum him up well as a person and in writing:

• Citing Joseph Campbell in a rather long footnote where Chuck is meandering through the ideas of “rock and roll” and all its varying distinctions and connections to story telling, referencing the fact that: “all religions are true, but none are literal.”
• On philosophy, history, art, and merit he states this: “History is defined by people who don’t really understand what they are defining.” (I.e. the cultural masses).
• He makes several attempts to second guess staunch cosmological, numerical, and data driven constants such as gravity and Newtons Law. Mostly countering Neil deGrasse Tyson’s assertion that scientists need not ask “why” if they can explain things like gravity simply by the fact that they know exactly how it works mathematically or scientifically. Klosterman’s whole premise is to ask WHY. And therefore he never be satisfied with an answer. Why does the world work the way it does? I don’t know… Ask yourself if that question really matters.
• On the changing discourse of history and how its recorded and interpreted AND on the possibilities of living in a simulation: “…while its absurd to think that all of history never really happened, it’s almost as absurd to think that everything we know about history is real.” He goes on to ask, “what significant historical event is most likely wrong? And not because of things we know that contradict it, but because of the way wrongness works.” Do you see how this man thinks? The way wrongness works…. What does that even mean?
• Again on how history is remembered and specifically on how oral history used to be important but now we can just google the facts about everything: “The importance of any given memory was validated by the fact that someone remembered it at all.” I still find this relevant and true, but from all my psychology classes, I know our memories are pretty wrong most of the time.

All of this mumbo jumbo… I’ll take it with a grain of salt for I am my own person with my own opinions. But it makes me think.

The more you think and learn, the less you can really be sure of. That’s the biggest point made in these two books. It’s wonderful to sit here and read this and be introduced to new concepts, understandings, and ways of thinking about the world; to see that other people either have similar or even more outlandish thoughts than you. But ultimately, knowing this just leads me down a path of uncertainty. I am sufficiently nestled into the groove of the middle road — always seeing both sides — it (life) could go this way or that way — in my knowledge of the existence of perspectives I am confident, but to have the ability to express that in some coherent manner and to know for certain which one is right, I have much doubt. For it is apparent that whatever more I learn the less I actually know, even perhaps in knowing that I am losing my mind. You can chose naïve realism and subdue this pattern of thinking by not choosing to think much at all. I have chosen to think and so therefore I have succumb to existential despair. I am stuck in the pages of 240 and 241 of But What if We’re Wrong? I hope if you read it one day that you’ll be able to make it through them.

Having read through Chuck’s points on LeBron and Kanye and the Beatles and Neil deGrasse Tyson and so many others I am simply left with this. I have read a lot of pages here between these two books and although I have learned a lot I feel as though I know nothing more than when I started — perhaps less. But I could be wrong about that.