Eating the Dinosaur (2009), an original collection of essays on media, technology, celebrity, and perception.
Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006), a collection of articles, previously published columns, and a semi-autobiographical novella.
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (2003), a best-selling collection of original pop culture essays.
The Nineties (to be released February 2022).
But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past (2016).
I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined) (2013).
Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story (2005), a road narrative focused on the relationship between rock music, mortality, and romantic love.
Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural Nörth Daköta (2001), a humorous memoir/history on the phenomenon of glam metal.
Klosterman is the author of eleven books and two sets of cards. In 2021, Klosterman appeared on Storybound (podcast), backed by an original Storybound remix with Portico Quartet. It visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear in the future to those who will perceive it as the distant past. His best-selling ninth book, But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past, was published June 7, 2016. It focuses on the paradox of villainy within a heavily mediated culture. His eighth book, titled I Wear the Black Hat, was published in 2013. In 2015, Klosterman appeared on episodes 6 and 7 of the first season of IFC show Documentary Now! as a music critic for the fictional band "The Blue Jean Committee". In 2012, Klosterman appeared in the documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits about musical group LCD Soundsystem Klosterman's extended interview with the group's frontman James Murphy is woven throughout the film. He quickly vanished after, with Carl giving the explanation of "He had to go do a book tour and also he didn't like how I kept calling him 'pencilneck'". He also appeared in three episodes of the Adult Swim web feature Carl's Stone Cold Lock of the Century of the Week, discussing the year's football games as an animated version of himself and trying (unsuccessfully) to plug his book as Carl cuts him off each time. In 2020, he co-hosted a podcast titled "Music Exists" with Chris Ryan as part of The Ringer podcast network. Klosterman was an original member of Grantland, a now-defunct sports and pop culture web site owned by ESPN and founded by Bill Simmons. In 2008, Klosterman spent the summer as the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the Leipzig University's Institute for American Studies in Germany. Though initially recognized for his rock writing, Klosterman has written extensively about sports and began contributing articles to ESPN's on November 8, 2005. His magazine work has been anthologized in Da Capo Press's Best Music Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has written for GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. From 2002 to 2006, Klosterman was a senior writer and columnist for Spin. Career Īfter college, Klosterman was a journalist in Fargo, North Dakota, and later a reporter and arts critic for the Akron Beacon Journal in Akron, Ohio, before moving to New York City in 2002. He graduated from Wyndmere High School in 1990 and from the University of North Dakota in 1994. He grew up on a farm in nearby Wyndmere, North Dakota, and was raised Roman Catholic. Klosterman was born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, the youngest of seven children of Florence and William Klosterman.