“I don’t plan talks. I show up and look at the crowd and try to get a sense of what they want,” Klosterman said, although explaining that he will not be aimlessly wandering through random topics in his time on stage. “It’s kind of depends on what’s in the news.”
Entitled “Stranger Than Fiction: An Evening with Author Chuck Klosterman” the evening will be a look at how pop culture becomes inextricably linked with our memories, how it helps us understand the world and what this says about us, as individuals and as a society.
He is a best-selling author of six non-fiction books and two novels. He has written for a host of publications and currently covers sports and popular culture for ESPN and serves as “The Ethicist” for the New York Times Magazine.
In that latter role, he responds to readers’ questions involving ethical issues in a newspaper column he describes as “thinking about the experience of being alive.”
It’s a look at ethical dilemmas but he attempts to get at the center of a problem.
“It’s not like Ann Landers when you try to give this person specific advice, but looking at the situation and get at the aspect of the problem that is universal,” Klosterman said. “This is about people faced with ethics in an emotionally-charged atmosphere. It’s a different kind of criticism.”
Klosterman grew up on a farm in North Dakota and earned a journalism degree from the University of North Dakota, worked for a newspaper in Fargo, N.D. and later worked for the Akron Beacon-Journal. He wrote his first book while working in Akron.
He then got a job with Spin Magazine in New York, wrote a column for Esquire for four years and now works for ESPN and the New York Times. Mixed in with that was writing seven more books. Six of his nonfiction books have made the New York Times best-sellers list.
“I’ve been fortunate in my career. I never fathomed this. In college, I hoped someday I would work as a reporter and maybe someday write a book,” he said. “I never dreamed I’d be standing in Brooklyn talking to a writer in Ohio, where I am going to speak. That’s how life works.”
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