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Good on you, Chuck.

I've always enjoyed Chuck Klosterman, in a low-key kind of way. Meaning, I don't have to run right out and read every new book he writes (which I DO have to do with, say, William Langewiesche and Paul Feig, assuming, of course, that Feig ever writes another book--pretty please?), but when I see his name I'll usually give the book or magazine article a quick perusal. I did particularly enjoy his essay collection Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low-Culture Manifesto, and he's sometimes got interesting things to say in his Esquire column, but I can't say I ever, you know, liked him liked him.

Owl But I was pleased to see him branching out into fiction with the publication of his new novel, Downtown Owl, and I was even more pleased to check it out and be thoroughly amused by it. Klosterman, a North Dakota native, sets his novel in Owl, a small town in North Dakota, during the 1980s. Ostensibly the plot device (at least toward the end) is a killer blizzard that has repercussions (to say the least) for many of the book's main characters, but it's really a fairly clever little look at small-town America.

"But the one quality that truly drove the citizens of Owl bonkers--and particularly the old men who had coffee at Harley's Cafe every day at 3:00 p.m.--was Chet's intimacy with his dog. Chet had a black Labrador retriever, and he kept it inside his apartment. He turned a hunting animal into a house pet. This was less reasonable than talking to a brick wall. He would bring his dog inside the bar, and the dog often sat in the front seat of his Camaro, a vehicle which supposedly cost sixteen thousand dollars." (p. 18, about a character referred to by the locals as the 'Dog Lover.')

That made me laugh, as there is a certain set of the population that firmly believes animals live outside, not inside. I also enjoyed this tidbit:

"Traditionally, Roman Catholics are not big Bible scholars. Catholics focus on the Gospels; the rest of the Bible is what Protestants arbitrarily memorize for no obvious reason." (p. 84.

It's a great read. Chuck is starting to make me sick, actually, with his proficiency in both nonfiction and fiction. But I'll get over it.

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