What's the Hardest Thing About Writing a Profile?

Chuck Klosterman is a journalist and the author of eleven books, including his latest, The Nineties.

”Selling out… was very much injected into the way I understood the world…. And I am now supposed to do all of these interviews and all of these podcasts promoting this book. And because it's a book about the nineties… it feels incredibly uncomfortable to me…. I think young people assume that selling out is only about money: that if you try to do something to make money, that means you're selling out, because the word ‘sell’ is in there. But that's not really how it was. I mean, what you were selling out was this idea of your integrity. And what your integrity was, was somehow not doing anything to make other people like you.”

Show notes:

• @CKlosterman
• chuckklostermanauthor.com
• Klosterman on Longform
• 00:00 The Nineties (Penguin Press • 2022)
• 10:00 Capitalist Realism (Mark Fisher • Zer0 Books • 2009)
• 15:00 Klosterman's SPIN archive
• 29:00 Fargo Rock City (Scribner • 2001)
• 30:00 Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs (Scribner • 2003)
• 31:00 Killing Yourself to Live (Scribner • 2005)
• 57:00 "A 12th L.A. Lakers Title and Remembering Eddie Van Halen with Ryen Russillo and Chuck Klosterman" (The Bill Simmons Podcast • 2020)

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