Tag: sports

While pop-culture satire is perhaps what Chuck Klosterman is most well-known for, he is certainly no one-trick pony. He has proven successful in his ability to both write fiction and non-fiction, covering a wide array of topics from music and society to sports and morality. Most recently, he has even expanded into the realm of advice giving, so-to-speak, with his new-found role as the Ethicist at The New York Times Magazine. “Here’s the thing, though,” Dan Kozikowski writes about Klosterman in an article in The Monarch Review. When it comes to writing and speaking about sports, “Chuck is the real deal.” In the rest of the interview, however, Kozikowski also explains how many of the author's characteristics have lent themselves perfectly to his success in various genres.

“This is a man who really, truly loves sports,” the interviewer writes, explaining how this contributes to the insightful and in-depth writing that Klosterman contributes to the sports and pop culture site Grantland. “At this point in my life,” Klosterman says in the interview, “I’m self-aware to realize that people’s affinities for a specific team, their hometown team…is the need to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. But once you’re aware of that need, how can it still be there?” It is this type of deeper thinking that makes his work so fascinating, as he transcends the obvious, surface-level analysis to argue that sports is about more than just athletes playing a game—it's about the emotions and storylines that connect with passion fans everywhere. “He is a man blessed with a talent for using the extraordinarily commonplace and mundane…as a springboard to write about something that arouses curiosity on a much deeper level,” the interviewer writes. He is also an “interesting” person, the article continues, but interesting in the sense of being adept at “arousing curiosity.” This particular skill is something that he has honed in both his writing, and his entertaining and provocative keynotes.

Finally, the interview describes Klosterman as “being in accordance with reason.” His ability to apply the “tools of reason” to any argument or theory makes him ideal at providing ethical guidance to NYT Magazine readers. With a new book, I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined), forthcoming next year, it seems like Klosterman has no plans of slowing down any time soon.