It’s next to impossible for some writers to escape how their initial success defines them, and Chuck Klosterman certainly became a successful writer, initially, for a specific reason. Making his career as a kind of critic/pop guru at Spin magazine, and then with his debut essay collection Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, you could say Klosterman invented and perfected the culturally savvy voice that so many bloggers rely on today. (I wouldn't be doing what I do if not for him).
But what of Klosterman the fiction writer? Did literary society want this cultural critic/ music journalist/sports writer to become a novelist? Maybe not. But he is one, now, and I’m happy to say that 2011’s The Visible Man (just out in paperback this June) is one of the best crossover science fiction novels I’ve read in years.
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