Chuck Klosterman, the pop culture author and essayist you either love or hate (or love to hate), has penned “Downtown Owl,” his first novel. “It was incredibly difficult,” he told City Pages. “Way more difficult than I anticipated. The process was much slower. I guess I was a little cavalier about it going in. I knew it would be different, but I didn’t quite realize how hard it would be.”

Best known for his essays for SPIN, Esquire and ESPN, as well as “Fargo Rock City,” his breakout memoir about growing up metal in rural North Dakota, Klosterman’s debut novel doesn’t stray too far from home, taking place in the fictional town of Owl, North Dakota and revolving around ts seemingly unrelated oddball residents, like Mitch Hrlicka, high school football star. Though the novel treads in familiar territory, it is simultaneously a departure for the author, who is hoping to branch out. “I love AC/DC,” he told Salon in a recent interview, “But I don’t want to be Angus Young. I want to be Jeff Tweedy.” That publication said of the novel, “It is, at times, laugh-out-loud funny, but it is also poignant and sad,” the latter adjectives not frequently associated with Klosterman’s material.

But is it any good?

Entertainment Weekly says: “The best thing about Chuck Klosterman’s first novel, ‘Downtown Owl,’ is that it reads exactly like a Chuck Klosterman book. You might also say — if you wanted to sound like the wiseacre author of ‘Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs’ himself, with his flair for embracing everything and (often maddeningly) its opposite — that the worst thing about ‘Downtown Owl’ is that it reads exactly like a Chuck Klosterman book.”

LA Times says: “Too many of the characters here are nearly interchangeable… Even without that, I yearned for some sort of conclusion, or resolution, or something, however open-ended or specious. Instead, the book simply ends.”

AP says: “The sum does not quite feel as good as its composite parts. There are linking elements and a plot — albeit a mostly actionless one until the end of the book — but “Owl” feels slightly disjointed. The abruptness makes it feel more like a first novel than it should.”

Cleveland’s Plain Dealer says: “In its best moments, ‘Downtown Owl’ channels Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegone with its knowing humor. It understands the way Bible study groups can serve as proxy therapy sessions, or the confidence with which an Owl resident can say, “I have a friend from college who lives just outside of Chicago, so I’ve eaten in restaurants in that area and I have an understanding of that life.”"

And no critique of Klosterman’s work can be complete with the infamous NY Press piece by Mark Ames, who, despite his embarrassing rage over not being as successful as Klosterman, musters an admirable skewering: “Klosterman is, quite simply and almost literally, an ass. His soft, saggy face bears a disturbing resemblance to a 50-year-old man’s failing, hairless back end. His tiny, red mouth is a sphincter twisting to a pained close 40 seconds after taking a brutal pounding from Peter North. To round it out, he has a mop of ironically uncombed, dyed-yellow hair and thick-rimmed glasses that look like they were placed on the ass as a frat prank, like a wig and sunglasses thrown on an old jack-o-lantern.”

You can read an excerpt of the novel here.

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