Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
    Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
    Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
    Audiobook7 hours

    Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

    Written by Chuck Klosterman

    Narrated by Patrick Lawlor

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock 'n' roll all the way. Within the span
    of twenty-one days, Chuck had three relationships end-one by choice, one by
    chance, and one by exhaustion. He snorted cocaine in a graveyard. He walked a halfmile through a bean field. A man in Dickinson, North Dakota, explained to him why we have fewer windmills than we used to. He listened to the KISS solo albums and the Rod Stewart box set.

    At one point, poisonous snakes became involved. The road is hard. From the Chelsea Hotel to the swampland where Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane went down to the site where Kurt Cobain blew his head off, Chuck explored every brand of rock star demise. He wanted to know why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing. . . and what this means for the rest of us.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 1, 2005
    ISBN9781400171705
    Author

    Chuck Klosterman

    Chuck Klosterman is the bestselling author of many books of nonfiction (including The Nineties, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, I Wear the Black Hat, and But What If We're Wrong?) and fiction (Downtown Owl, The Visible Man, and Raised in Captivity). He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Esquire, Spin, The Guardian, The Believer, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years, and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons. 

    More audiobooks from Chuck Klosterman

    Related to Killing Yourself to Live

    Related audiobooks

    Personal Memoirs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      My Gilt-edged Cuttings Book

      Nov 17, 2021

      Should diamond jubilees exist in journalism, I would be celebrating one around now. It’s 60 years since I first saw my byline in print. It was a pretentious film review in a university newspaper. But from then on, Fleet Street was my calling, and I’v

      4 min read

    • Article

      Nikki Sixx

      Oct 12, 2021

      Nikki Sixx
      14 min read

    • Article

      I REMEMBER… Annie Nightingale

      Jul 19, 2022

      I REMEMBER… Annie Nightingale
      5 min read

    • Article

      5 Minutes With… STUART COUPE

      Aug 6, 2023

      You've certainly lived a life! What was it like, at 66, revisiting all these memories and writing them down to put out into the world? More fun than maybe I imagined it would be – especially as I'd never really considered writing a memoir. I wanted t

      3 min read

    • Article

      What's The Meaning Of Life? Ask Protomartyr

      Sep 29, 2017

      Protomartyr lead singer and lyricist Joe Casey walks us through some of the thorny questions behind the band's new album, Relatives In Decent, track by track.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Mark Eitzel

      Feb 9, 2023

      Mark Eitzel
      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘We've Gone On Holiday By Mistake’

      Jun 28, 2023

      Is there somethingyou really miss when you're away? For the last 38 years, I would say my wife [Joan Washington, who died in 2021, aged 74]. Do you travel light? My luggage got lost flying to New York 22 years ago, and I swore I would never ever trav

      3 min read

    • Article

      LeTteR Bocks

      Aug 4, 2022

      ◻PLEASE find attached this trademark from a box of eggs, which appears to show a chicken lifting its leg to crack off an eggy one. Susan Butcher, Australia ◻FORMER Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for meeting an ex-KGB agent without h

      13 min read

    • Article

      Elvis Costello: ‘The OBE Is Just Another Bauble In My China Cabinet’

      Jan 6, 2022

      Best gig ever: 3.30 in the morning, sun coming up, watching from the front as you played to an uninterested crowd at Oxford’s Trinity College May ball, 1981. You must have thought you’d sold your soul to the devil. kiwisimmo The fee was good and we n

      6 min read

    • Article

      In One Ear

      Mar 16, 2021

      In One Ear
      3 min read

    • Article

      Mark Eitzel

      Feb 9, 2023

      Mark Eitzel
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Power of Two

      Feb 9, 2024

      The Power of Two
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Killing Yourself to Live

    4/5

    47 ratings20 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      At first, I thought I would love reading this -- it was Eggers-y (road-trip, life dilemmas, made fun of itself for being Eggers-y) and there were hip little jokes about popular music. But it lost steam about halfway through and his ending soliloquy (actually spoken by his editor) about whether anyone would actually care about his non-love story with little plot or personal development was a little too on-point. He should've taken her advice.
    • 4/5
      This is just as much about how he deals with his past relationships as it is about his "go to several places of rock-star deaths" mission. Read it if you like pop-culture, rock journalism type stuff.
    • 4/5
      A prominent voice in contemporary pop culture writing(in my opinion,but hipsters do tend to stick together),Klosterman's follow up to 2003's Sex,Drugs,And Cocoa Puffs is pure paperback gold.In this latest chronicle,we accompany Klosterman on a cross-country journey to visit the last resting places of famous(and some not so famous) music legends. The combination of music and solitude quickly find Klosterman on the sub-plot of his own life.While this self inventory,in theory, could have easily been the nerdy laments of a jaded 30 something,Klostermans wit and frequent references to pop culture and music keep the story whole and on track. We end up identifying with him and maybe even being a little jealous....because I dont know about you, but I would love to be paid to go on an adventure like this.
    • 4/5
      Really a great read/listen. Plenty of laugh out loud moments, and if you're about the same age as the author, there will be plenty of American cultural moments for you to share. Another reviewer said the author "came off as a jerk," which I get, but also about which I would like to theorize. Part of that, to me, is the pure honesty of a 30 yr old guy grappling with intimacy issues. The trip home to see mums and daddums explains a lot about the intimacy issues, but more importantly, I'd rather have this kind of honesty from a writer and risk occasional audience alienation than to read anything that smacked of pandering. For all the musing about love, he clearly had not found anything approximating a genuine love relationship at this point outside of his platonic friendships. Also, there's that proximity to the age 30, where EVERYONE in the history of people goes through that last existential push of what they think life should be versus what it really is, and that angst made all of us come off as a jerk at some point when we orbited that developmental stage (quit protesting - it did - you either were or will be slightly sanctimonious when you near 30, and if you weren't/don't, then maybe you're not living to your full intensity, so try harder until you offend someone who has lived through what you're going through and they give you that sad, gentle smile of recognition when you're being a dick). What I LOVE about this book is that he has retained enough of his sense of wonder that there's a sense of celebration to everything about life, warts and all. What I like less is that damn New York/urban snark that has pervaded far too many creators - in this work, Chuck only shows minor signs of the affliction, but it's enough to give me pause. Please, Chuck, when you find yourself skewing too cynical, go run in that North Carolina air to clear your head. Granted, 99.99% of comedy comes from anger and will naturally skew negative, but there's a good balance here of heart and snark. The performance for the audio book is great. Thanks to both the author and performer for a lovely afternoon (and the performer's voice pleasantly survived listening at hyper-speed).
    • 5/5
      Mostly about unrequited loves and crushes he reflects on durring a road trip around the nation, visiting memorial spots where rock stars died.
    • 4/5
      I am a sucker for pop culture and I like to be entertained. This book fit the bill. And yet, I wish the author didn't come off as such a jerk.

      Enjoyed the narration and found this audiobook perfect for commuting.
    • 3/5
      I didn't enjoy it quite as much as "Fargo Rock City" - it seemed fluffier. However, "Killing Yourself to Live" does give the reader a better understanding of who Chuck Klosterman really is - his fears, feelings, loves. It is more than just the music, but it is ALL about the music.
    • 3/5
      I bought this book because I really liked reading Xhuck Klosterman's articles in 'Spin' magazine. Turns out he doesn't work out so well when he has a whole book to ramble about Led Zeppln.The book has a really great premise (he travels to places where famous musicians have died in a quest to gain some insight into death, pop culture, and music), and it does have some really funny and really insightful parts.Too bad 80% of the book is about chicks Chuck Klosterman has made it with.
    • 4/5
      Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.
    • 4/5
      So, this was a book recommended to me by a co-worker a bit ago. He loves it and thought that I might find it enjoyable. I picked it up at the library, and it's one of those books that I'm glad that I read, but it will probably be quite a long time for me to read it again. (Similar to Catcher in the Rye for me.)Why? Because it's depressing. There were times I wanted to curl up into a ball and just cry during some of it. Part of it is that it's about death, rock and roll, and love. And I didn't always get the references to the music stuff (Klosterman is a reviewer with Spin), but there were some moments throughout the book that I was like "Oh. Shit.", where it hit me over the head like a two by four (that's been happening a lot, recently). Just little insights into people, or relationships. But, gotta say, my favourite line?I could never be one of those people who climb mountains recreationally; I'd be one of those clowns who dies halfway down Everest because I'd bring extra powdered cocoa instead of extra rope.Other than that, there were times that Klosterman felt like he was just driveling around while driving around the country, just sort of navel gazing, but sometimes, I'm a sucker for that. Plus, it's a traveling memoir thing, and music is super important to him, and those two things gave it more of a depth for me than if he'd just been navel gazing, so to speak. I listened to music for an hour or so afterwards, and in some ways, I listened to it differently than I might have before, if that makes sense. Where I was, what I was doing, the memories attached to it.And then, if anything, the following passage made it all worth reading this, feeling alienated and slightly depressed, this borderland place that it's not that I feel unhappy, but I'm not happy, and it's not that I'm numb, but I'm not feeling a lot outside of slightly disconnected. (Though, if the book is making me feel like that, then perhaps the writing is more intense than I'm giving it credit for.)We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. [...] They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real - but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.
    • 3/5
      The loose premise of he book is that Klosterman goes cross country to visit the sites at which various rock figures, some of marginal renown, have perished. More a book of late youth ruminations about the vagaries of love and attraction and trying to find the crossroad where the two meet. Not Klosterman's best but the guy is clever and entertaining to read. And pages 188-93 is some of the funniest shit I have ever read. Maybe not Klosterman's best but definitely worthwhile.
    • 5/5
      What is it about premature death that makes musicians so famous?That's the question that Spin editor Sia Michel used to convince Chuck Klosterman to embark on an epic road trip across America to visit the places where musicians met their demise.Killing Yourself to Live started out as a feature article for Spin, but ended up book-length when Klosterman decided to pack the story full of his musing on past lovers, turning this travelogue into a memoir. This article/book was supposed to follow a standard script. At the end of his journey, his coworker, Lucy asks him some questions."Are you going to be able to write a compelling story that will dissect the perverse yet undeniable relationship between celebrity and mortality? Will the narrative illustrate how society glamorizes dying in order to perpetuate the hope that death validates life? Will you be able to prove that living is dying, and that we're all slowly dying through every moment of life" (233)?That's not the story Klosterman came up with, however. In the end he realized that "love and death and rock 'n' roll are the same experience" (234).This memoir is painfully narcissistic (not to mention exploitative of his relationships), but his brutal honesty makes for compelling reading. Klosterman doesn't seem to care what the reader will think of him or his moral choices. Add to this his encyclopedic knowledge of rock and roll culture and you get Killing Yourself to Live: a window into the mind of one of our generation's best cultural critics.
    • 4/5
      I have Seth Cohen (The O.C.) to thank for introducing me to Chuck Klosterman. I spotted him reading Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs during an episode of The O.C., and the title of the book intrigued me so much that I had to hunt it down. It was entirely fitting that a geek of Seth's stature should be reading the work of a self-proclaimed music and pop culture geek. Of course, I use the word geek in an affectionate way, given that I myself am not entirely without geekiness (I actually took some notes while reading this book).Chuck Klosterman began his career as a journalist, writing mainly about music and popular culture. Killing Yourself To Live is his attempt to "understand why some rock stars don't start living until they die, why death equals credibility". Klosterman begins his journey at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, somewhat unsuccessfully. The hotel manager doesn't want him to talk about the hotel in his book, and insists that the room where Nancy Spungen died no longer exists. Undeterred, Klosterman picks up a rental car, stocks it with over 600 CDs for the trip, and sets off cross-country, taking in the site in Rhode Island where a fire killed over 100 Great White fans at a concert, the spot where Buddy Holly's plane came down, and a few others, culminating in a trip to Washington, where he visits Seattle and Aberdeen.Klosterman is an entertaining narrator, and the book is peppered with soundbites, musings and tenuous analogies drawn between films and music. Not since High Fidelity (the film mind, not the book), have I enjoyed hearing someone describe music in such detail before. Klosterman describes, compares and critically evaluates the music he loves (rock music mainly), though it's a meandering journey and digressions abound, mainly on the subject of his old girlfriends. He discloses a lot of personal detail about his relationships, and what went wrong with them, and there's quite an analogy near the end of the book where each ex-girlfriend is compared to a member of KISS.Near the beginning of the book, Klosterman states that "sexuality is 15% real and 85% illusion". Killing Yourself To Live is subtitled 85% Of A True Story. My powers of deduction are telling me that some of this book has been embellished somewhat, and at first I thought that this 15% illusion was to be found in the discussion of his relationships, and the almost unlikely fabulousness of the women who loved him. Then I thought it may have been in the characters he meets on his travels. I'm still undecided. The actual site visits are often fleeting and unremarkable, but that could be the point - even with the knowledge that someone died there to give a location meaning, years after the event it's just a location after all. Popular culture is assigning significance to the sites, and I think that Klosterman gets this completely. It could be argued that there is too much of the author in this book, but then maybe that's also the point. Klosterman is an avid consumer of music and films, and more importantly he is infectiously enthusiastic about his passions. I have Chuck Klosterman to thank for introducing me to the Dixie Chicks, following his discussion of their song There's Your Trouble in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. His writing has that effect on me. I'm off now to buy more Led Zeppelin albums.
    • 4/5
      Not his best, but its so post-modern and self aware I cant look away. Compelling to my dumbass 21 year old male brain at least
    • 4/5
      Klosterman travels to various sites of rock deaths, such as the field where Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane crashed and the club where Great White's concert ended in flames. Along the way he throws out his usual continuous stream of pop-culture references and contemplates the state of his love life. Light and breezy, it's entertaining reading.
    • 5/5
      probably my favorite of his, Klosterman travels around the US to different grave yards and murder grounds of famous rockers throughout the ages including Elvis, Kurt Cobain, and Jeff Buckley. his style is immaculate and very catchy. this book came out during the time I was all syked when new Klosterman came out. so yeah, I got it signed haha.
    • 3/5
      OK, so Chuck Klosterman veers into, well, nonsense quite often, but it's wonderfully yummy nonsense and I'd still marry him in an instant if he asked. Not that he will. But I'm just sayin'.
    • 5/5
      A fun listen.A man and a woman are happily married for 10 years. During the tenth year the man dies unexpectedly. At the funeral the (now-) widow meets a man and greatly enjoys her conversation with him. A week later the widow kills her sister.What happened?If you're normal, you say that the widow killed the sister because she was talking to her husband.If you're schizophrenic, you say that the widow killed the sister because she enjoyed the conversation with the man at the funeral and wants to go to another funeral in order to see him again.Of the folks I've posed this question to, I've only had one who gave the schizophrenic response.
    • 4/5
      While writing at Spin, Klosterman is sent on an "epic" assignment of his choice. He decides to road trip around the United States, visiting places where rock stars have met their ends. As usual, Klosterman's obscure music knowledge is incredibly interesting to read about - learning lots of assorted trivia without having to seek it out on your own. I loved that this book also included an inspection of his own relationships, including the "deaths" of two of them. Klosterman has a great way of writing intimately about himself, but somehow taking himself out of it. I think he gives out just enough personal information to leave the reader to complete the story, without exploiting those he knows by spilling his guts across the page.
    • 3/5
      The story has an interesting plot base and the style in which Klosterman tells it is pretty awesome for a while. But towards the end the story sort ofbreaks down into introspective philosophical preachiness. For me the first 200 pages were a breeze and the last 35 were a battle.