Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Chuck Klosterman

Simon and Schuster, Jun 6, 2006 - Social Science - 257 pages

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 half-mile 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.

What people are saying

Review: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

User Review - Goodreads

Chuck Klosterman is like my guilty pleasure. He took a story he was writing for a magazine article and stretched it out into a 270 page book! I think I like him because he writes; how my mind works ...

Review: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

User Review  - Taylor Johnson - Goodreads

I don't understand every single pop culture reference Chuck Klosterman makes, but I still feel smarter for reading them. The book tells the tale of two week long road trip Chuck Klosterman took on the ...

Contents

• Section 1: 1
• Section 2: 11
• Section 3: 17
• Section 4: 23
• Section 5: 33
• Section 6: 49
• Section 7: 55
• Section 8: 75
• Section 9: 93
• Section 10: 103
• Section 11: 115
• Section 12: 129
• Section 13: 141
• Section 14: 151
• Section 15: 165
• Section 16: 177
• Section 17: 195
• Section 18: 211
• Section 19: 221
• Section 20: 229
• Section 21: 237

About the author

Chuck Klosterman is the New York Times bestselling author of seven previous books, including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; Eating the Dinosaur; Killing Yourself to Live; and The Visible Man. His debut book, Fargo Rock City, was the winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. He has written for GQ, Esquire, Spin, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Believer, and The Onion A.V. Club. He currently serves as “The Ethicist” for the New York Times Magazine and writes about sports and popular culture for ESPN.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
• Author: Chuck Klosterman
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2006
• ISBN: 0743264460, 9780743264464
• Length: 257 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Editors, Journalists, Publishers; Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs; Music / Genres & Styles / Rock; Social Science / General; Social Science / Popular Culture