I Wear the Black Hat : Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined)

by Klosterman, Chuck

• ISBN13: 9781439184493
• ISBN10: 1439184496
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-07-09
• Publisher: Scribner

Summary

From New York Timesbestselling author, "one of America's top cultural critics" ( Entertainment Weekly), and "The Ethicist" for The New York Times Magazinecomesa new book of all original pieces on villains and villainy in popular culture. Chuck Klosterman has walked into the darkness. As a child, he rooted for conventionally good characters like wide-eyed Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. But as Klosterman aged, his alliances shiftedfirst to Han Solo and then to Darth Vader. Vader was a hero who consciously embraced evil; Vader wantedto be bad. But what, exactly, was that supposed to mean? When we classify someone as a bad person, what are we really saying (and why are we so obsessed with saying it)? In I Wear the Black Hat, Klosterman questions the very nature of how modern people understand the culture of villainy. What was so Machiavellian about Machiavelli? Why don't we see Batman the same way we see Bernhard Goetz? Who's more worthy of our vitriolBill Clinton or Don Henley? What was O.J. Simpson's second-worstdecision? And why is Klosterman still obsessed with some kid he knew for one week in 1985? Masterfully blending cultural analysis with self-interrogation and limitless imagination, I Wear the Black Hatdelivers perceptive observations on the complexity of the anti-hero (seemingly the only kind of hero America still creates). I Wear the Black Hatis the rare example of serious criticism that's instantly accessible and really, really funny. He is the only writer doing whatever it is he's doing.