Interviews

Chuck Klosterman

Clayton Trutor

In the fourth edition of our monthly interview series, American Polymath questions Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman is, to say the least, polymathic in his literary pursuits. He is a journalist, an essayist, a novelist, and a cultural observer of the first order. His most recent book, Eating the Dinosaur, is a collection of essays with pieces on Ralph Sampson, Ralph Nader, laugh tracks, and a fascinating comparative work which parallels the lives of Kurt Cobain and David Koresh. Klosterman is the author of a total of six books, including Fargo Rock City, Killing Yourself to Live, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, and his 2008 novel Downtown Owl. The North Dakota native has written for Esquire, Spin, ESPN, The Onion, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine.
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Your Favorites

Who’s Your Favorite Vice President?

American Polymath’s panel of experts thought about their favorite residents of Number One Observatory Circle. Most of these men never became commander-in-chief, often to the detriment of the Republic, according to their respective partisans on the panel of experts.
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Culture

A Minor Retraction or: How I Learned to Live With But Not Necessarily Love the 2009 World Champions

Johnny Trutor

For starters, I want to retract the title of this article. I know it's not clever to follow Kubrick's formula, and that any originality contained within is forfeit to an uncreative title. That being said, let’s get going.

This is being written at 5 AM on a very, very, long day. Alexander once called these kind of days “a no-good, very bad day.” Following Alexander’s example and moving to Australia seems enticing, particularly because of the availability of HP Sauce and Vitamin-D producing sunlight in that country.

For a state that’s as flat as (insert quaint New England metaphor from my childhood), Minnesota sure doesn’t see the benefit of having an endless horizon once the sun sets. Here, as in many things, I place blame squarely on the Bush administration, owing to the ridiculous daylight savings nonsense that was enacted for-- honestly, I can’t remember any reasons being given. The sun now effectively burns my eyes because on November 1st, we all became morlocks.
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Fiction

Time for a Change

Ken Sieben

On the morning of September 11, 2001, when Joyce Benbow Hawkins looked out her office window across the water, she saw black smoke billowing from lower Manhattan out over Long Island. She rushed downstairs to the bar to turn on the television and learned that the north tower of the World Trade Center had just been hit by a plane. An accident like that was almost bound to happen someday, was her initial reaction. When the south tower was struck eighteen minutes later, Joyce realized the nation was under attack. She also realized that her life had been a series of bad choices.

At 7:30 every morning for the past eleven years Joyce has climbed down the stairs from her three-room apartment to the kitchen of her bayfront restaurant to turn on the lights and coffee urn. The coffee is for the staff; her acid stomach put a stop to a ten-cups-a-day habit years ago. After an inspection of the kitchen to see what was overlooked in the previous night’s cleanup, she checks out the bar, lobby, inner (smoking), central, and porch (non-smoking) dining rooms and rest rooms, makes lists of priorities, then climbs back upstairs. On September 11, though, she sat mesmerized in front of the television until the phone rang at 9:45.

It was her mother in Florida. They had spoken the night before because Joyce always calls both her mother and her son on Mondays. Their conversations were always civil, never profound. This morning was different. “What does it look like?” her mother asked.
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Culture

Guys Who Hate Rap

Clayton Trutor

When I was growing up, there were two kinds of guys in my neighborhood. When I say guys, I mean men over the age of thirty. Anybody younger than that was a kid.

As I was saying, two kinds of guys in my neighborhood: guys who liked the country station and guys who liked the Classic Rock station. The country guys liked trucks a little bit too tall for their French Canadian blood. The classic rockers went for whatever the fastest red car that GMAC would finance for them. Country guys addressed you as “son.” Classic Rockers called you “brother,” Hulk Hogan style. Country guys got really into the goatee. Classic Rockers stuck with the mustache. Country guys wear their sunglasses over the visor of their duck-billed ball caps. Classic Rockers don’t need a hat. The chicks dig their locks.
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Society

FROM THE CRANK FILE: I’m Shipping Down to Philly

James R. Van Houtte

Boston was forgotten by this country for about forty years after Sam Giancana and Fidel Castro and Jack Ruby and Don Cheadle and Fall Out Boy shot Jack, and they’re never going to let us all live it down. Then, in the first decade of this century, something clicked. The Patriots and Red Sox stopped being impotent crybabies and went out there and spent all kinds of money on championship teams. The Bruins remain pretty lackluster. The Celtics even managed a return to glory and won the orange ball game award. Good for them. I have no idea how the New England Revolution are doing, but honestly, you don’t either. Don’t go over to Wikipedia and find out. Pay attention. No other tabs should be open while a gentleman is expressing a civil opinion.

What was it about the go-go neoconservative 2000s that made the traditional New England seat of power so appealing? Was New York too dangerous with its high profile targets and Disneyfied Times Square? What about one of the newer cities on the East Coast, like Jacksonville? I know that nobody’s ever been there, but they’ve got a relatively high profile, and on Google Maps, I found a laundromat there with Street Fighter II: Turbo. I doubt that you could even find an upright SFIIT cabinet in Boston. First person who can send the Polymath editors photographic evidence of one in Boston (and not in some backwater like Methuen) will receive a bounty—what it is will be revealed upon completion of your quest. It could be an adult male chicken, or a Homie figurine, or half a Powerade. Don’t just slap on a Sox hat and think I’ll believe you. They sell those at my Target too, why I don’t know. Your address had better be pretty close to the 617 for me to waste money on a stamp.
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Fiction

American History

Ryan Napier

Well yes ma’am I know I was supposed to give my report on my family history but when I got home from school Daddy was at work til late and Momma was asleep since she got work in the evenings so there warnt anybody at home I could ask about our family history and whether we’re Irish or Scottish or German and what our name mean and all that just like everybody else already done. So instead of just making it up I’m gonna tell about this thing we all do for my Pap’s birthday ever year since he’s real old and it’s sorta like family history for us Napiers. Specially this one that happen last year.
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