Exploring Villians

I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains by Chuck Klosterman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I always love reading Chuck Klosterman, and I have read every book of his.  I think he is equally good at writing essay books and novels, and I seem to be one of few who do not prefer one to the other or think he stinks at one of those things.

This is his first "theme" essay book.  Killing Yourself to Live was more of one journey than one theme, but all the essays were about rock stars who died in various ways.  I really liked the one-theme essay book this time, which focuses on Villains and how our society views them.

I enjoyed when he described Machiavelli as a man who understood the nature of power and  wrote it down too clearly, and I liked that he stuck with an idea of villainy ("the one who knows the most and cares the least") and applied it to various facts we will all remember.  He asks whether it is scarier to deal with a villain with a motive or without one.  I enjoyed the intellectual calisthenics.

Klosterman has a way of devouring a topic.  He sprinkles his writing with pearls of wisdom that leave an impact.  For example, "It has always been my belief that people are remembered for the sum of their accomplishments but defined by their singular failure."

I do not always agree with what he writes (there were some conclusions in the Joe Paterno section I did not agree with), but I always respect his logical flow.



His application of the hero as the one who "knows the least and cares the most" was also intriguing.  I love so many of the topics he chose and each one was interesting in a unique way.

I only wish the book had come out several months after the George Zimmerman trial so that he could apply the same logical exercise to that case.  It would certainly be interesting.

I was particularly enamored with the application of the axiom "The Future Always Wins" to so many scenarios we see in our lives that focus on the triumph of progression over conservation of our world.  He applied this to the conflict a parent feels in limiting or indulging new technology or ideas for a child.  That discussion was particularly fascinating.  Embracing the future can be tough and can even feel wrong, but that future always wins.

Some other really great passages:

"My mind is not my own. And once that realization calcifies internally, there is no going back."

"His confidence is his art." - about con-men. I learned a lot about what makes a con-man tick.

"Is there anything more attractive than a polite person with limitless self-belief?  There is not."

"Why are the qualities we value in the unreal somehow verboten in reality?"

"The machinations of politics are mostly fake; they are performed and constructed for our psychological benefit with little tangible impact."


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