YouSaid · the spoken record

Chuck Klosterman

lines on the record: 87
first: 2022-02-23
most recent: 2022-02-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I mean, definitely having kids does seemingly solve the nature versus nature thing. It seems like nature. Like it really seems obvious, but you can't tell that to somebody because now to say that somehow seems like, I don't know, they think you're a eugenicist or something, like you're somehow claiming that the experience of society doesn't matter. But I think the experience in society generally makes people more similar. It's their nature that makes them different.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but the way they interact with other kids is really the key difference. Like, that is how they seem different to me. The way they view sort of how they operate in society and what they want from other people and what they want from friendships and what they want from themselves. I mean, what I'm saying is that it's not like they're so diametrically different. I can't believe their brother and sister.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it really is on average though. There's seven kids in my family. And there are strong similarities kind of visually or our use of our hands when we talk and maybe our fundamental ideas about money and safety and spirituality and stuff. But skills-wise, like it's pretty disconnected. I think that on average, of course, what you're saying is true. But I wonder, I have two kids and I'm shocked by how different they are. You know, it seems like they should be more similar than they are. They have the same parents. They're having the exact same experience. So I don't know.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's a good argument, I guess. That's a good argument against anonymity. That could be a book title against anonymity. Seems like that would sell now.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think wouldn't it always be an advantage to be on Google Bull, to have the inability for someone to find you easily? Because once they meet you, they'll be able to find you. They'll know other things about you. If all they know is your name, I think it would be better if you were unfindable. If that's all they know.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't know. It's like when did it become more common to spell the word John J O N than J O H in? Sure seems like that. I mean I realize there are JON Johns throughout time but when I was a kid every John was J O H N. Now was that because I came from a place where everybody was Catholic and Lutheran? Is J-O-N often used, I mean, seems like a lot of like Jewish guys named John often have J-O-N, but just younger people. Now it seems like J-O-N is more common than J-O-H-N. I don't know when that happened.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well now only if it's a why now if somebody has a y at the end but if it's FRED I that doesn't really seem like a horror movie thing”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My parents wanted to name me Fred, Frederick, but my sister who was three years older couldn't say Fred, she said. And even though she was only three, for some reason my parents were like that would be a problem. So then they named me Charles. But, you know, I always think if I had been named Freddie, if I had been like Freddie Klosterman, somehow that makes me seem like I would get ahead of a career as a con artist or something like where I was like trickier, yeah?”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different? Would I be taken more seriously? I don't know. Would I be seen differently? Because Chuck makes it seem like, you know, I just kind of came off the football field or whatever. It's like, I don't know. I have no idea if my life would be different if I had gone by Charles or if I'd gone by Charlie, would I be more playful?”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess it's a strange thing about names. It's like the most and least important thing about you. It really is. It's like you have a baby and you're coming up with its name and any name can work. And yet the thing you do name it is going to be the one thing that's going to follow that person for the totality of their life. It means nothing. It's just a collection. You could name your kids stick. It'd be fine. If my name was Stick Klosterman, nothing about me would probably be different. And then part of me is like, or would it? If I had went by Charles Closterman?”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, I've spent all this time telling people on radio hosts and stuff like that. It's like, oh, just so you know, I don't really care, but my name is Colsterman. Well, if I don't care, why am I telling people? But I just feel this obligation to do it. I felt obligated to tell you, even though if anybody now realizes you mispronounce my name, they've listened to an hour and a half of a podcast. It's like, what do they care now? It's like, you know.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I hate telling people that because there's no umlat over it. I don't care. But it's like my dad used to always say, like, well, you should tell people to pronounce your name right. But like, my son, he now goes by Closterman. It's really funny. He's eight, but he's made the decision. And you know what? He's totally right.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. But what's weird is even the things that we're saying about him could be used as evidence for the criticisms of him. It's like here I am talking about how I like this philosopher and I'm kind of bogged down on the fact that he has charisma that can break through a TV screen or whatever. That's not philosophy, right? I always think when I write stuff, it's like my goal is to be as accessible as possible. Like my self-editing is constantly making sentences straighter and more simple and more clear. But then you can become accessible to a fault where it looks easy to some people and it also seems obvious to people because it hits someone so directly that they assume that they thought that themselves, which in some ways the weird goal to make the person feel like they're writing the book as they read it. But if you succeed at that goal, they're going to think you're a bad writer. It's strange.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like charisma is a real thing. And in a way, I think sometimes we put charisma into a category kind of like grit or like authenticity or something. It's like, well, it's a thing that we throw at people when we write about them. And it's just sort of this kind of imaginary construct. But I have found over and over again that charisma is one of the realest things in the experience of being alive, that there are people who are different when you're around them than they are when you see them on a screen or you read them and it changes everything. And then there are some people who can transmit that charisma through the screen or through the page. And in some ways, it's just like the most attractive quality a performer can have, you know, and the most desirable. I guess I said like voice is the most important part of writing. There's also like a voice to his identity, just his being.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That people kind of made fun of and didn't take seriously because he was so kind of overtly handsome. Like he was good-looking and an obvious way. So there was this assumption, particularly at that time in the 90s, that if you were just like a kind of a conventionally good looking or kind of banal good looks or whatever, that made people look at his songwriting as like meaningless. But now we go back and listen to him as a songwriter. It's like, oh, he's real good. Like he was better than most. It was like, we thought he was bad because he was handsome. I think sometimes people think that Z-zac is fully because he's famous, but that's not necessarily true.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So am I. But like the underrated, overrated thing, it's hard to kind of place on him because in a sense His notoriety for what he does completely goes beyond the vast majority of people who are like philosophers or whatever, right? So in that sense, if you go from an individual's maybe importance to their field relative to their notoriety in that field, I think he might be at the top of that. Like, you know, there's just not many people. I mean, Cornell West maybe or whatever. It's like you find a few people who are philosophers who are famous. But in terms of his ideas themselves, they could be underrated because I think that his notoriety is very often used against him. And the fact that he'll talk about Titanic or whatever in this kind of very commercial way builds in this assumption that these ideas must not be really meaningful as much as they are like attention grabbing. In some weird way, he's a little bit like Evan Dondo of the Lemon Heads, where Evan Dondo of the Lemonheads was making records.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To think about, yes, but like you probably saw this, he recently reviewed the Matrix movie, the new Matrix movie. It was this really good review. And then at the end he's like, Also, I have not seen the Matrix, and that proves my point, kind of. And I was like, well, in a way it does. It's like, in a strange way, the epitome that you can look at something and have it only mean things outside of itself so much so you don't even have to look at the thing itself but”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, oh, it's always interesting. Although, I think one thing that over time I have come to realize is that a lot of his responses to things are always kind of driving back to some of these things he likes.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are you friends with him? It sure seemed like it in that, like, and if you are, what is it like to be with him when he is not in a performative scenario?”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hoping for has not only happened but happened many times over because it doesn't. It's like in some fundamental way you stay the same. And in some ways I feel the same as I did 30 years ago, even though my life then I would never want to really revisit except maybe on a vacation, but I wouldn't want to re-experience or whatever. So that's not really an answer to the question, but I guess the answer is that I'm almost not thinking about what's next. Like I'm trying to think about what I'm doing now and failing.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That if I could build a time machine on my deathbed that's probably where I go back to. So what I'm really trying to do now is try to be cognizant of the fact that all of the things that I wanted in life I've got them, but like way beyond it. Like I don't know what you're supposed to do when your actual life has completely usurped any dreams you had, but that's totally how it is. Like I say, I used to read Spin magazine in college. So when I worked there in the early 2000s, all my friends from college was like, ah, your dream. You've realized your dream. And I was like, I never dreamt that when I was reading that magazine, I knew somebody wrote it, but I didn't think I could get that job. I was always thinking if I wrote one book in my life, that would be amazing. But now I've written 12. So it's sort of like, why doesn't that make me completely happy? Why am I not completely satisfied by the fact that everything that I was holding?”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I haven't told anyone about. I am just trying to appreciate the high likelihood that in some distant future I will look back at this period of my life as the best period I had, and I'm trying to stay conscious of that as it's happening. Like my daughter is six, and she still kind of likes me to like lay in bed with her and hold her hand before she falls asleep. And sometimes, you know, that's kind of a drag or something I kind of want to, you know, it's like last night, for example. I wanted to see what was going on in the football game. And I was like, well, you know, but then another part of me is like, well, when I am dying and I'm thinking about the moments in my life that mattered, it's probably going to be things like lying in bed with my daughter and holding her hand in this kind of extraordinarily intimate situation. You know, like we're so close to each other, both physically and intellectually.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's an interesting way to look at it, I guess, but I don't know if I look at it that way. But 63, so I'm fourteen years away from that or whatever. Do I even look fourteen years ahead? I don't think I do. I feel like I am almost trapped in this kind of perpetual now. It's hard for me to think about my life in the future. But very easy to fix it in my life in the past.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, it might be, though, just like what your personality is like. Like, there's a certain kind of personality whose goal seems to make more money. And my personality is like, don't lose the money you've made. I seem so lucky to have had the things work out the way they have that my fear always is that in the end I'm going to have nothing again, that somehow I'm going to have put all this time in and done all these things to sort of accumulate this wealth that seemed absolutely unfathomable to me for most of my life, but somehow I'm going to end up exactly the way I started.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The nineties, there was not the sense that culture was unraveling, which I think is a common feeling now, that crisis is not unmanageable. Well, I mean, okay, so I have a financial advisor, and he always wants me to take more risks, but I always have this fear that, like, at some point, the way the economy of the United States works, it could just sort of collapse. And he always tells me it's like, well, if that's your concern, it's like, it's a concern for everybody. You can't build that into your portfolio. The idea of what happens if there's like just a catastrophic end to capitalism. But as an economist, what is the likelihood of the way our economy is built just completely hemorrhaging and falling apart? Like, would you say there's a 2% chance of that? A 20% chance of that? Is it always 50-50?”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shouldn't it be something I should be asking you about? Because it's like, to me, cryptocurrency, I didn't know anything about it. So I was like, well, I should kind of look into this just to understand it. And it's very difficult to understand, as far as I can tell. But I came across something, an idea that I'm wondering what you will say as an economist. So my assumption always was that cryptocurrency in some ways was like, we're breaking away from the way money used to be. And there's a real opportunity to make a lot of money in this. Like this is kind of a wild west scenario. But I came across some information that seems to suggest that for someone like me, it might be smart to look at kind of cryptocurrency as like a safety net. Because in fear that the US economy collapses or the world economy collapses. I mean, is there any value in looking at cryptocurrency?”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess I don't really care if my parents think I was cool. My fear always was that, you know, the difference between my life and my parents' life and their experience, I can't prove this, but I think it's probably greater than most writers. I mean, it's like due to the age of my parents, kind of the level of poverty they grew up in, fact that we were in such a rural place, they've never totally understood anything about my career. I kind of hope they haven't read my books, but even if they have, I don't think it would make any sense to them. Maybe the novel downtown owl might, but none of the other ones. But yet they can also see how other people react. They have a sense that somehow that I did okay or whatever, I would like to know if they feel like I made them proud or if it's embarrassing, you know, that I ended up this, you know, that I ended up becoming the person.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my dad is dead now. My mom is very old. And you know what's interesting about that is at one point I interviewed my parents just because I thought I'm just going to ask them about their life, you know? So I just put a tape recorder on, I asked my parents questions. My dad loved this. My dad talked about every detail of his life. My mom was like interviewing Tom York. Like she didn't want to say anything. Like she did not want to give me a response to anything. You know, the simplest questions. I guess what I would ask them is it's sort of a, I guess, a narcissistic question. I would ask them, are you proud of me? Are you happy with the person I turned out to be? Because that's very important to me. And I know they would never give me a real answer on that. I'll always wonder that, you know?”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, thing I always think about with this question is what is the likelihood that the people at this banquet are going to recognize why they are there? That's never said in the question. So I think some people hear that question and they assume they have been asked to this event for this reason and they're coming because they are part of this sort of weird sorority or whatever. And then some people imagine the people are just there. They don't know why they've been asked. They don't know what the relationship is to each other. And that's usually how I think of it, that the people in this room, they don't know why they're there. If they know each other, it's by chance and they happen to know each other in life. So I think I would probably give a speech where I would kind of go over the trajectory of my life and discuss all of the things about the past that I regret.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That work, to take someone and say, if you do these things, you'll be able to become the writer you want. It doesn't seem like that's how it works to me. So I taught her writing class and I just, I think it was kind of useless because the same way I was when I was in college, you know, I was an editor at the school paper. And I found that I was a real bad editor because I had two natural inclinations that were kind of dissonant. Either I would be like, I'm going to rewrite everything in this because this is terrible or I would be like, that's him. It's her. She gets to do what she wants. Just put it through. Like it's hard for me to be that middle person because anytime I read anything, like any book I read, as I'm reading it, I'm changing the sentences in my mind. That's how I've always been.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought that was real great. And then David Foster Wallace, I was obsessed with that, but he was the last one. And I think that you don't become a writer until you no longer want to be like other writers. That's sort of the key. The key is getting beyond the idea that there is some idea of what you think writing is, that you can somehow match or find or replicate, and you just kind of go off and do your own thing that only you can do. I feel pretty strongly about that, but there again, it's like I'm going by my experience. I think that you can teach mechanical aspects of writing to someone and you can make like one little jump. You can make somebody who's kind of like a very mediocre into, okay, and you can turn somebody who's okay into pretty good. And somebody who's pretty good, maybe you can make very good. But to really change the experience for people concerned.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You worse? What Well the most important quality of writing in my view at least is the unteachable element which is voice. You know, it's like if writing has voice, the content, I wouldn't say it's irrelevant, but voice can compensate for a lot. So a lot of times when you're teaching kids, like about writing, they ask questions like, how do you find your voice or how did you find your voice is something they often want to know? And the reality is your voice exists inside of you. You just have to pull it out. You're not finding it. You're not going to find it from reading other people. In fact, my take on this is that, you know, I think of my life and there was this variety of writers. You know, I was in high school and I really like Dave Berry. And then I went to college and I was in the Douglas Copeland. And then I was into Raymond Carver for a while. I just want to read all of this. And then it was like, oh, Michael Laner.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The fact that for a lot of people their relationship to gaming starts so early that they perceive it as really no different than an athletic sport except they were never comfortable playing athletic sports and this is a way to do it. And seeing people do it at the highest level to them is not any different than watching LeBron James. I mean it is strange. My son is eight. He will watch YouTube clips of people playing video games. It seems bizarre to me. It doesn't seem remotely strange to him.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That you could convince, particularly since you can gamble on anything now. Like, I think if somebody wanted to do this, what they would do is they would probably get involved with the mid-majors and very small college teams where it wouldn't be that difficult not only to get to a player, but to give him something that would be worth his time. I think, though, that there was just this fear that sports might become so splintered that it could kind of recede from the culture. And they had to find a way to keep it as popular as it ever was. And gambling was the answer because gambling makes people who don't care care a lot.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Usually forgotten. So there is some risk with that. The fact of the matter is pro athletes are now compensated to a degree where it would be difficult to convince them to throw a game or manipulate a spread, but the risk that is there with the amount of money they're already making. I mean, like there was the controversy about Len Dawson when he played for the Chiefs in Super Bowl IV. Before that Super Bowl, there was this idea that maybe he had some relationship with gamblers. And the fact of the matter is In the early 1970s, what a guy was making, you could definitely see how giving a guy $10,000 or whatever could be like a legitimate amount of money. At the pro level now, the amount of money you'd have to pay these guys to make it worth the risk is huge. At college, harder to say. I mean, like here in Oregon now, I could gamble if I wanted to on the Oregon State Lottery. You can't gamble on college games. I suppose that they would see that that's still an area of danger.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so I think that officiating is the issue where this kind of does become a little dangerous and fragile. Like one thing that sort of came out of the whole Tim Donah situation, you know, there was a scandal that the NBA did a pretty good job of kind of like just sweeping away and everyone's forgot about. But one of the things that came out of that was a realization that a referee can sort of dictate the outcome of a game simply by calling the game straight in the sense that they don't have to create fouls or try to look for situations where they can dictate the outcome. They can just occasionally call traveling the way traveling actually is. Or they can call lane violations on free throws, which they normally just completely ignore. So it becomes almost this invisible way of manipulating the spread because they're not doing anything. They're not wrong about anything. They're actually just being correct in a way that is.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Team to get the best collection of kids coming out of high school, put them together, and accept that college basketball now is more an extension of AAU basketball than high school basketball. So if you're asking me, it's like, why is it worth watching? It's like, well, I guess I still watch it, but I will say this, there was a long stretch of my life where if there was a pro game on and a college game on, I would always watch the college game. And now that's never the case. Now I will always watch the pro game.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is real difficult to get a sense of what these guys are like and what the coach is trying to do beyond succeed. I guess that is part of it. You think of college basketball in the 70s and the 80s. You think of like, you know, John Wooden and Bobby Knight and Dean Smith and John Thompson and all these guys. You think about these coaches who had consistently strong teams and teams that had a real clear identity. Like you could look at these teams and you would almost see when a kid graduates and a new kid is recruited, like he's the replacement for that guy, both as a position on the floor, but also as like what they would bring to the team. And that has kind of gone now. I mean, it's like the fact that Duke does this, I think people thought they might be like the last holdout of this, but they are not. When Kalapari succeeded at Kentucky, it sort of proved that this is the best way to build a great.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the first thing I will say is that when I think about sports experiences in my life, and I'm discounting like, oh, you know, this team I wanted to win lost or this team I hated succeeded, and I discount like terrible injuries to people or like the death of Len Bias or whatever. When I think about things in sports that have disappointed me over the course of my life, The decline in college basketball is probably at the top of the list. I would say that in the introduction of instant replay are the two things that disappoint me most about the way sports has changed over time. And, you know, college basketball now is solely the March Madness Tournament that seems to be the only thing even relatively serious college basketball fans care about. And because the best players play the shortest amount of time.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over that same period of time. And that's almost impossible now. It kind of defies logic that the Patriots have been able to succeed, that the way they have for 20 years. It doesn't really make sense, especially in the NFL, which is just designed to sort of allow every franchise to eventually get good and to create almost inorganic degree of parody.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Clearly, the two best teams in the league throughout that period. Yes, the Sixers were good in there, the Bucs were good in there, the Rockets had success, but the Sixers had to get Moses Malone in order to get over the hump to beat the Celtics. And like when the rockets beat the Lakers, it was an anomaly. So these two dynastic teams that were also completely different, even to just the most casual viewer. Race was part of it, but also playing style. And also this understanding that they were on different coasts and that there was something diametrically different about what it would be like to be a Celtic fan and what it would be like to be a Laker fan. It's hard to imagine that now. Like if you look at the NFL, the Patriots have had sort of this dynasty over a long period of time and teams have kind of come and gone. What would have needed to happen would have been like if the Packers or the Cowboys had had the same kind of success as the Patriots.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have him at the collegiate level for sure because part of the reason I find myself drawn to college sports more than pro sports very often is that even though the kind of person who goes to a school to play football or basketball is different than the student body, in a sense if Stanford is playing Arizona or if Texas is playing Georgia, there is a sense that we have an understanding of what kind of person tends to go to those schools and we can sort of apply it to the players and even though the players might be outside of that kind of world, like they kind of adopt those characteristics. So like the rivalry between like Michigan and Ohio State and Auburn and Alabama, those aren't going to go away. At the pro level though, it will be difficult to see two teams that dynastic at the same time where like the Lakers and the Celtics were clear.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They could have, and as so often is the case, self awareness is what destroys you. Like there's self-awareness of their limitation was the problem.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think they were a team that sort of overachieved for a period that people didn't really think of them as a premier franchise and we'd get into the playoffs and there was this realization that Lillard was kind of incredible scoring machine and CG McCollum is good and they had all these various pieces. And then it was like they hit some kind of abstract ceiling where there was like almost an understanding within the team itself, but also oddly with the fan base that they could never win a title, they could probably never even get out of the West. And once that belief sort of became like the foundational idea of the team, it just collapsed. And now you might as well blow the whole thing up. So it was almost as though they were just like they kind of convinced themselves that they were just limited. There was a limit to the success.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, he did have an early peak. He's a strange figure in the sense that he was a guy who was, you know, he's 22 years old and he's seeing nostalgically about this lost past. I think that if, you know, if people are fans of Van Morrison, they see him as like an interesting songwriter with a very distinctive voice. I guess compared to Eric Clapton, now of course they're tied together because they kind of sort of share this vaccination platform or whatever. He doesn't seem to me as a fraction as significant in the history of music as Clapton is. So I guess I would still say a little bit overrated, I guess, you know, but that's like taste too.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A great player, and it's strange you'll watch the TNT show and like Kenny Smith will still kind of hold this over Charles Barclay. Like somehow that there are equal as veterans, as former players, because Kenny Smith won two titles and Barclay won none. And Barclays aware of it. They've made this decision almost collectively. This decision has been made that in basketball, because there's only five guys on the floor, and we can kind of credit the best player as being the reason a team succeeds or fails, winning a title has become everything. And it sort of skews the way we understand this. And it's why you see guys trying to get titles late in their career, like ring chasing or whatever. I think they believe if they can just do that, that will somehow recontextualize everything else about them.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that this is a strange answer because he's very famous, but I think to a degree, Will Chamberlain has become underrated in the fact that people discount his statistics as sort of a vestige of a previous time, but even within that previous time, the statistics he compiled are really unthinkable. The fact that you will sometimes see lists of the greatest players of all time and he will be outside the top five, I think that's very weird. I don't know if he would be in the top 100, but like there were guys like Sidney Moncreef who were just good for years and kind of good in every way. But we would never include them sort of in this top tier because pro basketball has also adopted this, I guess maybe predictable, but also kind of curious perception that winning a championship matters almost too much now. That like if you have not won a title, you can't be classified as”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's a hard thing to measure, you know, because in sports, we actually reward people emotionally if they are obnoxious. Like, I mean, I remember when Justin Herbert came out of college, people didn't want to draft him because they were like, he's not an emotional leader. Like he'll never succeed because he's just quiet. He keeps to himself. Like somehow someone like Baker Mayfield, who sort of tries to draw attention, is perceived as being more dedicated and more intense. But it's confusing. I mean, like, you know, I grew up, my favorite player was Larry Byrd. And I remember being very surprised when I found out that Larry Bird was constantly talking and trash talking his opponents. Because as somebody who was just watching at home as a kid for some reason, I thought of him almost as a stoic person, you know? That's how I viewed it because he was talking to other players. He wasn't talking to the media.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say slightly underrated, but only by the casual consumer. I think people who follow the NBA pretty closely have a relatively accurate view of Bradley Beale. Like he might be properly rated, I guess, among people who understand basketball and follow basketball closely and certainly people who live in Washington. But I would say there are a lot of people who might classify themselves as basketball fans. If you ask them about Bradley Beale, they might not know who he is or where he plays, you know?”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, let's see. Is he overrated or underrated? I would say he is probably somewhat overrated because he is often injured. He is really more of an elite defender than an elite scorer, even though he is a good shooter. He's a great player. He's an all-star. But I would say that if I'm listening in order the best players in the league, I would guess I would place him further down on the list than a lot of my peers. So I would say slightly overrated.”
2022-02-23 · Conversations with Tyler · Chuck Klosterman on Writing the Past and Relishing the Present · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source