Illiterarty.com Book reviews and blogs by Bridget

If this was a book cover, it would be its own - flashy, fun, inviting, two-dimensional and with a really wanky subtitle.

If this was the first meal of the day, if would be a bowl brimming with your favourite guilty breakfast cereal pleasure and ice cold milk (unless you prefer hot). And you’d be hungry. For a while, at least.

If this was a stage act, it would be an obviously talented juggler who does nine balls in time with music for twenty minutes, then cocks and elbows over the mic stand and spends two hours talking about why his wife left him in a self-deprecating manner.

If this was… I was going to give Klosterman the honour (sic) of comparing him to Motley Crue but I just can’t do it. It would belie the very valid points he makes about the nature of their appeal (Klosterman is NOT cool, and would never pretend to be – indeed his nebbish outsiderness is something he’s proud of). Got it – if this was thirty years old it would be the book Lester Bangs wrote about the music he loved and never got around to publishing because it was a bit too self-obsessed even for him.