In this recent Time Out New York Q&A by FOBB&B John Sellers, author Chuck Klosterman puts a finer point on it:
TONY: Okay, then. Your novel is set in North Dakota, your home state. No offense, but that seems like a strange place to have grown up.
Chuck Klosterman: People talk about how strange it must have been growing up on a farm in North Dakota. But I think kids who grow up in Manhattan have the weirdest understanding of what the world is like. They essentially don’t even live in America. They live in this place where nobody drives, where you can get anything you want at any given time, where diversity is normal. A political moderate here is somebody who, like, doesn’t want McCain to die. To me, that would be weird.
3 comments:
I completely agree with this.
Hi Benji Bass.
As a fellow North Dakotan, I agree to a certain extent. On the other hand, Chuck is from Wyndmere, ND -- pop. 533. If Chuck were from a town like, say, Grand Forks, ND, with a suburban-like population of about 40,000, the contrast would make more sense. But I have been to Wyndmere. It is utterly frightening. So, yes, he is correct, but his hometown is just as far from "normal" as NYC. People drive tractors instead of cars in Wyndmere; everyone either lives on or works on a farm; and everyone there probably thinks Obama is Bin Laden.
PJ
So far, I'm the only person I know who liked "downtown owl". City folk thought the characters were too extreme. Haven't met a noncity-folk who has read it. I thought it was hilarious.
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