One of my most enjoyable reads this summer (amidst a few apocalyptic novels) was Chuck Klosterman’s I Wear the Black Hat.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from the book, as it was all about villains and villainy in almost every area of life.  Klosterman is an easy read for me, though not because of any inherent simplicity.  Something about his mixture of the personal and the cultural makes for a smooth, challenging, and ultimately enriching read.

Last week Klosterman contributed to Grantand’s “The Big Little Things of 2013” series with a rumination on Eminem and his unexpected interview with Brent Musberger on ESPN.  Both subjects are outside my areas of deep interest, yet Klosterman is able to make a brilliantly understated connection between family, technology, music, and culture.  Best sentence of the article?  Commenting on the rapper’s frank and almost dismissive answer about his most recent album, Klosterman surmises:

He’s trying to build a weird bridge to somewhere reasonable.

“Aren’t we all?” I asked myself as soon as I had read it.  What’s probably true for Eminem is true for me and you and Brent Musberger, too.  And that has both everything and nothing to do with the “generation gap” mentioned in the article’s title.

I’d encourage you to take a moment and read the article in full here.  It’s great writing, thoughtful and instructive in a way you don’t often find.  He’s correct, I believe.  Differences because of age still exist, but the strange spell of technology is creating an even weirder dynamic most of us are accidentally missing.