num_pages: 214
description: From New York Times bestselling author one of Americas top cultural critics (Entertainment Weekly) and The Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine comes a new book of all original pieces on villains and villainy in popular culture.Chuck Klosterman has walked into the darkness. As a child he rooted for conventionally good characters like wide-eyed Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. But as Klosterman aged his alliances shiftedfirst to Han Solo and then to Darth Vader. Vader was a hero who consciously embraced evil; Vader wanted to be bad. But what exactly was that supposed to mean? When we classify someone as a bad person what are we really saying (and why are we so obsessed with saying it)? In I Wear the Black Hat Klosterman questions the very nature of how modern people understand the culture of villainy. What was so Machiavellian about Machiavelli? Why dont we see Batman the same way we see Bernhard Goetz? Whos more worthy of our vitriolBill Clinton or Don Henley? What was O.J. Simpsons second-worst decision? And why is Klosterman still obsessed with some kid he knew for one week in 1985?Masterfully blending cultural analysis with self-interrogation and limitless imagination I Wear the Black Hat delivers perceptive observations on the complexity of the anti-hero (seemingly the only kind of hero America still creates). I Wear the Black Hat is the rare example of serious criticism thats instantly accessible and really really funny. Klosterman is the only writer doing whatever it is hes doing.
language: English
title: I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains
publisher: Scribner