Book Review: Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

If Downtown Owl isn’t the great North Dakota novel, I don’t know what is. When they teach “Our State” in Fargo and Bismarck, Downtown Owl ought to be on the reading list, enshrined alongside Lawrence Welk, knoephla soup, Angie Dickinson. . . and, yes, I suppose we need to include that unfortunate incident with Gordon Kahl and the federal troopers. But don’t let that Kahl stuff fool you. Did you know that North Dakota has the smallest percentage of non-religious residents of any state?

Chuck Klosterman, the author of Downtown Owl, had his first professional writing gig in Fargo, North Dakota back in ancient times (i.e. Bill Clinton’s first term). And though he has gone on to a celebrated career, as the journalist who best captures the fluttery pulse of whatever phenomenon achieves fifteen minutes of fame in today’s pop culture, he hasn’t forgotten his formative years. In his first novel, he does for Owl, North Dakota, what Godzilla did to Tokyo, albeit over the course of 275 pages.

And he does it in style. Klosterman has long shown that he can write non-fiction prose with panache and a sure instinct for finding the most compelling narrative angle in almost any set of circumstances. He does the same in his first novel. Downtown Owl is a virtuoso effort, marked by constantly shifting narrators, settings, and formats, but it never lags. It is always clever, and often outright brilliant.

Klosterman doesn’t need much to get started. His intersecting plots are simple enough. Julia, a new teacher shows up in Owl, and struggles to adapt to small town life. Mitch, a third string quarterback on the high school team, nurses a deep grudge against his hard-ass coach. Horace, a widower, passes most afternoons talking with his buddies at the local diner. Hey, this is not The Brothers Karamazov. Most soap operas dish up more engaging storylines fives afternoons every week. But Klosterman works wonders with his simple characters and plots. By the time, he is done with Owl, North Dakota, you wouldn’t trade it for Peyton Place and Winesburg, Ohio put together.

Klosterman is not afraid of trying for extravagant effects. One of his finest chapters is in the form of questions and answers from a high school exam on George Orwell’s novel 1984. Another section of this book offers a textual deconstruction of a flirtatious barroom conversation, and is far more insightful than anything I’ve read in Derrida. The book opens and closes with newspaper clippings from the Bismarck Tribune. Along the way, we are told about anti-tax militant Gordon Kahl, a criminal in the mind of the US government (please excuse the oxymoron), but a hero to many residents of Owl, North Dakota. In other words, at any point during your progress through this novel, the next chapter is likely to be very different from the one you are currently reading.

Article Author: Ted Gioia

Ted Gioia is a writer and musician. He is the author of Delta Blues, The History of Jazz and, most recently, The Birth (and Death) of the Cool.

Visit Ted Gioia's author page — Ted Gioia's Blog