A student-heavy crowd at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium listened to and laughed with Chuck Klosterman in the final Kennedy Lecture of the school year.
Klosterman, the author of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs and Fargo Rock City among other works, focused heavily on the idea of chance being the deciding factor in one’s life.
“The biggest aspect of your future is chance,” Klosterman said. “It’s scary when you accept that chance rules your life. You can only control one little pawn in your life, and that’s yourself. My only advice is to be aware of the chance and be ready for it.”
The North Dakota native used a first-person narrative to explain how the unfolding of his life demonstrates the importance of chance.
Klosterman said that after he graduated college, a newspaper in Fargo, N.D., tried to appease Generation X with a weekly spread titled “Rage.” Klosterman noted that he graduated college at the same time that newspaper editors began to notice Gen X, which played a part in him getting the job.
The highlight of the event was what Klosterman said was a “social experiment.”
He put the audience in the role of a mentor of a very bright, above-average boy who would follow the mentor’s advice about whether to follow his dreams unequivocally. Those in attendance then stood and were told to sit down when Klosterman mentioned a dream that they thought the boy should not follow.
The list of aspirations began benignly with working very hard and having a loving family but quickly became more ridiculous with ideas such as writing the perfect novel and never letting people see it, becoming president by only quoting Foo Fighters lyrics, and running a secretly racist day care center.
Andrew Holzaepfel, associate director of programming for the Performing Arts and Concert Series, said the lecture was a success.
“About 800 people were in attendance,” Holzaepfel said. “That is about where I expected it to be, and we were very pleased with how many students came.”
Troy Robison, an OU graduate student studying psychology, attended and said he enjoyed the show and was glad Klosterman came to Athens. He also participated in the social experiment.
“I sat down at ‘Become the Bob Dylan of air-conditioning installers,’ ” Robison said.
io312410@ohiou.edu
