A Meditation on Villainy

Chuck Klosterman has walked into the darkness. As a boy, he related to the cultural figures who represented goodness—but as an adult, he found himself unconsciously aligning with their enemies. This was not because he necessarily liked what they were doing; it was because they were doing it on purpose (and they were doing it better). They wanted to be evil. And 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)? How does the culture of deliberate malevolence operate?   In I Wear the Black Hat, Klosterman questions the modern understanding of villainy.   Blending cultural analysis with self-interrogation and imaginative hypotheticals, I Wear the Black Hat delivers observations on the complexity of the antihero and is a rare example of serious criticism that’s instantly accessible and really, really funny.