Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade Of Curious People And Dangerous Ideas, by Chuck Klosterman

By attributing a quality of "danger" to his latest collection of essays, the American columnist Chuck Klosterman has written a cheque that his prose, no matter how courageous, is going to find very hard to cash. What exactly is "danger", when journalism of every shape and form are instantly accessible? In truth, the most dangerous ideas in Chuck Klosterman IV come in the piece about how the film Super Size Me was based on an "idiotic philosophical premise", and another about the widespread chronic misuse of the phrase "guilty pleasure".

I can only think that, by presenting him as edgy, Klosterman's publishers are attempting to sell to the same crowd who worship the ground Hunter S Thompson prowled on. Klosterman's previous book Killing Yourself to Live involved a druggie road trip that had more than a bit of fear - and self-loathing - about it. But Klosterman is a far more evolved, funnier writer than Thompson. A lot of people are. Most of them, though, do not get the privilege of publishing such a messy, unfocused collection of work.

This messiness is simultaneously the book's biggest asset and its biggest failing. The combination of straightforward features on U2 and the White Stripes with more interesting think-pieces from Klosterman's Esquire column seems lazy and ramshackle. In his introductions, Klosterman is often apologetic about his writing, and the hilarity of his footnotes to an early feature about the Fargo underground rock scene only just excuses the hubris of including it. And his decision to tack an iffy attempt at short fiction on at the end adds to a sense that this collection is the literary equivalent of a hastily resprayed Porsche pulling a junk-filled caravan.

Yet when Klosterman is at his most random and loose, he comes up with his best material. His essays on leather-trouser etiquette, and the differences between nemeses and arch-enemies constitute the kind of unpitchable think-pieces that you wish British magazines would risk. He's also that rare thing: a rock journalist more interested in entertaining the reader than showing off his taste. In the end, Chuck Klosterman IV is probably a lot more entertaining than countless more shrewdly marketed collections. The most dangerous thing about it may be that, in an increasingly tidy non-fiction world, it has been allowed to exist at all.

Tom Cox's 'The Lost Tribes of Pop' is published by Portrait