Chuck Klosterman's real and imagined villains

I Wear the Black Hat
Cover of "I Wear the Black Hat," by Chuck Klosterman.
Book cover courtesy of publisher

Some of the villains (real and imagined) examined by Chuck Klosterman in his new book, "I Wear the Black Hat": Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst. Sarah Palin. Chevy Chase. Blogger Perez Hilton. O.J. Simpson. Taylor Swift.

Klosterman, who also writes The Ethicist column for The New York Times Magazine, sees villainy in shades of gray. He writes in the preface of the book, "There are 'good people' and there are 'bad people,' but those two designations are unreal. The designations exist in conversation, but they're utterly made up. Within this scenario, would goodness still be something to aspire to? Wouldn't this mean that good people are simply the ones who accept that what they've been told is arbitrarily true? That they've accepted a policy they didn't create for themselves?"

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