The art of getting out of Chuck Klosterman’s way: Author will stop in Eugene

Brendan O’Meara has been doing this long enough to know what not to do on Saturday afternoon.

The host of “The Creative Nonfiction Podcast” is recording a live episode with Chuck Klosterman, a Portland-based author and prolific podcast guest, at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene.

And while O’Meara can hold his own on the mic after 550 episodes of his long-running podcast, there are some guests he knows to simply tee up.

“He’s operating on a different level,” O’Meara said. “His brain has a different kind of firepower — a different kind of horsepower — than mine. I can just ask really good questions and get out of the way and let him shine and run with it.

“The worst thing you can do is try to go punch for punch with a heavyweight like him.”

Klosterman is a best-selling author and cultural critic who has made a career out of thinking far too deeply about the things the rest of us might overlook. In his most recent book, “Rock*: A Mainstream Alternative History of Alternative Mainstream Music,” Klosterman imagines an alternate version of the last six decades of music history built around one simple premise.

“It’s basically like fictional nonfiction, because it starts with the assumption that Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground became as popular as the Beatles were,” O’Meara said. “It’s a challenging book to read if you’re not really versed in that music history.”

Its quirkiness made it hard to publish, even for an established author like Klosterman. The book was initially set to be published by Penguin, but the publisher ultimately passed before the book was eventually released by Da Capo in September.

So while O’Meara may have spent a fair amount of time on Google making his way through “Rock*,” he’s particularly interested in asking Klosterman about the writing and publishing process when the two sit down at 1 p.m. Saturday.

“It’s getting into that headspace of, you know, a very well-established writer and how he’s dealing with some of the hiccups and the grind of writing and the rejection that we all deal with,” O’Meara said. “I love getting very established writers to riff on that headspace because we see them as such successful titans of this industry, and meanwhile, us normal people are wrestling and we’re the ones struggling with all the rejection. But like you know, they’re dealing with it, too.”

If you go

Brendan O’Meara will record a live episode of “The Creative Nonfiction Podcast” with Chuck Klosterman at 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene, 540 E. Eighth Ave.

Admission is free, though advance RSVPs are encouraged.