Tuned in

Chuck Klosterman will appear at the Hard Rock Cafe in Boston tomorrow night at 8. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 day of show at 866-468-7619 or www.ticketweb.com.

If you've read Chuck Klosterman's essays - either in his Esquire and Spin columns or books like "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto" - and always dreamed of being one of his interview subjects, you'll have your chance tomorrow night at the Hard Rock Cafe. In addition to reading from his forthcoming collection, "Eating the Dinosaur," and fielding questions from the audience, Klosterman hopes to host an impromptu talk show with guests drawn from the audience. "What could be more interesting than a talk show with people you've never seen before?" he asks, laughing. So don't forget to put your name in the bucket on the way into the talk, because that's how he'll pick his guests. We caught up with the rock critic/novelist/pop culture observer/hair metal enthusiast from his home in New York by phone last week.

Q. What are some of the topics you're covering in "Dinosaur"?

A. They're all original. I talk about the relationship between [Nirvana's album] "In Utero" and David Koresh. I talk about time travel, ABBA, Ralph Sampson, Garth Brooks, things the Unabomber was right about, the process of interviewing people, and why it's fun to spy on people.

Q. That one's self-evident isn't it?

A. But why is it fun? That's the question.

Q. Because it's a little thrill to know something about someone that they don't know you know, right?

A. It's the opposite. You'll have to read it. [Laughs.] Everybody thinks that's the reason they enjoy voyeurism; they think that they're knowing something they didn't normally know, but that's not why people enjoy it.

Q. You've been on several book tours now, but at the beginning did you entertain rock 'n' roll fantasies about groupies and drugs?

A. First of all it's a tour, but it's a book tour, so the kind of people who are drawn to a writer are very different than the kind of person that's, say, drawn to Nickelback. When I used to go on tours, a lot of times at the end of the show I would just say to the audience, "Anybody want to go to the bar?" Because all the people who were coming were exactly like me. That's not really the case now, so I would never say that anymore. Somewhere between "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" and "Killing Yourself to Live," I realized I could no longer ask people in the audience to go party afterward because they were just too crazy and weird. And the kind of people who want to go out tend to be the weirdest, craziest ones.

Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com