We’re reading the paperback edition of Chuck Klosterman’s most recent book, a look at 1990s pop culture and historical trends in America with the unbeatable says-what-it-is title “The Nineties: A Book.”
It’s a deep dive into the decade that brought us many things, including the pivotal widespread adoption of the modern commercial internet and cheap cellphones, grunge and gangsta rap, OJ Simpson, the Clintons, MTV’s The Real World, Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” Tupac and Biggie, Friends, the X Files, Alanis Morisette, “The Big Lebowski,” the Y2K panic, “Prozac Nation,” “Generation X,” Snoop Dogg, clear-colored beverages, 90210, peak irony, the relentless stream of AOL Online discs in the mail, and much, much more, as they say.
Klosterman’s takes are as incisive and entertaining as they’ve ever been. Like in his “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto” from early in his writing career, pop-cultural touchtones and totems are put into context in “The Nineties.” These are dissected, analyzed, their legacies distilled and re-evaluated, and explained through Klosterman’s forthright accidental hipster-nerd lens, unfettered by pretense, wordsmithed with a laidback, legit intellectual and journalistic heft doused with a robust sense of humor. Read it, y’all.
GLOBAL GRAPHICA 