Book Review: The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

So, first things first: Yes, I had that phone from the cover. Bought it when me and my roomate Spoon got our first apartment in Hoboken in 98, and kept it for the next year and a half or so. Yes, we bought it because of the GNR "Patience" video, and yes, every once in a while we would slam it down just like Axl did, which is why after a while the ringer broke and we would just have to look for a corner of the living room to light up to see if someone was trying to call us.

On a similar note, I think with a book called "The Nineties", I need to put down my 90s bona fides, as that will willingly or unwillingly color my review. I'm Gen X and thus went from high school through college to the workforce in that period (however you define it - more below). I wasn't as Gen X as some of my contemporaries (I never read any of the "defining" books, I never owned an album distributed by Sub Pop, I only saw movies like Singles or Reality Bites on Cable or VHS - although that may make me even MORE Gen X), but was still prototypical Gen X in many ways (spent a good two-year period with flannel tied around my waist despite living in Virginia, was inspired by Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign to get into politics, once owned concert t-shirts from Jimmy's Chicken Shack and Red Red Meat, missed out on what ended up being one of Nirvana's very last concerts - happening just a couple hundred yards away from me - because I thought the band was "too commercial"). I would love to say I would put all of these biases aside as I review this book, but I don't think that's even possible.

The hitch with reviewing any Chuck Klosterman book, for me at least, is that he's already written one of the best books I've ever read, But What If We're Wrong? Any other collection of his essays, even if they were written prior to that book, is going to be compared to that masterpiece. In comparison, The Nineties puts up a good fight, but inevitably falls short.

That's not to say that the material isn't interesting - it is. And that's not to say that the contents aren't thorough - they are. But from my perspective at least, that's part of the problem.

There are two main challenges to this book. For the first, let's go back to But What If We're Wrong? I read that book a few years ago and still think about the chapters about the history of Moby Dick becoming the great American novel and why String Theory may be proven wrong in the future - but part of it was because they were wedged in between chapters about subjects like why "Roseanne" might be the most realistic sitcom in TV history. The Nineties, however, is like drinking out of a firehose - every chapter is a deep dive into a heavy subject, like when the 90s truly began, what the characteristics of Gen X are, how the Internet spread into popular culture, etc. Klosterman still brings the funny as much as possible (great chapter opening - I'm paraphrasing - "They year 1995 really feels like the year that everything changed. Especially if you just read W Joseph Campbell's book 1995: The Year That Everything Changed.), but most of these chapters get downright academic quickly. Even the chapter that starts out with the inevitability of Pauly Shore movies moves quickly into the Bill Clinton presidency. With important point after important point, it was hard to keep track of things - I can barely remember his thoughts on how George HW Bush went from sky-high approval ratings one year to losing an election the next, or why The Matrix spoke more about TV than the Internet, because so many points seemed to run together. I think Klosterman recognized this, which is why every chapter ended with a shorter piece on a related topic; however, those shorter pieces were not necessarily less heavy - a few pages about the murders of Tupac and Biggie is not really a palate cleanser.

That runs into the second challenge of this book - looking back, so much of this period was depressing. You could argue that the "decade" began with the fall of the Berlin wall*, with the US the only global superpower left - a time of limitless possibilities. It ended with September 11th. Along the way you had Nirvana exposing the hypocrisy of popular music and burning the bridges to popularity for all remaining rock bands, Bill Clinton enjoying huge approval ratings despite (or maybe even because of) his infidelity with an intern, the Internet working its way into making every other form of media obsolete, and people talking themselves into thinking the 2000 election was a joke (including me - I voted for Nader). Even the touchstone movies are now problematic - as Klosterman notes, in Reality Bites, Ethan Hawke's self-absorbed, humiliating, bro-philosopher character is the embodiment of toxic masculinity; in the 90s, he was the GOOD guy.

* I happen to agree with Klosterman that the period after the Berlin Wall fell was still technically the 80s; the 90s truly began when Nevermind replaced Bad as the #1 album

I know this has been a pretty negative review so far - I don't want you to think that this is a terrible book. It has a couple of problems, as stated in the first point, but my reaction to it isn't always based on thinks in Klosterman's control, as stated in the second point. I think this is still a very worthwhile read - eight out of ten hot dogs - just not the best of his works. As I said at the beginning, though, I can't escape my biases dictating my feelings on this book. I would love to see what someone from another generation would think of this work - if you're a Boomer or Gen Z, give it a read and let us know what you think!