“This book is awesome, I don’t really need to tell you which decade it’s about or avoid spoilers because, well, human history is mostly a spoiler.
So the most useful thing is to talk about what makes this book unique, because it is unique among books that try to talk about a period in history. And I mean unique in a good way, not the way that, like, my mom cutting up my Ghostbusters t-shirt to make cleaning rags when I was a kid, was a “unique” way of getting cleaning rags.
I’m going to address the uniqueness of the book. Because I listened to a podcast where two dum-dums discussed this book, and they were both like, “I don’t understand why this needs to exist.” To which I said, “I don’t know why this shitty podcast needs to exist!” out loud to my phone.
Then I realized that was dumb and tried to rate the show somewhere, like on iTunes or whatever, and then it was an Apple ID thing and they were going to send me a code, and you know what? Not worth it.
But if that’s your podcast and you’re reading this somehow: No, YOU suck!
The biggest difference between this book and others like it is that Chuck Klosterman is not examining the 90’s in a way where he’s trying to say, See, in these ways, the 90’s was not as it appeared at the time. And thank fuck. I’m all set on those.
It seems like some people wanted this book to be a We The People with better prose and maybe a section about clear colas, something that was a written-out timeline of an entire decade, blow-by-blow, and from a variety of perspectives, all handled even-handedly.
Which is monumentally stupid because nobody ACTUALLY wants to read We The People. It’s boring, it sucks, and the only saving grace is that the questions at the end of the chapters are in the order the answers appear in the chapter, so at least you can do your homework with SOME speed.
I think what a lot of book critics really want is to be able to point out the things the book doesn’t cover and say, “See, this book doesn’t represent the experiences of People X, therefore it’s not comprehensive.” Then I’ve proven I’m smarter than Chuck Klosterman, boom, roasted.
Some reviewers seem to be missing the overall arc of the book, probably because they skimmed it, read only parts, or didn’t actually read it at all. Which is too bad because the larger narratives are the best part, and also because what’s the point of a book podcast where you talk about books you haven’t read? Any idiot could do that. Que up the first episode of Page-By-Page Infinite Jest: A Pete Podcast where I discuss, page-by-page, what I THINK happens in Infinite Jest.
I think the larger narrative of The 90’s is something like:
The natural tendency is to remember a time from the past through the lens of your current self as opposed to remembering it as you really perceived it at the time. Remembering it accurately and with the feelings you had at the time is almost impossible.
We all do this, and I’ll prove it:
Think about something you did in the past that was SUPER embarrassing, but at the time you did it, you didn’t feel exactly the same way.
Mine? Oh, too many to choose from…
Okay, one time I walked in goose shit and tracked it into my friend’s mom’s house. I didn’t walk in goose shit on purpose, by the way. When the geese stop in town, they just shit everywhere. It’s madness. Is this necessary info? I don’t want people to picture me rolling around in goose shit like a dog, but maybe everyone knows what I’m talking about?
Anyway, his mom was super pissed and made me clean it up, and at the time I was embarrassed and sort of mad she didn’t help me clean it up and sort of ashamed because I was scolded so hard, and now, in the present, I don’t know why I wasn’t just like, “You know what, you’re right, I did it, it was an honest mistake, I’m gonna clean it up.” But that’s because now I’m an adult man with carpets of my own, and I get it, and I’m not capable of understanding someone in a way I wasn’t capable when I was 14, and I’m also accustomed to sticking up for myself on the level of saying, “I did something wrong, I’m going to try and make it right, and further shaming about it isn’t necessary.”
I think Klosterman’s premise in The 90’s is that it’s impossible for me to remember this incident as I felt it at the time because there really isn’t a way to access memory without it filtering through your present self. And it’s a damn interesting premise, and I agree.
If there’s a wide cultural example I can think of, it’s the phenomenon where adults don’t know what it’s like to be a teenager (this is usually shouted AT adults who are in the middle of attempting to understand a teenager, or possibly reprimanding them for bringing bird feces into the house). And in some ways, those teenagers who run up the stairs and slam a door and listen to their music because Aaron Lewis is the only one who understands my pain–they’re right, we adults don’t understand. Because the only access we have to our teenage selves is our memory, and that memory is filtered through our current selves.
It’s not the memory of what it’s like to be a teenager. It’s the memory of what it’s like to remember to be what it’s like to be a teenager.
I guess the other highlight is that, for me, this book does profile a decade that is the last of its kind. It’s the last decade when people didn’t have internet at home, it’s the last decade where politics were seen as a low-stakes game, the last decade where there could be anything described as a monoculture, and maybe most importantly, the last decade where it was legitimate for a person to really not have much of a stance on something.
This is the Monday after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, and EVERYONE has a take. Violence is not okay, it’s okay to get slapped sometimes, Jada didn’t deserve it, Jada is mean, all kinds of shit.
In the 2020’s, it’s meaningful to NOT express any opinion on something whatsoever. If you do not express an opinion, one will be assigned to you based on your failure to let everyone know how you feel. If you don’t condemn person A, you’re supporting them. If you don’t condone person B, you’re condemning them.
And damn, I do miss a little bit of the 90’s when most of us could just say: a celebrity slapped another celebrity on a television program I do not care about, I didn’t watch the event, and no, I don’t really have an opinion on it.
And yes, I’m pretty sure everyone will be just fine without me weighing in.”