The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. Landlines fell to cell phones, the internet exploded, and pop culture accelerated without the aid of technology that remembered everything. It was the last era with a real mainstream to either identify with or oppose. The ’90s brought about a revolution in the human condition, and a shift in consciousness, that we’re still struggling to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job.
In The Nineties, Klosterman dissects the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the pre-9/11 politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan, and (almost) everything else. The result is a multidimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.
This book popped into my Libby recs at just the right time.
I *just* started a podcast with a friend of mine called Generation In Between: A Xennial pocast…where we talk about our 80s childhood and 90s coming of age/teen years.
I was born in 1980 and my co host Katie was born in 1982….
So the 1990s were a BIG ASS IMPORTANT time period for us!
This book touched on all kinds of things, just like we plan for our podcast to do.
It’s kind of a remember, revisit, realization and relearning kind of vibe—for this book and also our podcast.
I found this book to be quite interesting, informative and entertaining…to look at things thru a different lens than I did while I was living thru it.
AND OMG THE COVER ALONE…..I *totally* had this phone in the 90s!!!!!!Chances are you probably did to if you’re around the same age as me!
The author touched on all kinds of things: politics, music, world events, sports (I totes zoned out on that), film..just to name a few.
The 1990s were a really unique time—or maybe I just think that because it was such a pivotal time in my life…when I became a teenager and young adult.
I’ve heard it been said of the Xennial generation that we had a “analogue childhood with a digital adulthood”….and that has never happened before or will happen again.
Lots of unique things happened in the 1990s…but I guess the same could be said about the 1980s, or 1970s or 1960s etc.
Every generation wants to think they are unique and set apart from all the rest. LOL
A few quotes that stuck out to me:
“The nineties were a golden age for metropolitan newspapers and glossy magazines, yet most copies were destroyed or recycled within a month and never converted to digital files. It was a decade of seeing absolutely everything before never seeing it again.”
“Modern people worry about smartphone addiction, despite the fact that landlines exercised much more control over the owner.”
“In the nineties, doing nothing on purpose was a valid option, and a specific brand of cool became more important than almost anything else. The key to that coolness was disinterest in conventional success. The nineties were not an age for the aspirant.”
Bottom line opinion on this book: enjoyable and educational
Will def probably use as a resource for future episodes of Generation In Between…so WIN for that aspect as well!!