The Nineties
Ratings71
Average rating3.7
I really enjoyed Chuck's personal and unique take on the 90's. He covers so many topics like generations, politics, music, terrorism, sports, television, polarization and even the way humans think, react, and live. His writing style is very entertaining as well as it is informative, retrospective, and insightful. He also connects numerous points and ties everything together in a seamless and satisfying way. There were a ton of things that I didn't even know or thought of, considering I am technically a “90's kid” even though I don't exactly remember much of it since I was so young. I definitely want to read more of his books and essays. Highly recommend!
DNF at 63% because I can't listen to more boring history retellings. There are no connections between the events that happen other than the fact that they all happened in the 1990s. The other ads nothing new to his historical synopsis, and I would argue that the pieces of history he chooses to pull out are mostly boring.
So much of culture and society shifted as a result of the Internet boom in the 90s yet that topic was barely touched on other than simply recounting some of the updates that came at that time. I should've read some of the reviews and more of the description before jumping into this, but it truly, it's just a history synopsis and not at all something I'm interested in as I lived it all.
It's a bit weird looking back on a decade that you lived through and one that doesn't feel that long ago. Klosterman has organized this book as a series of funny, intelligent and entertaining essays focused on different events, pop culture, and phenomena of the time. One of the press reviews called it “irreverent” and I agree.
Reading the book, I realize how much has changed. The internet was fun but not vital, you had to be at home to get a phone call, and we shared a lot more pop culture experiences back then, for good or for ill, such as Seinfeld, Titanic, Nirvana etc. With social media, we might assume we are connected but everything is broken up into little bits of specialized interest. You also had a higher degree of individuality.
“No stories were viral. No celebrity was trending. The world was still big. The country was still vast. You could just be a little person, with your own little life and your own little thoughts. You didn't have to have an opinion, and nobody cared if you did or did not. You could be alone on purpose, even in a crowd.”
I enjoyed being reminded of things I hadn't thought of in years. Clarence Thomas, Ross Perot and the 1992 presidential campaign, and the entire millennium changeover scare.
Born the same year as I was, Klosterman had a chapter (Fighting the Battle of Who Could Care Less) devoted to our generation, generation X, who were the young people during the 90s. We would have been the ones influencing and experiencing the 90s the most at the time but it's hard to notice something when you are in the midst of it.
If there is any weakness in the book it's that I wish he'd been able to go into more of the literature/fiction writing of the time. He mentions a couple of books, neither of which I think were a big deal.
Usually politics is the side story to pop culture. This is the opposite
Interesting look at the 90s, although it is somewhat specific to the author's own experience, and excludes many things that could have been included (e.g., the rise of video games). It could be more accurately titled “The Nineties: My Experience”.
Some of this was excellent. Some of it was tiring. I used to rank Klosterman as one of my favorite authors, but now I just find him exhausting. It must be SO HARD to be SO COOL.
The difference between Klosterman and, say, Malcolm Gladwell, is that Gladwell surprises me with the things he links and the craftiness with which he does so. Klosterman just bludgeons readers over the head with his own opinions and oftentimes the chapters just feel like disjointed rants.
Because I've been thinking about this book a lot, I've decided to bump this one to 5 stars.
A great examination of all parts of a decade that most people view as uneventful or ineffectual.
I don't always agree with Klosterman (and sometimes I think he is a complete asshole) but his writing is always entertaining, and the lure of reading about the last decade before our lives moved online was too strong to resist. Not just a trip down memory lane but a re-examination of how we experienced the seminal events of the 90s, and how they are perceived 30 years later.