The Nineties

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I was tearing through this book and it probably took me a few days to realize the joke in the very title of the book, identifying itself as a book. And then reflecting on how funny it was that this would have to be identified as such. And then realizing how deliberate this must have been, because after all…we are talking about an ironic, self-deprecating, coming of age of the Gen X generation (the over-educated-working-beneath our potential just-to-keep-up generation to which I belong) and it is only right that we identify the fact that we are reading a serious BOOK about the history of a decade that seems so recent yet began 30 years ago.

Klosterman does a masterful job synthesizing politics, pop culture, news, music, opinions, theory and history in telling a cohesive story that roughly begins when the Berlin Wall fell and (spoiler alert!) ends with the Twin Towers falling in 2001. The very 90’s phenomenon of acting like nothing matters, the resistance toward success which leads to success which you can’t define; the career of Garth Brooks—a man I had never really thought of as a product of the 90’s…the rise of hip hop, the rise and fall and flattening of Bill Clinton and clear Pepsi…all of this and more are part of the tapestry of The Nineties.

For me, this book alternates between saying “well duh” and “oh yeah, I remember that.” The 90’s might have been the last tine you could agree to disagree with a person of a different political party. It might have been the last time some of us actually answered the phone. Or the last time we had to be home at a certain time to watch a TV program…but if we missed it, it wasn’t the end of the world.

It would be easy to say that I enjoyed this for the nostalgia, but I think it goes beyond that. Klosterman doesn’t just hold something up and go “remember the swing craze!” He examines what it meant and where it fit into the greater context of this ridiculous decade (I once caught the Cherry Poppin Daddies because I thought they were a ska band…which is about as 90’s as I could get).

The Nineties also examines the progression of a society that went from basically functional to almost completely falling apart dysfunctional as it is now. The greatest hits are there and when it’s over, you know it.

Excellent book. But you know. Whatever.





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