The Nineties: A Book

by Chuck Klosterman

That, more than any person or event, informed the experience of nineties life: an adversarial relationship with the unseemliness of trying too hard.

It was perhaps the last period in American history when personal and political engagement was still viewed as optional.

If a society improves, the experience of growing up in that society should be less taxing and more comfortable; if technology advances and efficiency increases, emerging generations should rationally expect to work less. If new kids aren’t soft and lazy, something has gone wrong.

The concept of “selling out”—and the degree to which that notion altered the meaning and perception of almost everything—is the single most nineties aspect of the nineties.

“This car is like punk rock,”

They sued Ticketmaster over monopolization,

Lol

The Beastie Boys, a musical group who’d eventually become progressive icons of inclusion, wanted to title their 1986 debut album Don’t Be a Faggot.

Learning so much truly

The adoption of queer by queers added still another layer to the tiramisu of heteronormative befuddlement.

TIRAMISU

“I don’t understand this whole thing about computers and the superhighway,” sci-fi novelist Ray Bradbury told an audience of college students in 1995. “Who wants to be in touch with all of those people?”

The late nineties will forever be defined as baseball’s Steroid Era,

lol

There was a level of calculated redness to his neck: It was erroneously publicized that he’d tried to cash a $1.6 million royalty check at his local bank’s drive-through window.

lol

Yet the single most interesting thing about Titanic is its total commitment to expressing nothing that could be construed as interesting, now or then.

The Matrix resonated not because it was fantastical fiction, but because it was not.

That “detail” has become the media version of a McGuffin, in the same way the murder of Laura Palmer has little to do with the way people remember Twin Peaks.

but she was...wrapped in plastic

the nineties were a good time to be president, and he was a good president for good times.

The nineties were a terrible time for Mike Tyson, which is an odd thing to say about someone whose hobby was purchasing Bengal tigers.

Again and again, Bush was described as the candidate voters “would rather have a beer with.” It was a very nineties way to think about a problem.

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.