We've read a few books by Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Chuck Klosterman IV). He's an interesting author. He reminds us of that friend we've all had who - often over drinks at a too-hip bar that they, of course, suggested - seems way smarter and erudite than the menial dead-end job they always seem to be working. Klosterman has an opinion about everything and states those opinions with steely conviction, but his sentences can be so unwieldy and pretzel-twisty that we often feel like he's talking over our head. And so we have no choice but to nod sagely as if we agree lest we admit we're rubes who can't follow him. That said, it's a rare thing indeed to find an author who's so clearly thought this long and hard and deep about a subject that might seem trivial to other historians and essayists: pop culture.
In his book The Nineties Klosterman notes that marking decades can't be done on the calendar - they should be bookended through how the culture perceives that decade. He argues that the 1990s started with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 (although he suggests that the 80s vibe may not have truly faded until 1991 or so) and ended with the September 11 attacks in 2001. He further suggests that the Bush-Gore election in 2000 and that first year of the Bush presidency in 2001 were essentially an extension 1990s "so what?" ambivalence. Times were pretty good and life was dull, the internet and smartphones hadn't yet turned everything upside down.
More interesting, though, is the idea Klosterman threads through the book that there will always be a disconnect between how you remember something happening and how it really was when it was actually happening. That is, when you look back at the more dramatic turns of history from the vantage point of the present day, it can be easy to wonder how could that have possibly happened when at the time what happened seemed perfectly logical and wholly unsurprising.
Aside from all of this fancy philosophizing about the 1990s, why they were the way they were, and how we now remember them, we found pleasure simply following Klosterman as he wound his way through the decade ruminating on a number of people, places, and things that we'd forgotten about (or almost forgotten about). We experienced a great many fizzy and nostalgic "oh yeah! we remember that!" moments.
Here's a list of 1990s signifiers in no particular order.
* Political correctness
* Alanis Morrissette's Jagged Little Pill
* Clarence Thomas' 1991 Supreme Court confirmation
* Reality Bites
* Prozac Nation
* Grunge
* Ross Perot running for president
* The Gulf War - broadcast live on CNN
* Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction
* Star 69
* Windows 95
* Michael Jordan playing baseball
* Zima
* Dolly the cloned sheep
* Biosphere 2
* MTV's "The Real World"
* The Matrix
* Oprah Winfrey
* Titanic
* The all-purple "alternative" adjective
* The Blair Witch Project
* Eminem
* "The X Files"
* Generation X
* The long cardboard boxes CD used to come in
* George H.W. Bush
* The Unabomber
* Broadway's Rent
* 70s nostalgia ("That 70s Show," Dazed and Confused)
* Napster
* The rise of the internet (AOL and dial-up modems)
* Kurt Cobain suicide
* The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and impeachment
* Pauly Shore
* Jurassic Park
* "Achy Breaky Heart"
* Oklahoma City bombing
* Rodney King video
* Falling Down
* The Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase in 1998
* Y2K hysteria
* VHS tapes and Blockbuster Video
* Nirvana's Nevermind
* Tiger Woods
* The OJ murder trial
* American Beauty
* NBC's Thursday night "Must See TV" lineup
* The Columbine school shooting
* The Matrix
* The word "queer"
* Kids
* 1994 baseball strike and cancelled World Series
A word about that cover photo. We had that clear Princess-style phone in our college bedroom.
