She Treads Softly: The Nineties

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

The Nineties

The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman
2/8/22; 384 pages
Penguin Publishing Group

The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman is a highly recommended look back at the decade of the 1990's.

Presented as a group of essays or discussions of a wide variety of topics randomly organized and interconnected, Klosterman covers cultural observations from the 90's. This sweeping collection of topics covers major trends in music, TV, film, radio, sports, political moments, technology, and more. The decade was bracketed between the fall of The Berlin Wall (11/9/89) and the Twin Towers collapsing. It is the era of grunge, Seinfeld, the reunification of Germany, videotape, The X-Files, Bill Clinton, clear drinks, landlines and phone books, Ross Perot, The Phantom Menace and Jar Jar Binks, Art Bell and Coast to Coast AM, Waco, Columbine, Cops, hanging chads, Dolly the sheep, Michael Jordan, and so much more.

Looking back at the 90's through Klosterman's eyes is both entertaining and perceptive. His essays provide a shrewd and diverse look back at a time when you didn't have anything trending or going viral. If a story was a big news event, it really was news worthy. People living during this time were the last ones to know life before the Internet. If you remember the 90's, you will remember the sounds involved in dial-up internet service. You will also remember life before everyone had a cell phone and you depended on a landline where you never knew who was calling and had to answer the phone. You also were not connected all the time and could actually be unavailable. There were no binge watching shows. If you missed an episode, you had to wait for reruns. Video rental stores were huge.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the Penguin Publishing Group.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.