The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman

Penguin Press 384 pp.

By Paul Markowitz

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman is truly a wonder.  On the face of it it is a series of essays, both short and long, that attempt to make some sense of the 1990’s in the United States.  But if you were looking for a dry rendition of those ten years, you are looking in the wrong place with this book.

The Nineties is a mind-bending trip that never signals where it is going next.  Klosterman will make an incredibly insightful philosophical or sociological comment immediately followed by a discussion of “Achy Breaky Heart” one of the more inane hits of the 90’s by Billy Ray Cyrus, and then immediately discuss the decade long popularity of Garth Brooks where he breaks down the lyrics of “Friends in Low Places”, one of his biggest hits.  Before the chapter is over, he discusses the significance of the shows Dallas and Friends, only to make a thoughtful comment about the Seinfeld episode in which Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza pitch a show to TV executives about “nothing.”  Not to end the chapter on that note, Klosterman concludes by discussing the movie Titanic as an economic story versus a historical event.  What one ends up with Klosterman is a work of synthesis, that is both funny and thoughtful and ultimately a wild ride through the mind of a highly intelligent and amusing political, historical and sociological chronicler.

Klosterman the author sees the Nineties life as more than any person or event but as an adversarial relationship between people without the unseemliness of their seeming to try too hard.  This was no doubt the case due to the fact that it was an easy time to live before the rise of polarizing issues.  At this time there was no way to verify facts but then again it wasn’t considered essential.  American life was underwhelming.  We controlled technology rather than they us.  It was the golden age of newspapers and we had a collective obsession with popular culture.  The Berlin Wall had come down and the Soviet Union had dissolved.  What could possibly go wrong?

Things would seem to be never better as the decade progressed.  We would experience the longest economic expansion in American history.  Yet still the decade would experience a peak in social disaffection.  Yet a new generation was coming to the fore.  This generation had been born between 1965 and 1980 constituting some 65 million individuals.  Self- righteous outrage that had not been considered cool in an earlier generation had begun to change to more than acceptable.

Klosterman compares the invention of the wheel with the development of the internet as a momentous shift in most people’s lives.  The internet would arrive in only ten years and totally divide the populace.   As a matter of fact he determines that the future in fact began in 1995.  Even though less than one-fourth of the population possessed a computer it would offer a competing version of reality and soon annihilate the newspaper industry.

The early nineties seemed predictable.  There was the fall of Communism and reinventions in music and film.  But there was also the rise of genetic engineering, and network computing and the centrality of “neo-liberalism” as personified by Bill Clinton.  Despite the fact that Y2K turned out to be a non-event, the present and past started to unhook.  As Eminem, the rapper, put it – “You know the world is going to hell when the best rapper is white and the best golfer is black.”

America had been consumed with non-stories while ignoring foreboding signs of impending danger for some time.  The decade would end according to Klosterman, not with the last day of the decade but in 2001.  The Nineties collapsed with the World Trade Center Towers.

Klosterman The author certainly covers key historical and political events of the decade: Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, the election of Bill Clinton, Mandela, Yeltsin, the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building, Ralph Nader.  But he doesn’t do it in a chronological manner and doesn’t do it without deciphering it through television programs, movies, books and music to make his points.

This book is clearly not a conventional history of the decade.  But it is wise yet humorous, thoughtful yet fun, insightful yet unpredictable. So, if you are interested in reliving the decade in a totally unconventional manner, I would suggest you read it with your seatbelt on, because you are in for a bumpy ride.

Paul Markowitz is a California based writer.