Klosterman compares the invention of the wheel with the development of the internet as a momentous shift in most people’s lives. Self- righteous outrage that had not been considered cool in an earlier generation had begun to change to more than acceptable. This generation had been born between 19 constituting some 65 million individuals. Yet a new generation was coming to the fore. Yet still the decade would experience a peak in social disaffection. We would experience the longest economic expansion in American history. Things would seem to be never better as the decade progressed. The Berlin Wall had come down and the Soviet Union had dissolved. It was the golden age of newspapers and we had a collective obsession with popular culture. We controlled technology rather than they us. At this time there was no way to verify facts but then again it wasn’t considered essential. This was no doubt the case due to the fact that it was an easy time to live before the rise of polarizing issues. 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. 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. 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. 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. The Nineties is a mind-bending trip that never signals where it is going next. But if you were looking for a dry rendition of those ten years, you are looking in the wrong place with this book. 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. The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman is truly a wonder.
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