If you are a member of Gen X and even mildly paid attention to the pop culture scene of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s you will enjoy Klosterman’s view of the world. His takes on Star Wars, The Real World, Billy Joel and many others are funny and insightful.

It doesn’t surprise me that he says he’d never find a woman who’d satisfy him ‘cause he’s nitpicky, mildly sexist and contrarian as all hell. Still an entertaining read tho.

this took a little bit longer to consume than i expected. the essays made me laugh and i could relate, but it just didn’t do it for me.

my first reaction from reading this book is that it is far too outdated. and it will surely deter readers. that were not born or alive in the 70’s or the 80’s. the subjects he talks about include personas such as billy joel, pamela anderson, saved by the bell when it was still on nbc, my so called life when it still airing on mtv. so you get my drift. klosterman chooses subjects that inherently affected him when he was still growing up and while he was in college, there afterwards. this book is divided into several different stories but in reality they are all through the paradigm of the author’s life and his own opinons. which i guess the greater story in the end. [chokes] but yeah, sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs is good but not in the conventional sense.

Essays on pop-culture aren’t that hard to come by, but essays on pop culture that strike the exact right balance between academic learning and social understanding,and still manage ot be relevant and funny?
This is my favourite Klosterman.

I met Chuck Klosterman when I was on vacation last summer. He was doing a short reading, leading a discussion, and finishing up with a book signing. It was very low key, in a small coffee shop in Seattle. My friend and I were just so very excited to meet him… We’ve been devouring his books…

So when it was all done, he was just hanging out and I asked him to come out and have a beer with us. AND HE DID! I was shocked that he said yes, and to this day, I still can’t believe I had the guts to go up to someone who could write such a great book, and ask him if he wanted to hang out. It was awesome.

I wanted to like this, I really did, but in the end I just couldn’t. There were lots of funny little bits here and there, but the sum total was just too glib, too shallow, too purposefully contrarian, and above all, too universalist and unqualified. The main problem is that he’s trying to universalize what amounts to a very narrow-bore pop culture experience. I’m only a few years younger, but very few of the touchstones(the Real World, Billy Joel, Saved by the Bell, etc) that he mentions have had any appreciable effect on my life or that of my peers. I’ve heard of them all and been exposed to them enough to have a good familiarity, but I can’t hang any of the shared meaning on them that he does and attempts to extend to his whole readership.

I was also bit irritated by his ongoing attempts to cast himself as lowbrow, working class, anti-elitist, etc. He may be genuinely uncomfortable being a part of a cultural elite(and some sincere confrontation with this discomfort could have been really interesting in this context), but he is, and he’s not fooling anyone with his protestations and poses to the contrary.

Finally, he should just avoid writing about the internet or gaming or computers, because he just doesn’t have any expertise in those areas and catty condescension is not enough to make up for that fact.

does it get any better than this!? absolutely hilarious!

Absolutely hilarious collection of essays looking at pop-culture, music, sport and sex. Anyone that can write an entire essay on why porn is the single most important thing on the internet wins in my book.