In Chuck Klosterman’s new book, “The Nineties,” he writes that decade’s fixation on authenticity and not selling out was never far from mind. So as he finished the book, he realized he wasn’t sure how to feel about promoting it.
Chuck Klosterman’s new book “The Nineties” is a look back at the cultural touchstones and influences of what Klosterman thinks might be the last decade we think of as a distinct chapter of history. Klosterman, who turned 18 in 1990, laughs at the absurdity of that, and also how much has changed from the ’90s, when to promote oneself was to be branded a sell-out, and today, when, well, self-promotion is what we all do all the time on social media.
“I put a lot of effort into that,” Klosterman says, laughing when complimented on his close scrutiny of a 32-second YouTube video of the AOL sign-on. “I looked at that thing like 40 times.”“The Nineties” came to Klosterman partly out of a desire to complement or correct an earlier book on the decade, he says.
“I was like, ‘I did that book, and I just wasn’t ready to do it in a way that I felt like would still feel good to me years later,” he says. “So part of it was almost like, ‘I’m going to do this again, but instead of being subjective, I’m just going to be as objective as possible.’ A chapter on Michael Jordan’s dalliance with baseball after dominating basketball jumps sideways into the decline of baseball in the era of labor strife and steroids.
“I’m looking at things that are sort of universally seen as touchstones of the time,” he says. “I’m going to try to describe why that ended up having a meaning larger than itself.”“There’s no situation that impacts all people in the same way or at the same time,” Klosterman says. “So what I was looking for are things that ended up unconsciously impacting people, even if they didn’t view it as central to their own personal experience.
The late English culture writer Mark Fisher’s theory on time was a significant influence in how “The Nineties” was written, Klosterman says.
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