- Editorial:
- PENGUIN USA
- Año de edición:
- 2022
- Materia:
- Literatura contemporánea en inglés
- ISBN:
- 978-0-7352-1795-9
- Páginas:
- 384
- Encuadernación:
- Tapa dura
THE NINETIES
A BOOK
CHUCK KLOSTERMAN
It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didnt know who it was. By the end, exposing someones address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didnt know who it was. The 90s brought about a revolution in the human condition were still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job.
Beyond epiphenomena like "Cop Killer" and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a 90s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it.
