Between the falling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the falling of the World Trade Center in 2001 was a decade called the 1990s. The nineties gave the United States its first Baby Boomer President, Bill Clinton, and we saw the rise of the internet. Generation X was finally noticed (the oldest already in their twenties) with the advent of Grunge and a little sitcom called “Friends.” Princess Diana died in a horrific car crash in a Paris tunnel, and OJ Simpson went from football hero to a accused murderous villain. We gossiped about Kato Kaelin, Lorena Bobbit, and Monica Lewinsky. We began the nineties completely unaware of email and ended it checking our AOL email accounts for messages from our families and friends.
The nineties seem so long ago, and at the same time, it seems so recent. Has it really been nearly thirty years since Kurt Cobain left this mortal coil? I feel like I just heard the news of his suicide. Apparently, I’m not the only one who feels like this. Writer Chuck Klosterman also has thoughts about the nineties. And he discusses this decade in his book The Nineties.
In essays both short and long, Klosterman examines the politics, media, sports, and pop culture that shaped the nineties. He examines the scientific developments that gave us the aforementioned internet to the cloning, including Dolly the sheep. He examines major political events like Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings and Anita Hill, Bill Clinton’s election ,and a certain political disrupter named Ross Perot, and South Africa electing Nelson Mandela after he had been a political prisoner.
Klosterman speaks of tragedies like the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building and the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, which we are still talking about today. But he also writes about things that I had forgotten like the cult Heaven’s Gate mass suicide and the simulated Earth Biosphere 2.
Being a Generation X-er himself, Klosterman (born in 1972), can’t help but write about the insurgence of Generation X. Caught between the more attention grabbing Baby Boomers and the Millennials, Generation X had a brief moment in the spotlight. Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X was a best-seller. Grunge music and the Seattle scene took over music. Countless movies like “Reality Bites” and “Singles” examined the ennui and struggles of the MTV generation, And speaking of MTV, it was still showing music videos, but reality TV had taken hold with a new show called “The Real World.” Now, thirty years later MTV shows nothing but reality television shows. My younger self would have been so pissed if MTV was broadcasting “Teen Mom” back in 1990.
Where was I? Yes, Generation X and pop culture. We made Thursdays “must-see TV” on NBC with shows like “Friends” and “Seinfeld.” Streaming was more than a decade away, and cable was just starting to make quality television programs (“The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City”), so network television still ruled our viewing habits. Today, “Friends” and “Seinfeld” would be streamed on Netflix or Max, and nudity and cursing would be involved. So instead of Ross from “Friends” saying to Rachel, “We were on a break!” he’d probably say, “We were on a fucking break!” and Rachel would probably be topless.
I really enjoyed reading The Nineties. Klosterman covered so many topics (his take on the Billy Ray Cyrus cheeseball hit “Achy Breaky Heart” cracked me up, and remember a clear cola called Crystal Pepsi?), and he must of had fun walking down memory lane and researching all the people, places, and things that made the nineties the nineties. Those of us who remember this decade will read this book with a sense of both happy and sad nostalgia. And younger generations will get primer on what old people are talking about when they talk about the nineties.
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