Finished
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman the other day.
It calls itself a "low culture manifesto," which is a pretty good description. It's basically a series of essays with little to no relation to one another, except their obsession with drawing meaningful conclusions about humanity and society from pop culture events and trends. This works for me, because I always find myself trying to extrapolate everyday things into greater truths; perhaps too often, which can also be said about some of the conclusions in this book. Still, I enjoy Klosterman's writing style, lack of (and disdain for) pretension of all spades, and I've always been a fan of thinking deeply and meaningfully about all sorts of things, even those which wouldn't seem to lend themselves to much thought.
A quick example: I particularly enjoyed his observations about "The Sims." The idea of playing a game designed to simulate the life you're already living is, after all, pretty weird. And he correctly observes that people don't often use the game to act out or be someone else; the first thing everyone does is try to make their character look just like they do! He mentions that he had to learn how to play from his niece, and that he kept pestering her with questions about his in-game character. "Where'd I go to school?" "Where did I get the money I'm using to buy my house?" Et cetera. She brushes these questions off with responses like "It doesn't matter" or "You just have it" or "You're just here." But as he points out, if he were to ask her why her Barbie doll has two pairs of shoes and four outfits, she'd have some incredibly elaborate and complicated backstory to explain the discrepancy. With her toys, she adds her own imagination to the process. With computer games, she unconciously decides that anything the game doesn't tell you is therefore unimportant or not worth considering. It's a pretty fascinating insight.
I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who likes discussion and informed conjecture for their own sake, or to anyone who simply enjoys pop culture, and the idea of finding depth in seemingly shallow things.
Klosterman, by the by, is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers (
his review of Guns N' Roses' perpetually upcoming album
Chinese Democracy is fantastic). After I started reading this my lady friend, Courtney, saw an audio version of one of his books on sale for $4, and picked it up for me. I've never listened to an audiobook before, and frankly I don't think I'll enjoy it quite as much as I would reading the book itself, but hey, you know...$4.
If you want to get a feel for Klosterman's general style, ESPN's Bill Simmons just posted a
two-part podcast with the man himself on Michael Jackson, the nature of celebrity, Twitter, and other such things. I haven't listened to it yet, because I'm too pleased that it's there, and want to wait until I have some sort of comfort food in front of me and can enjoy it to its fullest.
By the by, Simmons has had Klosterman on his podcast a few times before, all well worth listening to. You can find his previous appearances
here.
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) and runs up to Jan 2009. Despite being stuffed with all the acronyms and insider terminology you'd expect, Tett has a good way with language, and brings a humanising angle having met some of the key players (especially at JP Morgan, who come out looking less-bad-than-the-others in many ways, although this might partially reflect the level of access she's been granted).
)
