Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

I love the way Klosterman's writing engages the reader. It's right there and easy to comprehend given you understand some of his frequent references (I missed plenty). I laughed out loud; I reflected on pop-culture; I called upon for future conversations; I questioned Klosterman. That said I feel that some essays are skipable. Below are the ones I recommend to read, description added:

This is Emo: re the media's impact on our expectations of love
(Carnivore Interlude): I am almost a cannibal
Billy Sim: re the purpose of the Sims
What Happens When People Stop Being Polite: re The Real World's impact on our fulfillment of archetypes
(An Interlude to be Named Later): how to be an expert conversationalist
George Will vs Nick Hornby: re why soccer allows the most unathletic kids to participate and go happily unnoticed
The Lady or the Tiger: re cereal mascot's impact on kids perception of coolness
(Hypothetical Interlude): Either something will happen, or something will not.
Being Zack Morris: re cast characters disappearing and reappearing on TV shows
The Awe-Inspiring Beauty of Tom Cruise's Shattered, Troll-like Face: re ignorance being bliss
All I Know is What I Read in the Papers: re publishing a newspaper
(Waiting to Die Interlude): fantasizing about dying or having sex

The synopsis isn’t wrong – Chuck Klosterman will drive you insane. However, despite the book having been published back in 2003, he also did raise some interesting points that are relevant to this day that made me think about how pop culture reflects in our everyday lives.

The more stimulating chapters for me were about The Real World, The Sims, serial killers, and Pamela Anderson vs. Marilyn Monroe. He completely lost me on the chapter about soccer, but that’s besides the point.

It’s almost impossible for me to put my feelings for the author aside from my feelings for his content, mainly because what he’s written is a direct extension of his thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. With that said, sometimes Klosterman comes off as a little bit of an ass. His tone at times made me feel like the whole book was just him trying to prove a point that everything he did and said was so cool, and it had the opposite effect on me. Not to mention that at one point he unashamedly told a story about how he was dating two different women at the same time and sent them both the same mix CD which they ‘both loved’. I mean, nobody’s perfect, but clearly he has no shame or remorse of any kind to have included something so obviously cruel and personal in the book – the whole time I was thinking, “I hope at least one of those women either read, or was informed about this.”

Aaanyway, basically some chapters I liked a lot, and others I didn’t fully grasp, or care for. Overall though, it was a book that had its thought-provoking moments, and that definitely counts for something.

3.5/5 Stars

This is one of those books where you have two choices: either you’re going to read it or you won’t. Either you’re into the societal influences mass entertainment has on our culture or you’re not. If you aren’t, how would you even find this book? It’s basically a semiotic analysis of culture.

I found this book to be very interesting, oddly enough. Chuck Klosterman has a very amusing voice and he knows exactly how to use it. He writes about real life experience and entertainment culture in a surprisingly engaging way and makes what could be mundane into something that’s incredibly readable. He’s funny—I mean he’s really funny—and he uses his fantastic sense of humor to really infuse each chapter with something special. He has that intangible something that you unconsciously look for in quality authors.

I won’t go too much into it—“it” being a low culture manifesto—but I thought, overall, that Klosterman was extremely insightful to the influences of the media and how it translates to our every day lives. Most of the time, he makes a lot of sense and covers a lot of ground regarding everything from internet porn to how The Real World  affects our tropes to the real definition of “cool” derived from bad 80’s songs. He takes obscure subjects that we’re all familiar with and he analyzes how they affect the way we live and, for the most part, I think he did a really great job of illustrating cause and effect while making some pretty valid points.

However, on the other hand, I felt like a couple of chapters in the book were just personal opinions/vendettas and I felt like those essays had no place in this tome whatsoever. There was a definite shift between relatively objective chapters and chapters that just seemed like unwarranted verbal slaughter against something Chuck obviously felt strongly about on a personal level. Those I felt had absolutely no legitimate points other than, “I’m writing a book about low culture and its effect on the population, so now is the time to air my extreme distaste for Soccer.” I mean, I can see that he was trying to make a vindictive analysis about things he didn’t like—something to prove his point on a massive scale—but it just seemed a little childish to me in comparison, and those essays weren’t very informative in those moments in the slightest.

However, I was pulled through by Chuck’s humor and his hilarious voice as well as his captivating writing style. I found it to be a very interesting and deconstructive book about scattered subjects that somehow all made sense in the end. I thought it was relatively well put-together and it had especially amusing interludes between chapters. I’m interested in at least reading some of Klosterman’s other work and I hope they can stand up to—if not triumph over—Sex, Drugs, and Coca Puffs.

People who diss this book are exactly the people Klosterman lampoons in it, which is a hilarious self-fulfilling prophecy. The author smartly points out all the traits of the modern "thinking person," which is to say, no one is really unique, but there are people we find we hate less than the average person. The kind of person who doesn't like this book also doesn't enjoy discussions about suicide or dying, and makes the argument that people who talk about death are just trying to be edgy--when really those people shouldn't pick up a book called Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs in the first place and crawl back to whatever self-aggrandizing piece of fiction is up next on Oprah's Book Club.

I am constantly baffled by the new-age propensity to hate-read books only to give a slightly more informed review about why it was pedantic. These people are exactly the kind of person who Klosterman describes as celebrity journalists: a 20 minute phone interview will not tell you anything groundbreaking about Jennifer Lawrence, but I'm sure if you went to a decent college you could make up some kind of deeply personal article about the struggle of owning your narrative in an always-on society and throw in an offhand quote and say she said it "with an air of implied heaviness" and people would think Lawrence gave an actual interview. These negative reviews are written *literally* by those people. These people won't stop picking up books by Klosterman and Palahniuk just to complain about them on the Internet.

I love this book. It's smart, it has interesting arguments, and it's pseudo-intellectual without trying too hard. Read it, it's quick, that is all.

Another reread, mostly because a story about Klosterman being friends with three people who were acquainted with serial killers that I thought was in Killing Yourself to Live was in fact not in that book, but this one. (I wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy and imagining the whole thing. I'm not, though Robert Graysmith's little obsession seems to be somewhat contagious, dammit.)

ANYWAY (and there I go again)...I've already said a lot about Klosterman in various reviews of his books, and I really do think that when it comes to his writing, you're either going to love him or hate him—and even if you love him, you may also hate him a little. I continue to be fascinated and annoyed by him, often at the exact same time. I keep wondering what would happen if we met at a party; I suspect there's a fifty-fifty chance we'd either a) get in a big, screaming fight, or b) end up having sex on top of the coats. Or again, maybe both.

So, yeah. If you're looking for some essays on pop culture that may one second have you nodding along and the next hurling the book against the wall, well: this bad boy's for you.

This was the first audible-book I ever tried and it was the RIGHT book to start with: It is narrated by the author himself, who shares his thoughts like he’s sitting next to you and talking to himself.

First, some important clarifications:
1)tThis book is not for everybody. You’ve got to be American enough and immersed in pop culture enough to get its references. I myself am not American but have been obsessed enough with music and movies to know what he was talking about throughout the chapters– well, except for the American football chapters. Those were especially uninteresting.
2)tChuck seems to be under the impression that the book targets those born in the mid-to-late seventies, but as someone who was born in the 80s, it still works. “Saved by the Bell” was aired on our TV screens in the 90s, but that may be due to a slight satellite lag in the Middle East!

OK. So. This book had some amusing moments. Examples of those are:
- Mentions of how John Cusack and Nora Ephron have been ‘ruining our relationships’
- Critical analysis of how we listen to music (we often like to think of the “IDEA” of what we’re listening to)
- Mix tapes vs. compilation CDs
- The take on patriotism (would you want to date someone who identifies as “patriotic”, or does that come off as creepy?)
- The fact that TV shows have created one-dimensional personalities, which in turn have made us, the consumers of this pop culture, lose our multi-dimensional aspects. Chuck talks about the singularity of self-awareness in this “real world” culture that is devoid of complexities: “People started becoming personality templates devoid of complication and obsessed with melodrama,” and being interesting has become replaced by being identifiable.
- Chuck also goes through long analysis of the SIMs computer game, sports, religion, and serial killers.

There are other amusing takes here and there, like Chuck’s touring with Paradise City: a Guns N’ Roses tribute band, whose goal is not to be somebody, but to be somebody else. Chuck also lets us know that he’s watching Pamela Anderson’s porn video while he’s writing the book, and goes on to compare Pam’s legacy – of our times – to Marilyn Monroe’s fame in an earlier generation, in terms of what the world valued then (the concept of celebrity, iconic figures and social philosophy) and the plastic greatness that is representative of the decline of American morality.

My favourite chapter was the one about Billy Joel. Chuck’s take on Joel is that his music is about loneliness: "Every one of Joel's important songs - including the happy ones - are ultimately about loneliness. It’s not clever lonely, like Morrissey, or interesting lonely, like Radiohead. It’s lonely lonely; like the way it feels when you are being hugged by someone and it somehow makes you sadder.” Chuck goes on to explain how Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” is descriptive of the depression in all of us, because three years after releasing that song, Joel divorced his wife who he had written this song about, and it reminds Chuck of the love letters he had written to his ex-girlfriends; believing he would never get over them, but he got over them. "I hate that those letters still exist. But I don't hate them because what I said was false; I hate them because what I said was completely true. My convictions could not have been stronger when I wrote those words, and - for whatever reason - they still faded into nothingness." In that same chapter, Chuck mentions other musicians too, like Led Zeppelin (inarguably one of the coolest bands), Black Sabbath (one of the most under-estimated bands, yet indisputably cool), Meatloaf (“a goofball who is cool, in spite of himself”), David Bowie (not only a musician but so cool he becomes a pop idea) and Bruce Springsteen (also cool and representative of the working man). These are ideas of what we’re supposed to be experiencing, says Klosterman, and he highlights on coolness vs. greatness. Billy Joel, he insists, is *not* cool. He is faceless, and, in some ways, meaningless: his personal image is not integral to his success; he is not a pop idea. He is just a guy, who represents the depression of all of us. Chuck did such a good job at describing the way he sees Billy Joel that upon finishing this chapter, I went ahead and bought “The Nylon Curtain” album.

But this is probably just as good as this book gets. A little after this chapter, this book stops being so interesting and starts to head to a one-dimensional direction that Klosterman himself had been criticizing against. At some point, he goes as far as promoting the one-sided “you’re either with us or against us” soldier-like mentality that he himself is supposedly against. His sweeping generalizations and sometimes-petty arguments which are presented as “truths” also give no chance for the potentially-insightful momentum he had initially started with to survive. The singularity of his presentations, unfortunately, seems to represent that same one-dimensional reading that Klosterman had described American pop culture to have become.

This book is not really recommended, but I would say certain chapters from this book certainly are recommended for those who really dig music.

Wow, what a bitter, GenX man! Part of it could be me, and not quite being around for all the cultural touchstones he uses here, but I think part of it is his cynical, distant tone he uses to critique the media he consumes. His hot takes against Saved By the Bell, The Sims, Pamela Anderson and Star Wars are scorching and perplexing in their validity, considering he is also the type of person who thinks beds are overrated, preferring to sleep in "nests" in random corners of his room. Also, did the sport of soccer run over his mother with a car or something? Because the essay he includes on why it is a subpar sport should be included in early historical artifacts on the decline of the United States of America. I get the impression that he views many aspects of pop culture as beneath his intellect, despite the fact that he clearly cared enough about these things to write a think piece on them (albeit feebly constructed). For example, an essay on the marketing of cereal in America throughout the years, which began with some research and context, ended with a thesis statement of "kids eat cereal because it makes them look cool." For me personally, I would have loved to see some discussion around a definition of "cool" and how basically aspiring to be it makes you unable to meet its criteria? It would have been understandable if all the essays had a detached tone, but he seems to withhold his respect unless American sports are the subject, in which case they are discussed in detail and with reverence on par with a sacred religion. So the take home message for this essay collection is: all the monocultural, popular, water cooler moments are stupid and for idiots except sports which are dramatic events crafted by gods, worthy only of being watched by the eyes of men-which inherently elevates their intellectual capacity because it holds the male esteem. Personally, I feel this hyperfixation of being perceived as "cool" and with cultural critics devaluing popular media as "low brow" is why we ended up with this hyperindividualistic, pseudo-intellectual but culturally lifeless, prestige TV streaming nightmare right now! Sorry for the incineration here, but I can't take these half-baked, self-righteous observations as seriously as the author intended.

Skimming the reviews, I must say I agree with someone's comment that Klosterman is more of a blogger than a writer (at least if judged by this effort), but for a collection of essays on pop culture, that doesn't seem to be a very crucial distinction. With Internet culture overflowing into the day-to-day life of most Americans, it shouldn't come as a shock to find it reflected in contemporary writing; besides, sometimes a decent blogger is preferable to a boring writer. That isn't to say that I wasn't at times bored with this book--please note that I've read it one and a half times because I abandoned it at first (after 60 pages) and didn't feel compelled to give it a second chance until a year later. Not all of these essays are likely to appeal to every person. My first attempt was thwarted by an essay in which Klosterman describes interviewing a Guns-N-Roses tribute band. The second time around I was very tempted to skim, rather than read, this as well as a couple of sports-oriented essays, but I resisted and persevered (although probably to no benefit).

Klosterman manages to amuse at times, given that A) you are aware of at least most of the pop culture references cited and B) you realize that, according to Klosterman's logic at least, there is a 50/50 chance that you won't agree with his opinions. I found myself not only disagreeing with some of his opinions, but feeling a slight superiority at times (only to the extent that I would sometimes realize I was unintentionally smirking). Still, I didn't allow (sometimes extreme) differences of opinion to elicit any emotion that might completely diminish the humor behind many of his observations. Music especially is a touchy subject for people, but whenever I was frustrated with Klosterman, I simply reminded myself that he is a writer for Spin--a magazine which I don't subscribe to [at all or:] for its music reviews.

The book starts off strong with "This Is Emo," an essay in which Klosterman blames John Cusack--or the character Lloyd Dobler to be more accurate--for his and everyone else's failed relationships. As someone who would rank Cusack fairly high up on my list of GIWB (Guys I Would Blow), I was amused--and what is more, the argument was not without merit. This is followed by an essay on The Sims, which was somewhat thoughtful, but less meaningful to me considering my own experience with The Sims was short-lived because I found the game boring. Next comes an essay on The Real World, which is even less relevant to my interests. I don't think I've watched a single episode in its entirety. That isn't to say that the essay isn't coherent without significant prior knowledge, but I mention it to illustrate the point that such varied, rather specific subjects of nostalgia are likely to be met with varying degrees of enthusiasm, depending upon the reader's prior knowledge and interest.

Some of the other topics include: Pamela Anderson (as compared to Marilyn Monroe), Left Behind (book series and film adaptation), Internet porn, Star Wars, Saved By the Bell, journalism, Memento, Vanilla Sky, serial killers, The Dixie Chicks, the 1980s rivalry between the Celtics and the Lakers.... I was born in 1986, so even if I cared about sports (and I don't), that last one wouldn't mean anything to me. Obviously there's a high chance certain subjects are already dated or will become so shortly.

Overall conclusion: probably overrated, yet a decent means of distraction (especially when you borrow a copy and bypass the financial investment of purchasing). Two might be a bit harsh of a rating, but enough people praise Klosterman's writing that I feel it kind of evens out.