Book Review – Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Chuck Klosterman's Feeble Attempt to Make Pop Culture Matter

May 15, 2009

Despite being spoken of as the voice of an ironic, postmodern generation, Chuck Klosterman's wit and angst cancel each other, leaving the reader with a mere novelty.

The sections below provide a great example of how Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (Scribner, ISBN: 0743236017, 2004) comes off if read in a few sittings. Not only does it expose his weaknesses, but it makes what few strengths he does have seem like gimmickry, at best.

The Beginning of a Chuck Klosterman Essay

Here’s the real start of the essay, in which dwells somewhat of a thesis. Mostly, though, this paragraph just starts the namedropping of and references to esoteric music or movies or sports figures. Expect this trend to continue through the whole piece. It’s just like David Bowie stealing Scott Walker’s shtick and scarf collection and running with it. A reader should just assume that makes sense, even though it only tangentially relates.

The Middle of a Chuck Klosterman Essay

Well, here’s a paragraph in the middle 80% of the essay. Would the reader like some more nerdy humor that resides about a step in either direction away from his or her favorite obscure BBC show (and to think a sideways reference to Absolutely Fabulous couldn’t be slipped into this review!) that means so much to life?

And nothing here would be complete without a footnote that serves the same purpose as a parenthetical aside, only it disguises what’s being said in some sort of intellectual cloak. Pretend there’s a little “1” next to some word in this paragraph, just like everyone should pretend that Dangerous Toys didn’t make any albums past their 1990 debut. Is that a reference to some forgotten 80’s sleeze-metal band in hopes of being recognized for an unabashed love for that particular style of music? I guess so. How postmodern.

In fact, it’s so postmodern that the word “postmodern” will show up throughout the whole book in what looks to be a unifying theme, but really just ends up being some buzzword to fall back on when discussing the concept of “reality.” For all the bashing of renowned hippie-school Evergreen, there sure is a lot of the same pointless, quasi-existential wandering going on here.

Nearing the End of a Chuck Klosterman Essay

“Post-modernism” leads nicely into the “philosophy for shallow people” (Klosterman’s phrase). Whereas it’s actually pretty amusing and much more telling of an actual point to write about the personal anecdotes that relate to the topic at hand (The Real World, cereal, the Celtics/Lakers rivalry, etc), this paragraph will try to speak for an entire group of people in an attempt to decipher the hidden depth of things that supposedly have no depth.

This will go on for pages, peppered with faux-modest shoulder-shrugs, profanity-placement more akin to that of a 13-year-old, and the unrelenting pop-culture references that never stop just like Sylvester Stallone never stops chewing on a wooden match in Cobra (not bad, eh?). While not being hypocritical, the writing here will have to be opinionated, yet noncommittal.

Or maybe that’s unfair and the information just isn’t proven correctly. The oddly-preferred method of trying to measure up the effect of Billy Joel on a generation – as opposed to one person (the self) – is going backwards, but that’s the way it has to be. This near-ending part will continue as a silly ideology-maelstrom that consists of equal parts irony, authenticity, rock ‘n’ roll, and all of their opposites.

The End of a Chuck Klosterman Essay

Oh, the end. Before the last words, there will have to be middle-finger comments slipped in about how all the other experts and academics and iconoclasts that diverge the opinion expressed in the essay are all missing-the-point, full of (quite possibly their own) feces, and leading a life that is based on the wrong kind of stuff, respectively.

Finally, everything will be tied together, but only after realizing that there really isn’t that much to say about the chosen theme in the first place. At least not anymore than can be found in the blog of a snarky, jaded dude with an English degree who wants to feel as if the hours he’s spent reading about serial killers wasn’t all for naught. The end will be a quirky little last line that simultaneously asks for a disregarding of the entire essay as well as a faithful embrace of it.

Really Though, the Essays Are Not That Good

What’s been posted above is exactly what all of the essays in this collection read like. While Klosterman’s formula isn’t criminal, his execution is. There’s no problem with the idea of pop-culture having an effect on someone’s life, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with dissecting it on a personal level. But it can be done better.

What Klosterman tries to do is to form connection by talking about a collective “us.” Effective writing almost always works in the opposite way, achieving the universal through the personal, not the universal through the universal. If someone wants to talk about God, she doesn’t just talk about God: she has to start at the car wash and work her way to God.

This is all only sort of saying that Klosterman is a lazy writer. It’s not even the prose that is really bothersome. To write about pop culture’s place in regard to the question of “what does it all mean?” (or, as the book prefers, “What is reality?”) means a direct pathway through the person explaining it, with the conclusions left to be drawn by the reader.

The collection is better than the review lets on, but it certainly doesn’t sit well after turning the last page. If he had just told the reader what he knows instead of what he thinks they know, he would have, at the least, an achievable goal.

The copyright of the article Book Review – Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs in Humorous Writing/Books is owned by Ryan Werner. Permission to republish Book Review – Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.