“Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs” by Chuck Klosterman

This book, oddly enough, was mentioned to me by my therapist. Having read it I am still a little confused by the suggestion but we can roll with it. Klosterman describes this as a “low cultural manifesto” which describes it pretty well, he essentially takes aspects of everyday life and writes about them and their significance to society. A sort of layman’s cultural criticism or philosophy of the everyday.

You can also sum up this book with what Klosterman writes in the middle of his chapter on basketball, “this is why men need to become obsessed with things: It’s an extroverted way to pursue solipsism. We are able to study something that defines who we are; therefore, we are able to study ourselves.” (p. 123) A good amount of the book is just Klosterman taking some aspect of culture and demonstrating how this explains a larger part of culture. Sometimes this is obvious, like his chapter on The Sims or tribute rock bands and what they say about music, other times it seems like he’s really reaching. Like the aforementioned chapter on basketball, for instance.

A lot of his comparisons I found to be really interesting. The first chapter is how romantic movies have essentially destroyed any hope that any of us can truly be happy with another person. Essentially we always want a soul mate and for things to work out perfectly, when really we are all just normal people looking for another normal, decent human to share the rent with. There were a couple chapters on music that I also liked, such as the tribute bands one or the Billy Joel chapter.

Overall though, I’m struck by how dated this book is. It was published in 2003, and it definitely reads like a white man wrote this in 2003 with very little research being done. A lot of the cultural references I did not understand or simply aren’t relevant anymore. There’s an entire chapter on MTV’s The Real World and I have never seen an episode of it, let alone can realize it’s impact on life.

It’s also just, men writing essays like these. Clearly Klosterman isn’t a feminist. At one point he remarks that people are always saying that women who have sex are called sluts while men who have sex are called studs, but apparently he’s heard that observation made much more often then he hears people call women sluts or men studs. Meanwhile he included an entire chapter on porn where he calls A LOT of women sluts. There’s another part where he insists that a woman calling the music industry “sexist” is detached from the rest of the world, and while he does notice that the porn industry (same previously mentioned porn chapter) revolves around men’s interests, he doesn’t go further than that. It’s just so frustrating to read at times.

If anything, I’m glad that I read this so that I can remind myself why I hate talking to self-assured men. And how good I am at picking up on their bullshit these days. And yes there are decent parts, but I’m not sure if that was worth the whole experience.