Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Chuck Klosterman stands as a pitch-perfect synecdoche for Generation X in all of its self-aggrandized disengagement from society. Rather than viewing simple pop culture footnotes for the largely irrelevant guilty pleasures that they are, he asks profound questions about their importance - not as works of art themselves with any intrinsic value, but as these little nuggets of symbolic magnitude that say something about larger human experience issues. Does anybody truly have a multi-faceted and well-rounded personality in the eyes of their peers and acquaintances? Are clever song lyrics with multiple interpretations overrated, and are we too quick to scoff at simple sentiments with universal appeal? Are human beings inherently good? In Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Klosterman asks and explores these questions by means of, respectively, The Real World, Toby Keith, and the Trix Rabbit's endless quest for just one bowl of that breakfast cereal meant to be exclusively "for kids." These are certainly interesting ways to approach such thought-provoking questions, and Klosterman deserves credit for his conversational way of writing, a method that comes off as equally interesting and interested. Reading this collection of eighteen essays is a bit like spending several hours with a few close friends just talking about mundane things in a faux-enlightened manner. "Which of the Looney Toons would win in an all-out street fight?" is, I'm sure, a fine example of one of those great debates that you and some of your friends have had at some point: a great open-ended question with no wrong answer, but one that is ultimately pointless. Add Klosterman to the conversation, however, and he'd turn it into something like, "Which of the Looney Toons would be the best subject of a short form biopic?" or "Which of the Looney Toons would be the first one to 'occupy' Wall Street?" which are equally open-ended and pop-culturey, yet somehow more poignant and relevant in the grand scheme of life. The main problem I have with Klosterman's work - both here and in the past when I've read his pieces on sports and TV shows and music and movies on the Internet - is that he rarely reaches conclusive theses on the ideas he proposes, and when he does, they're often ill-defended and not very convincing. "The 1980s Celtics-Lakers rivalry embodied every possible American conflict of the time," he'll boldly claim. But then he'll never really get around to getting me to believe that - or even getting me to believe that he actually believes that. Of course, he gets a free pass here because his tone is so casual and strangely humble; were Klosterman a self-described "expert" on these subjects, I'd complain, "he asks a lot of interesting questions, but it doesn't matter because he seldom comes up with satisfying answers." Instead, I'll say, "he seldom comes up with satisfying answers, but it doesn't matter because he asks a lot of interesting questions," which is a much more flattering summation of the guy, even if it technically provides the same "pros and cons" checklist. I'd love to read more of Klosterman's books, but due to the heft of both my backlog and the amount of Klosterman-penned stuff floating around the Internet that I've yet to read, I'm sure I won't be back for at least a little while.