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Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Chuck Klosterman

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.72.7K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Chuck Klosterman writes about culture. Pop culture, more specifically. Rock bands, basketball teams, adult entertainment, Saved by the Bell... you get the idea. He was a writer who wrote volumes of hot pop culture takes before being a writer with hot pop culture takes was just, y'know, being a writer. He's positioned himself as a writer who doesn't just think about pop culture, but has a knack for unearthing common threads in disparate things – like The Chicks and Van Halen, for example. And in doing that, you, the reader, get a deeper understanding of both. In his newest book, The Nineties, Klosterman chronicles the last decade of the 20th century. He does so not as a cultural critic, but more as a historian, or a philosopher. He takes a decade that many of its readers experienced, and thinks not about the nostalgia of the events back then, but their consequences, what mattered, and what didn't.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Walton Family Foundation,

0:05.1

working to create access to opportunity for people and communities by tackling tough social and environmental problems.

0:12.0

More information is at walton family foundation.org.

0:17.1

Bullseye with Jesse Thorne is a production of Maximumfund.org and is distributed by NPR.

0:27.6

From Maximumfund.org and NPR, it's Bullseye.

0:49.1

Chuck Gloucesterman writes about culture, specifically popular culture, rock bands and basketball teams and pornography and saved by the bell.

0:56.0

He was a writer who wrote volumes of hot takes about popular culture before having hot takes about popular culture was just what was required to work as a writer.

1:02.6

His 2003 essay collection, Sex, Drugs and Coco Puffs made so many top 10 lists when it came out.

1:10.5

And he's since positioned himself as a writer who doesn't just think about pop culture,

1:13.9

but has a knack for unearthing common threads in disparate things.

1:19.3

Like The Chicks, the former Dixie Chicks, and Van Halen, for example.

1:25.1

And when he finds those threads, you, the reader, get a deeper understanding

1:30.0

of all of his subjects. His newest book is called The 90s. And I know what you're probably thinking

1:37.0

when I say that there's a book called the 90s and it's written by a writer like Chuck Klosterman

1:42.8

that maybe it's a celebration of lesser-known sting records

1:47.9

or a, I don't know, 10,000 words on the problematic nature of home improvement

1:52.3

and how it paved the way for new metal or something like that.

1:55.6

That is not what the 90s is.

1:57.9

In the book, Closterman chronicles the last decade of the 20th century, and he does so not as a

2:03.8

culture critic, but as a historian or maybe a philosopher. It's not a book about nostalgia.

2:12.4

It's a book about what happened in its contemporary context and the consequences, what mattered and what didn't.

2:21.9

Look, you'll hear more about it soon enough. Let's get into it. My conversation with Chuck

...

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