It’s an eccentric buffet, from which you are free to savor what appeals to you most, and if you aren’t served what you were looking for, well then you’ve come to the wrong kitchen. It makes no pretense to comprehensiveness. The Nineties is more a collection of salvaged items than a narrative or an argument. That passage may be the most Gen X thing in a book deeply enmeshed in resurrecting the lost mentality of Klosterman’s youth. You can find that off-putting, or you can find it (as I do) a refreshing change. He doesn’t object to complying with this custom, but he’s going to sigh grudgingly as he does so, like an 8-year-old being forced to write a thank-you note. I was economically upper-lower-class in 1990, middle-middle-class in 1999, and am lower-upper-class as I type this sentence.” This aside is a little masterpiece, a sarcastic genuflect, down to the excessively detailed breakdown of Klosterman’s class, an identity marker that the people who care about the other identity markers listed often prefer not to take into consideration. The closest he comes is the book’s first footnote, which reads, “Transparency requires me to admit a few things here, if only to aid those primarily reading this book in order to locate its biases: I was born in 1972. The Nineties isn’t nostalgic-not exactly, at least, since nostalgia implies a voiced dissatisfaction with the present, and Klosterman is too shrewd to waste his time on that. Send me updates about Slate special offers.
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