Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Chuck Klosterman

Klosterman’s book is a series of off the wall essays. I loved most of them—they are brilliant, insightful, intellectually stimulating, very funny, and totally politically incorrect. I am not sure that this is a book most females would like or appreciate, but it is clearly a classic written “by a guy and for the guys”.

Rather than bore you with my views and opinions I will quote some of Klosterman’s pithy statements to give you the flavor of his writing.

“Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time.”

“…I gave everybody two potential options for a hypothetical blind date and asked them to pick who they’d prefer. The only things they knew about the first candidate was that he or she was attractive and successful. The only things they knew about the second candidate was that he or she was attractive, successful, and “extremely patriotic”.

“All those original pundits were dead-on; for once, the media managed to define an entire demographic of Americans with absolute accuracy. Everything said about Gen Xers—both positive and negative—was completely true.”

“Solo’s brand of badass cool is something you can’t understand until you’re old enough to realize that being an arrogant jerk is an attractive male quality.”

“As of the writing of this particular book, I have 43 “close friends,” 196 “good friends,” and 2,200 “affable acquaintances.” [In footnotes he defines these as follows: Close friends are people I would phone immediately if I was diagnosed with lung cancer. Good friends are people whose death from lung cancer would make me profoundly sad. Affable Acquaintances are people I would generally hope could recover from lung cancer.]

In point of fact, I probably did a lousy job in choosing the above nuggets. Some of his best involve sexuality and/or profanity. Others are more convoluted or just too long to excerpt.

In sum, I agree with the following comment from the Tampa Tribune: “Klosterman is thoughtful, witty, and insightful about subjects most writers would dismiss as brainless, witless, and shallow”.

I have only one criticism for this book. It was “uneven”. By that I mean that some of the chapters were so profound and so funny that I kept thinking this guy is a real genius and I can’t believe he is not the most popular writer of his generation. A few of the chapters were weaker and worth skimming. On balance, I feel that this is a must read.

Review by Len Oppenheim