Chuck Klosterman

A Low Culture Manifesto

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Colton Ray

This was the most 90s book ever written, which should have been awesome. Unfortunately, Klosterman is obsessed with the parts of the 90s which I have little familiarity or interest in: Pamela Anderson, The Real World, Michael Jordan, Left Behind, Tom Cruise, and The Sims. He at least admits in the opening that the book will quickly be dated as hell, and he's right. 

Klosterman doesn't actually seem like someone I would enjoy hanging out with. I get this was written 15 years ago, but there are several sections where he really comes across like a stereotypical white man clueless about politics but quick to offer his opinion about "both sides," how culture is "feminizing men," and other center-right bon-mots tossed around. He likes to go on for pages denigrating hipsters with zero awareness that he is the ultimate hipster, perennially preoccupied with being "cool." 

He also admits that most of these essays were written right before he fell asleep, and that's exactly how they come across - a drowsy dudebro soliloquizing about the philosophy of Saved By the Bell while you're wishing he would just shut up and go to bed already. I was never convinced by his argument that pop culture holds some secret meanings beyond vapid escapism, and therefore, much of this book seemed like grasping at straws for a meaning that probably wasn't there to begin with.

Anita Irsevic

Mia Caven

Erik Wallace

Read this after coming across an article about Chuck Klosterman. I hadn't read any of his books, but his views on music, relationships and politics are pretty amusing. Even if you don't agree with what he says in the book, it still makes for an interesting and hilarious read.

With an exhaustive knowledge of popular culture and an effortless ability to spin brilliant prose out of unlikely subject matter, Klosterman attacks the entire spectrum of postmodern America: reality TV, Internet porn, breakfast cereal, serial killers, Pamela Anderson, literary Jesus freaks, and the real difference between apples and oranges (of which there is none). Sex, Drugs and Coca Puffs is ostensibly about movies, sport, television, music, books, video games and kittens, but really it's about us. All of us.

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto is a collection of essays by Chuck Klosterman.

The topics of these essays are diverse and all focus around American culture. While I did find some hilarious and some others relatable, I feel a few of the subjects just did appeal to me (either sports related or just focused too soully on a side of America I didn't have any previous knowledge on).

I will say that Klosterman's dry wit is what kept me engaged even when the subject was not to my taste, but this also gave it a sharpness that I found boring at times. I'm mostly blaming my being British for this, rather than the writing and humour intended.

Victoria Justice

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto is a collection of essays by Chuck Klosterman.

The topics of these essays are diverse and all focus around American culture. While I did find some hilarious and some others relatable, I feel a few of the subjects just did appeal to me (either sports related or just focused too soully on a side of America I didn't have any previous knowledge on).

I will say that Klosterman's dry wit is what kept me engaged even when the subject was not to my taste, but this also gave it a sharpness that I found boring at times. I'm mostly blaming my being British for this, rather than the writing and humour intended.

Mary Rose Luksha

I'm usually not a big non-fiction reader, but this book just grabbed me. I like Klosterman's style of writing; you kind of have to unfold it as you go along, but it was easy to read. Granted some of the essays are now out of date, but any book exploring the deeper meaning in pop culture will be so because that's the nature of pop culture, and that realization comes across in the text so by knowinlgly dating itself, it's not really dated. Though I felt he put his best work at the beginning and end of the book, and the middle got a little ramble-y, overall it was incredibly insightful. And I've sort of started to dig deeper in pop culture since reading the book, which is either really stupid, or really meaningful.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs A Low Culture Manifesto

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