#author Chuck Klosterman

[cinemacentral666]

The Nineties (2022)

SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW

The above is an archival podcast recording made before I ended my review show at moviejeff.com

Probably my favorite non-fiction book by Klosterman since Killing Yourself to Live. Chuck is one of the rare modern authors whose work I've devoured in totality since I discovered him. A friend levied the complaint that he too often puts forth opinion as fact, but isn't that true of any media of this nature? Seems like it comes with the territory, part and parcel, etc. If anything, this felt like the most researched and non-subjective thing he's ever written. As a very young Gen-Xer or decrepit Millennial (take your pick: I was born halfway through '81 and feel like I experienced the bulk of the titular decade as still but a child), my perception of the angle he often takes (he's firmly in the Gen-X demo) didn't totally jive.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¾

[uncloseted]

can you please give me some book recommendations? i'm going stir crazy without a hobby and i want to get back into reading

For getting out of a reading slump, I really like books of short stories because you can read them in one sitting and quickly feel like you're making progress without having to put in that much effort. The short stories collections that I have on my current reading list are Lizard and Daisy's Life, both by Banana Yoshimoto.

For a non-fiction essay collection, Chuck Klosterman's books are always a fun read without being too stodgy. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is the one most people start with, and it's 18 different comedic essays about pop culture. One of the essays, What Happens When People Stop Being Polite, fundamentally changed the way I view the world and I think about it constantly. As some of you might know, I also love his book But What if We're Wrong. That one is a more epistemological endeavor that gets weird really fast, but if you're into that sort of thing it's amazing.

Another quick read is 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. It's told entirely in letters and it focuses on the the twenty-year correspondence between the author and Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co antiquarian booksellers in London.

The last books that got me out of a reading slump were the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik, starting with A Deadly Education. These books are great if you devoured the Harry Potter books as a kid but want a more realistic, kind of grim take on it that includes romance.

Kind of along a similar line, The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake is a very fun book that focuses on 20-somethings who are part of a magical society. This one was a favorite on BookTok and I get why- it's not the best written book ever, but it's a lot of fun and the minute I finished it I wanted more.

The last book that I found to be a really fun, easy read was The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna which is a warm and uplifting novel about found families. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune is in a similar vein and another quick read.

If you like books that are no plot, just vibes, try The Night Circus and The Starless Sea, both by Erin Morgenstern. These are two of my favorite books ever, and I re-read them whenever I don't feel like reading something new.

If you want something that's mysterious enough that you want to stick with it, try Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I won't say too much about it, just that I didn't want to put it down once I started it.

If you like hopepunk sci-fi, anything by Becky Chambers is great. I read all seven of her books back to back because I liked them so much. If you like Star Trek (or the general idea of people going to different planets and interacting with different species), start with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. If you want something more terrestrial, A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a really beautiful novella about two characters who try to answer the question "what do people need?" If I could live in the world of A Psalm for the Wild-Built, I would.

I'm sure there are some I'm forgetting, but those are the ones that come to mind for me. I would love to hear everyone else's suggestions, too.

[fuckyeahvanhalen86-95]

News broke today about the possibility of a movie based on the highly acclaimed book by Greg Renoff — Van Halen Rising — the book that charts the iconic band's journey from Pasadena locals to rock legends.

What the chances are it'll happen, we dorn't know yet. But it's possible. Renoff has posted an update to Facebook:

“Some exciting news broke today, about me and my book Van Halen Rising via the video below.

A few years back, my book was optioned by a producer. What that means is that the producer and his team had the exclusive right to commission a screenplay and to try to get a deal for a movie based on Van Halen Rising.

Fast forward to today, and there IS a screenplay based on my book, written by screenwriter, producer, and director Jeff Wadlow. Jeff's enthusiasm for the project (and naturally the Van Halen origin story) is off the charts, and accordingly, he's worked incredibly hard on his script.

I can't describe the narrative arc in the script better than Jeff, so check out his take on his own script in the video below.

Obviously, I think the Van Halen origin story is compelling, cinematic, and offers key insights about the place and time that birthed the band and it's incredible music.

Full disclosure: I am biased, but that's what I think. Needless to say, when you spend five years & conduct 200+ original interviews while writing a book, you believe there's something very worthy that you are pursuing as a historian and author.

As of today, the next potential step is for it to go out to film financiers at some point in the future.

What comes next remains to be seen, needless to say. Anyone who knows anything (and know very little) about the movie business will tell you that getting from script to screen is no easy feat. So there may, or may not, ever be a movie based on my book.

Let me repeat: There may, or may not, ever be a movie based on my book.

It's exciting to think there might be, but expectations are best tempered by reality.

That said, am extremely grateful to Jeff and his team for all their hard work to get to this point!

Today I am also thinking of the well-established, gifted individuals who read my book before it was released and said: this is good. I like this. I will endorse it: writer Chuck Klosterman, director/writer Brian Koppelman, & MTV VJ & DJ Martha Quinn. Thank you for believing in me.”

— Greg Renoff

[waveridden]

top 5 nonfiction youve read this year?

fun fact you and @leonstamatis sent me this at the same time

the nineties by chuck klosterman is about. the nineties! and is a series of essays about culture and politics that defined the ethos of the nineties. also my favorite cover of the year

it won’t always be like this by malaika gharib is a graphic memoir about the author’s childhood and her stepmother and made me very emotional to read

how to resist amazon and why by danny caine is a really excellent short book full of exactly what it says on the tin, and even as an anti-amazon girlie before picking it up i still got a lot out of it

eight bears by gloria dickie! just finished this lol it’s about the eight bear species in the world and the culture, history, and science of them all. super well written and heartwrenching

desert notebooks by ben ehrenreich which probably also got the strongest emotional response from me of any book i read this year. about deserts and the life within them, and las vegas.

[maddie-grove]

Little Book Review: Nonfiction Round-Up (May-December 2022)

Waking the Tiger by Peter A. Levine (1997): a self-help book with a somatic approach to dealing with trauma symptoms. It contained some advice that was useful at my old job. Unfortunately, I was too traumatized from said job to concentrate properly on the audiobook, so I was kind of in a Catch-22.

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman (2022): A deliciously disconcerting series of essays about the fractured last decade of the twentieth century. It wins the coveted "book I'm most determined to lend to my mom" award.

Yes, I'm Hot in This by Huda Fahmy (2018): a cute collection of comics from Fahmy's Instagram, covering subjects from strangers being stupid about her hijab (hence the title) to lighthearted scenes of domestic life. I found it in a Little Library.

Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson (2022): an exploration of the life and writing career of Beatrice Sparks, author of multiple "real" diaries by troubled teens, through-and-through grifter, and coiner of the immortal phrase "freak wharf." This fucked, y'all. Emerson seamlessly delves into multiple topics of interest--Sparks's hardscrabble youth, the discovery of LSD, the Satanic Panic--with plenty of compassion and humor.

The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber (2013): the true-crime account of Charles Cullen, a Pennsylvania/New Jersey nurse who murdered possibly hundreds of patients by poisoning their IV bags in the late 1980s to early 2000s. The subject matter is shocking, and it's horrifying how the indifference of the large medical systems he worked for kept him from facing consequences other than getting fired for years. The style/organization of the book is kind of pedestrian, though.

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow (2019): an account of Farrow's efforts to write a story for NBC about the decades-long sexual predation of producer Harvey Weinstein, including NBC's sideways attempts to get him to back off. Farrow's a solid narrative writer, not great, and the book gets less interesting when he strays beyond the inner workings of NBC.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (1968): In her first collection of essays, Didion talks about murder, movies, mental distress, and Sacramento. It's incredibly fresh in some ways (the essay where she talks about raising her daughter away from her extended family) and incredibly dated in others (her incredulity at people who ascribe artistic vision to Meet Me in St. Louis). I genuinely appreciate her ability to make me go "girl, what are you even talking about."

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh (2020): an illustrated memoir/series of comics, focusing on coping with mental illness and the unexpected loss of a loved one. There are some very funny passages (particularly one involving a troublesome dog), some devastating ones (Brosh's montage of memories of her late younger sister), and some aimless ones.

Monkey Mind by Daniel Smith (2012): part memoir and part general information about anxiety (the science of it, how different people have written about it through history, etc.). It's more interesting as a memoir. I remember that it had some good advice at the end for managing anxiety, but I don't know for the life of me what it was. Still, I feel like I should give him credit for it.

[alrederedmixedmedia]

Alredered Remembers Chuck Klosterman, American author and essayist, on his birthday.

"Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you."

[otherpplnation]

Chuck Klosterman on Brooklyn, Book Tour, Time, Predictions, Identity Politics, Farming, High School, Dreams, and Heavy Metal

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 423, my conversation with bestselling author Chuck Klosterman. This episode first aired on July 20, 2016.

Klosterman is the bestselling author of eight nonfiction books (including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; I Wear the Black Hat; But What If We’re Wrong?; and Killing Yourself to Live). he has also published two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man). He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Esquire, Spin, The Guardian, The Believer, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years, appeared as himself in the LCD Soundsystem documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits, and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

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[greensparty]

Talking with Jeff Gomez

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the No Alternative compilation album. 1993 was a year of several landmark alt-rock albums including Radiohead's debut Pablo Honey, Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, U2's Zooropa, The Breeders' The Last Splash (read my review of the recent reissue), Pearl Jam's Vs. and of course Nirvana's In Utero, but this compilation album of alt-rock artists encapsulated so much of what was happening in the Alternative Nation in 1993. It was a benefit for the AIDS charity Red Hot Organization and it featured some of the biggest names at the time as well as rising stars and veterans, i.e. Matthew Sweet, Buffalo Tom, Soul Asylum, Urge Overkill, Goo Goo Dolls, Pavement, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Sarah McLachlan, Bob Mould, Uncle Tupelo, Beastie Boys, and the aforementioned Breeders and Nirvana. Writer Jeff Gomez, who has written several books about Gen X and alt-rock, has written an entire book about this buried treasure of an album to commemorate the 30th anniversary with There Was No Alternative, released earlier this year from McFarland publishing. I recently caught up with Mr. Gomez via zoom to discuss this book.

author Jeff Gomez

Me: How did this book come about in terms of telling the story of this album in book format (as opposed to podcast, etc)?

JG: It's interesting, the book I wrote was not the book I envisioned, I think what I envisioned was going to be much more like a Chuck Klosterman book, where it was very much looking at the 90s and Generation X. Then when I began to talk to the actual producers of the record, the story I discovered was a story of friendship. I had no idea going in. I knew it was a Red Hot record. I naively thought it was Red Hot's idea to do a grunge or alternative record. As I talked to the folks involved, I discovered it was this guy Paul Heck, whose idea it was to do the record along with his two friends from college. As I talked to Chris Mundy, Jessica Kowal and Paul Heck - again it was a story of friendship and activism in the early 90s. So it shifted from being a cultural thinkpiece like Rob Sheffield / Chuck Klosterman - into a story of friendship and what the 90s meant to people and how they tried to make a difference. In terms of politics, I needed to dive back into that election and remember figures like Paul Tsongas and Mike Dukakis. People I had not thought of in decades.

the No Alternative album cover

Me: For me, I was a junior in high school in the Fall of 1993. I was a huge fan of several artists on the No Alternative album, including Nirvana, Matthew Sweet, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, but then there were several artists where I knew a song and then this compilation was the gateway to learning more about them. Were you, yourself, a fan of these bands at that time?

JG: I was a little older than you, I was 23 when it came out. I was much more on the indie rock side. The only group I was really into at the time I got it was Pavement. So I was much more into Pavement, Sebadoh, Guided By Voices. I might've bought it for Pavement, but I thought I was a little too old for the grunge scene, but I was a big fan of Nirvana's song that was on here ["Verse Chorus Verse"]. So it was a little bit of an intro for me to some bands. Beastie Boys I really liked, Breeders I really liked. [Jeff holds up his CD of the album and I laugh because I hold up mine as well]. It's funny on social media when I announced this book, a lot of people said "I still have the album", "I'm going to go to the garage and dig it out" and the reports that came back were that it still holds up today!

Me: You, yourself, write a great deal about Generation X, which I am a proud member of. There seems to be some debate about the exact ages of Gen X. For some it's the 13th Generation, which is anyone born between 1961 and 1981. Others consider it anyone who was born in the 70s. But the most common definition is anyone born between 1964 and 1980. But whatever your definition is, if you were in your teens or twenties in 1993 this album spoke to you! Based on the featured musicians, the benefit for AIDS and the approach to the benefit album. Did this release at that time, speak to you specifically?

JG: It did, but one of the things I investigated looking back is that I was not a political person and I was not into the activism side of things. I was 23 and I was very much wrapped up in my own thing: trying to get a writing career off the ground, dating and in a band. I was a little bit of the Gen X stereotype of someone that was not thinking much beyond myself or my own circle, and what impressed me as I delved into the story of those who made this record is that they were not like that. Paul Heck, the man who really produced this record wanted to do something in music, but was seeing people sick on the streets of New York. As a straight man he was not directly effected by the AIDS crisis, although certainly heterosexuals did have to worry about having it. But he just knew that something was wrong in the country and in the government that these people were sick and he wanted to do something about it. So he decided that this charity album would be a way to raise awareness and money for the cause. Whereas I had my little apartment, my Fender Mustang, was in my cheesy indie rock band and was very much in my own world. I was one of those people who was in it for the music and was not thinking much larger than that.

Me: With this book you did a deep dive, looking at all different angles: the producers who were putting it together, the Red Hot Organization, each of the artists, the issues that Gen X was facing at that time. What was the biggest thing that you learned when you were writing this book?

JG: I think it was really about the AIDS crisis and what the Gay community did in terms of activism with Act Up and how effective they were. Again, I was very much in my own little world at the time. It also might be a case in the last 30 years, the biggest development is the internet. If it wasn't in Alternative Press magazine at the time, I probably didn't know much about it. I wasn't really reading the L.A. Times, was watching a little bit of TV but didn't even have cable at the time. So some of these really big issues were not really on my radar at the time, other than knowing I had to be safe for my own personal safety. So really it was how big the activism was with Act Up, how much they achieved in a short time and getting lower prices for AIDS drugs. And it was really interesting in seeing the parallels between COVID and AIDS.

AIDS was a global pandemic that was almost immediately politicized. Bringing up condoms was looked at as a political thing rather than a personal safety thing. Thirty years later, it was masks. It was really disheartening to see how far we haven't come. A larger pandemic with COVID in that it was inescapable to every person on the planet. So seeing those parallels was really interesting to me and wanting to dive into that.

book cover

Me: Was there anyone you wanted to interview for this book and for one reason or another you weren't able to get them?

JG: Oh yeah, if you look at the track listing, I went after everybody. I would've loved loved loved to talk to some of The Beastie Boys and Sonic Youth. The manager of The Beastie Boys literally laughed at me on the phone. And Nirvana. The same management company represents Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, The Breeders and Nirvana - it's John Silva Management and he's been managing them for 30-40 years. He [John Silva] laughed and said 'they're not going to talk to you'. Also - Michael Stipe did a short film for the VHS and MTV special, so I reached out and his rep was very polite and said that he was unavailable. But I'm a big Patti Smith fan and certainly would've loved to have heard from her thoughts on Robert Mapplethorpe at that time. But the people I did reach were great and gave me the time. One of the things that was great was some of the bands that were not on my radar at the time and were great like the Goo Goo Dolls. Those guys couldn't have been nicer. The guys in Urge Overkill couldn't have been nicer. So thirty years on knowing who they are now and talking to them and they couldn't have been nicer was satisfying.

Me: Looking at the album and reading the book, it's actually kind of sad and bittersweet that so many of the artists are no longer here, including Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, Adam Yauch of The Beastie Boys, Karl Mueller of Soul Asylum, Blackie Onassis of Urge Overkill, Gary Young of Pavement and Lance Diamond. So this album is really a document of a moment in time of so many of the artists we've lost since then.

JG: Yeah, I guess that's where the number 30 comes in. 30 years on some of the people who were in our world are now passing away, some from natural causes. And Yauch was just about my age and he succumbed to cancer and it's a scary thing putting myself in that head space of when this album came out, my biggest concern was "do I have enough money for Domino's Pizza or go out on a date on a Saturday night?" Now here we are middle-aged and having to deal with some pretty big issues and what's that like?

Me: There were a ton of benefit concerts and albums in the 90s, notably the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert for AIDS and the Tibetan Freedom Concert. Why do you think it is that the No Alternative album has had such an impact and is still remembered so fondly today?

JG: I think it was such a great microcosm of the moment. I also think it was a little bit more sly and subversive than some of those other things, because - and this really speaks to John Carlin and the Red Hot Organization's approach - he had this idea of being a trojan horse. Where they produce this really spectacular artifact, that you bought because just like me I bought it for the Nirvana track and the Pavement track, and then you begin to read the liner notes and it's not such a heavy handed delivery, it's very subversive, it gets by on osmosis. That helped it last over time. Also, how classic it is. As you say, there were other alternative compilations at that time, and what's so classic about this is that the design doesn't really seem dated in that 90s way, whereas if you look at some of the other stuff that looked like it had that Raygun Magazine, with that crazy font and the lettering, or early photoshop, what it really just screams "This is 1993" in a way, whereas this feels more classic.

For info on There Was No Alternative book

[bnfbc]

The Nineties - by Chuck Klosterman - November 2022 - selected by Paul 

Andy: “Awesome book. Just like my book brother compatriots, I enjoyed myself some I Love the 80's on VH1. There is something in the brain about nostalgia. I liked that Klosterman didn't just share the info but got down into the details and studied it. Good stuff!” A

Gabe: “I enjoyed the nostalgia of thinking about the 90s, and appreciated the analysis of the decade in retrospect. The thing I didn't love was the overly-academic tone, and the way that Klosterman was kind of all over the place in terms of where he would start and end a chapter. Overall, though, I very much enjoyed it and have been talking about some of its points with friends since finishing it.” A-

Paul: “There’s something about looking back just far enough into the past that really appeals to me. When I Love the 80′s captured the imagination of certain pop-culture loving dorks like myself, I don’t think it would have worked had it been I Love the 70′s or I Love the 90′s (note - I think both of these happened but obviously they didn’t slap like the original). Basically what I’m trying to say is the timing of this book is perfect - the 90′s are now far enough away that it seems like a different world, but still recent enough that the nostalgia hits hard. While I’ve always found Klosterman to be a funny and lively writer, some of his earlier stuff was a bit too Gen-X for me. The navel-gazing and snark have been tempered a bit, and there is a good deal of wisdom and depth emerging from these zippy essays about clear beverages, snap bracelets and the like.” A-

Tommy: "Despite many moments of enjoyable nostalgia, the book's tone prevented me from fully embracing it. Klosterman comes off as overly confident with his theories and I don't find him as funny or clever as I think he thinks he is. Aside from the writing style, it was fun to rehash and dissect many events from the nineties that I'm familiar with. I liked Klosterman's argument about decades not being based on given years, but rather aligned with events that denote a marked change. It's difficult to fully explore events when an author attempts to cover an entire decade, and I felt that with this book. Even though it felt a bit strange to briefly cover tangential topics after each chapter, I recall enjoying several of the afterwords between chapters before moving onto the next topic." B-

GPA: 3.50

[bulletinsonline]

The Oscars and That Flub and the Rare Power of Shock#Oscars #Flub #Rare #Power #Shock

Last year, the comedian Marc Maron brought the author Chuck Klosterman on as a guest on his WTF podcast. The two discussed many things (including Klosterman’s then-new book, But What If We’re Wrong?, which he was there to promote), but one of them was sports—and the particular thrill that they offer to audiences. Sporting events, Klosterman argued, promise that most dramatic of things: an unknown…

[chicagoblogboy]

What's this going to be?

What will you find here? The musings of a millennial culture vulture, mostly. Born in 1990. Chicago. Mizzou grad. NBA fan. Software salesman. Dog dad.

Importantly; a reader. The classic non-fictions. Tim Ferris, Michael Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell, Chuck Klosterman. A small but ever growing list of classic novels. Stories about nature, fantasy, pandemics. City of Thieves, Station Elleven, Harry Potter, Dune. You’ll found me in the top 1% of Pocket readers - a million words last year in magazine features, NYT Opinion articles, and sports stories. 

I like learning what the authority on a subject has to say about the topic of the day. I devour and regurgitate these ideas. I have my own ideas.

I used to write my own stories. Based on my baby box, as soon as I could write, I was. In 7th grade I won an award for the words I wrote about a teacher who I enjoyed, who had encouraged me. Unfortunately, I don’t remember many more teachers like that one and I did not pursue creative writing past that, other than keeping an occasional journal.

This is my foray back intro writing - these are my opinions - my current affair journal. Enjoy?

[beamloaddirective]

B01: Why I Write

Title: Why I Write Author: George Orwell History: Found at a library sale in October

If my piece on Chuck Klosterman’s “The Nineties” from last year indicates anything, it is that I have little sense of how to write about books in a non-academic essay sense. I am not in the habit of reading book reviews outside of those published in journals (maybe that’s a habit I should get into. Come to think of it, I’m not in the habit of reading reviews of any medium at the moment. Maybe that’s another habit I should get into.) Forgive me if I’m shaky to start out with here.

Orwell is a writer with whom I have limited experience. I wasn’t in the classes that read 1984 and did the whole accompanying ‘Big Brother is Watching’ game in high school, and I know that I own a copy of and at least at some point started reading a collection of his essays (it’s in my huge stack of books in the profile picture) sometime since the start of college, mainly because I read his essay on being in boarding school in a narrative essay collection I was assigned for one of my creative nonfiction classes back in college. I was struck then by how much weight and complexity he could infuse into the emotional experience surrounding wetting oneself as a youth, and that’s been my primary memory of his work as a writer and a thinker to this point, a fact which I’m sure he’d be happy to know.

This collection features a few essays written in the 1940s, mostly discursive/argumentative essays about England’s cultural existence, England’s place in World War II and Europe, socialism, and patriotism. 

Orwell is refreshingly straightforward. He dictates in the collection’s last essay, “Politics and the English Language,” that he values precision highly, and it’s reflected in each of these. We might call him “brutally honest” nowadays, or more accurately ten years ago we might’ve called him that, back when that tendency was seen as a genuine virtue and not an annoying front for callousness, i.e. back when we used that phrase without scare quotes. He’s so adept at stating or defining something precisely in a single sentence and building off of it. It makes me miss teaching, I want to use his essays to illustrate the value of a good thesis statement. A great example was in Part II of “The Lion and the Unicorn” – 

What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism – that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit – does not work.

Which is gorgeous as a thesis statement. Orwell states his argument and defines the main term of the argument precisely before elaborating. He states this, he states the claims which build up the argument, the reader can agree, disagree, be enlightened, be disgusted, whatever, but there’s no kvetching to it. Especially in comparison to so much editorial writing I’ve read recently, I liked reading a man confidently (and competently) state his argument the way that Orwell did here. I couldn’t immediately think of who Orwell’s writing is contrasted with in my mind here, but as I write this reflection, I keep thinking of reading The Athletic’s college football columns during the first half of this season before I realized I hated each of the primary columnists, and I might even be thinking of lengthy Tumblr and Reddit posts by non-professional writers. That is probably the answer: I don’t seek out enough good writers to begin with. It’s my own fault that I dislike so much of the writing I read. I know where I can find good writing, or at least I know where I keep finding the type of writing that makes me want to grind my knuckles into the desk in front of me until I hit the bone, and yet I often choose the latter.

Orwell’s opinions do not align so neatly into modern defined scaffolding. He’s a socialist and an imperialist and he values patriotism. Through modern eyes these immediately struck me as contradictory opinions, but he argues precisely and thoroughly. His argument about England continuing to occupy India reminded me of contemporary arguments on the American presence in the Middle East, but I came around to his argument on patriotism’s role in getting a mass of people on board with a broader mission. The one thing I envy about him writing in that era (and I mean the one thing. I don’t envy him writing that with airstrikes landing in the streets around him) is that achieving his ideological mission seemed much simpler and more feasible in his era. In a much less connected world, the list of simple steps he lays out for his socialist vision struck me as feasible, and some of those steps around state ownership seemed to have come to fruition in the UK. I don’t envy the modern socialist rhetorician, as a pragmatic approach like Orwell lays out feels difficult in such a complex and interconnected world. 

I should clarify that the depth of my knowledge around these topics during Orwell’s era is limited if that isn’t already clear.

I appreciated Orwell’s criticisms of his contemporaries, even if I didn’t know who he was specifically criticizing. There was something fun about reading criticisms that I could imagine a modern writer like Freddie DeBoer or Max Read making towards similar groups in a Substack post – The middle and upper management classes are built on nepotism and are fundamentally incompetent. The intellectuals are annoying and so stuck in idealism that they’re functionally useless. I read criticisms like this all the time from modern cultural critics. That was maybe the most interesting aspect of reading this book: How many of his criticisms have reflections in the modern day. 

I’ll end on my favorite section (fitting given my profession), “Politics and the English Language.” I like that he succinctly lays out his main criticisms with contemporary writing: “The first is staleness of imagery: the other is lack of precision.” His complaints on staleness touched on something that frustrates me about modern writing as well. I think of my frustrations with reading Defector, a site whose mission as a sports-based subscriber-funded cooperative I admire but whose writers I dislike reading because of these sort of rhetorical handrails they hold on to, so many of them adopted from old tweets (‘it’s good, actually’ or ‘you can have a little whatever, as a treat’ or ‘types of guys’), which were grating to me initially (and clearly aren’t to their reader-base) and only grew annoying as time and language has progressed. It’s a champagne problem that the people on my side politically write in a way I find annoying, but it’s pushed me to try to write differently myself. Orwell credits this to an innate issue with writing under any orthodoxy. 

The conflict between he and I (and my central criticism of my own writing at the moment, though I have so much fun doing it that I don’t want to stop it) comes from an inability to be precise and direct in much of my work. I’ve worked on it in this post, I don’t know if it’s come through. Precision, in political writing, or even just in basic argumentative writing, has significant benefits, but I’m fine as it stands with my creative essays leaning purple. Once I get the final Football Hell essay published, I might try to take these lessons into account.

What I want to take from this work comes from this passage:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

I hope to make asking these questions into a habit going forward.

[newswireml]

The Oscars and That Flub and the Rare Power of Shock#Oscars #Flub #Rare #Power #Shock

The Oscars and That Flub and the Rare Power of Shock#Oscars #Flub #Rare #Power #Shock

Last year, the comedian Marc Maron brought the author Chuck Klosterman on as a guest on his WTF podcast. The two discussed many things (including Klosterman’s then-new book, But What If We’re Wrong?, which he was there to promote), but one of them was sports—and the particular thrill that they offer to audiences. Sporting events, Klosterman argued, promise that most dramatic of things: an unknown…

[articlesminer]

The Oscars and That Flub and the Rare Power of Shock

The Oscars and That Flub and the Rare Power of Shock

Last year, the comedian Marc Maron brought the author Chuck Klosterman on as a guest on his WTF podcast. The two discussed many things (including Klosterman’s then-new book, But What If We’re Wrong?, which he was there to promote), but one of them was sports—and the particular thrill that they offer to audiences. Sporting events, Klosterman argued, promise that most dramatic of things: an unknown…

[mitchipedia]

Chuck Klosterman talks about his new history of the 1990s, called, simply enough, “The Nineties,” where he describes the decade as it was to the people who lived through it.

The 90s was a significant decade for me. I left New York, met my wife, became a Californian, and discovered the Internet.

[audikatia]

Thanks for the tag, @your-void-senpai!

Last Song: Weekend Friend by Goth Babe

Last TV Show: I'm about halfway through The Sandman!

Currently Watching: The Sandman. Also, @the-prince-of-tides and I have been making our way through Bridgerton and Derry Girls lol

Currently Reading: 

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman (nonfiction book about the '90s in America, very smart and with a very accessible and conversational tone)

Cremains of the Day by Misty Simon (cozy mystery from an author I met last year. It's cute so far with a nice small-town vibe).

What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher (fantastical retelling of The House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, featuring a non-binary lead)

If you're interested, you should fill this out! I'd love to see your answers! @the-prince-of-tides @cloudslinger @sirenwalker @teenwerewoofs @ive-garden @kelliealtogether @zaatanna

Also, if anyone else wants to do it, go ahead!