Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto (Paperback)

by Chuck Klosterman (Author) "No woman will ever satisfy me..." (more)
Key Phrases: waking life, sexual icon, fake love, The Real World, Paradise City, The Sims (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
There's quite a bit of intelligent analysis and thought-provoking insight packed into the pages of Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which is a little surprising considering how darn stupid most of Klosterman's subject matter actually is. Klosterman, one of the few members of the so-called "Generation X" to proudly embrace that label and the stereotypical image of disaffected slackers that often accompanies it, takes the reader on a witty and highly entertaining tour through portions of pop culture not usually subjected to analysis and presents his thoughts on Saved by the Bell, Billy Joel, amateur porn, MTV's The Real World, and much more. It would be easy in dealing with such subject matter to simply pile on some undergraduate level deconstruction, make a few jokes, and have yourself a clever little book. But Klosterman goes deeper than that, often employing his own life spent as a member of the lowbrow target demographic to measure the cultural impact of his subjects. While the book never quite lives up to the use of the word "manifesto" in the title (it's really more of a survey mixed with elements of memoir), there is much here to entertain and illuminate, particularly passages on the psychoses and motivations of breakfast cereal mascots, the difference between Celtic fans and Laker fans, and The Empire Strikes Back. Sections on a Guns n' Roses tribute band, The Sims, and soccer feel more like magazine pieces included to fill space than part of a cohesive whole. But when you're talking about a book based on a section of cultural history so reliant on a lack of attention span, even the incongruities feel somehow appropriate. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly
There's a lot more cold cereal than sex or drugs in Klosterman's nostalgic, patchy collection of pop cultural essays, which, despite sparks of brilliance, fails to cohere. Having graduated from the University of North Dakota in 1994, Klosterman (Fargo Rock City) seems never to have left that time or place behind. He is an ironically self-aware, trivia-theorizing, unreconstructed slacker: "I'm a `Gen Xer,' okay? And I buy shit marketed to `Gen Xers.' And I use air quotes when I talk.... Get over it." The essay topics speak for themselves: the Sims, The Real World, Say Anything, Pamela Anderson, Billy Joel, the Lakers/Celtics rivalry, etc. The closest Klosterman gets to the 21st century is Internet porn and the Dixie Chicks. This is a shame, because he's is a skilled prose stylist with a witty, twisted brain, a photo-perfect memory for entertainment trivia and has real chops as a memoirist. The book's best moments arrive when he eschews argumentation for personal history. In "George Will vs. Nick Hornby," a tired screed against soccer suddenly comes to life when Klosterman tells the story of how he was fired from his high school summer job as a Little League baseball coach. The mothers wanted their sons to have equal playing time; Klosterman wanted "a run-manufacturing offensive philosophy modeled after Whitey Herzog's St. Louis Cardinals." In a chapter on relationships, Klosterman semi-jokes that he only has "three and a half dates worth of material." Remove all the dated pop culture analyses, and Klosterman's book has enough material for about half a really great memoir.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (June 22, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743236017
• ISBN-13: 978-0743236010
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (138 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,075 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tasy Cereal....but with an aftertaste, July 10, 2004

By	Westley (Stuck in my head) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

"Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" is an essay collection that draws comparisons between popular culture and important social and interpersonal issues. It also happens to be extremely witty at times. Chuck Klosterman is a writer for Spin magazine, so he clearly knows pop culture and can write quality essays. The best of his work here truly encapsulates life. Who cannot relate to this quote? - "Every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less." That profundity, by the way, is from an essay that discusses the merits of "When Harry Met Sally"; another section proffers the genius of Billy Joel. Yes, Klosterman is a bit of a hipster geek.

Pop culture references are sprinkled throughout the book, but sometimes it stretches a bit too much for the sake of a clever analogy. In the forward, Klosterman assserts that, at times, he feels as though "everything is completely connected." Unfortunately, he is not adept enough to make all of his essays into a cohesive whole (as other reviewers have noted). Ultimately, the book feels like a loose collection of unrelated but very funny skits. Although that debit doesn't sink the book, it does lessen its impact. In addition, Klosterman is sometimes too self-aware for his own good; several times, he makes reference to liking something "unironically" - such as "Saved by the Bell." His definitive goal seems to be achieving irony. While this credo certainly makes "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" a funny read, it can become rather tedious as well. Overall, I'd recommend this book, but with reservations.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sex, Drug and Cocoa Puff-a-rific, August 9, 2003

By	"lightsoutfilms-com" (Temecula, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs : A Low Culture Manifesto (Hardcover)

Yeah, that title pretty must covers it.

Klosterman's essays are chock full (and I hate to use this term) of Gen-X references to everything we've grown up loving.

Now, these aren't essays ON Saved by the Bell and Pamela Anderson, but rather, he uses cultural icons as a jumping off point for rambling, funny and (uh-oh) thought provoking discussions. Klosterman is the kind of guy that you would want to hang out with at a party. Look. You're either going to love this book or you're not. You're either to find the tangential, rambling essays endearing and interesting, or simply tangential and rambling.

So what kinds of subjects are you in for? How about the Tori Paradox in which Klosterman deconstructs the idea of Tori on Saved by the Bell? One season, after Tiffany Amber Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley had left for more naked pastures, Tori shows up. And then, just before a graduation special that was to air on NBC, Tori was gone. And Kelly and Jessie were back. Klosterman argues that Saved by the Bell is a lot like life. First people are there, and then they're not - gone. Only to be forgotten and at the most, vaguely remember. Of course, Klosterman explains much better than me.

Just the pure assault of pop-cultural references was enough for me. It's not uncommon for Klosterman to reference such diverse items as the music of Radiohead, Who's the Boss and Trix cereal all in one essay. And I wouldn't be exalting his references if he was just throwing them out. They actually mean something to the people that grew up in the post-Boomer era...

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Meh, July 12, 2004

By A Customer

It was impossible to read these essays and not imagine that they were typed as spouted, realtime, by a smart, overcaffeinated english major sitting on a couch in a dormitory. You can almost see the (cheap, industrial) carpeting and hear the 'k-cchunk' of the vending machine in the background.

This can be fun, but what we all learned in college is that it's important not to take couch-speaker-guy's opinions as seriously as he takes them. That's the case here, too. Klosterman guesses at things when ninety seconds of googling would have given him the facts; he makes assertions and then, rather than backing them up, goes on to further assertions, possibly in hopes that you'll be too busy trying to keep up to start poking holes in his argument; and every now and then, despite his open contempt for people who use words without understanding their meanings, he does this himself (e.g. describing this collection as a 'manifesto').