Reviews and Comments

I enjoy Chuck Klosterman. In college, I devoured his essay collection: “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.” And Klosterman’s new collection of essays lingers somewhere between fine and likable, depending on the topic.

Many of the significant events in the book are better covered elsewhere: the OJ Simpson trial, the Clinton administration, and the 2000 election of George W Bush.

But the collection shines in its excursions into pop-esoterica—for example, the discussion of “selling out,” framed by Nirvana’s 1991 album Nevermind and the 1994 Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, and Ben Stiller film Reality Bytes.

It’s an isolated, freestanding period where a person’s unwillingness to view his existence as a commodity was prioritized over another person’s actual personality. An authentic jerk was preferable to a likeable sellout. It was a confusing time to care about things.

-- Chuck Klosterman, The Nineties

And Crystal Pepsi

There’s no evidence that people of the nineties wanted clear versions of beverages that were readily available in non-clear form.

-- Chuck Klosterman, The Nineties

And Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill":

It epitomized the long-standing complaint that a male artist’s experience is seen as universal while any female experience is inexorably viewed as personal—instead of becoming a song about breakups, it became a song about this specific breakup.

-- Chuck Klosterman, The Nineties

One tricky part of reading all these essays back-to-back was that Klosterman's Formula™ started to leap out and distract me:

1. Introduce a topic
2. Say there are 𝑛 important things about this topic (where 𝑛 is usually 2 or 3)
3. "And this is both [some easy-to-guess adjective] and [some hard-to-guess adjective]."

For example, on the OJ Simpson white bronco TV chase:

Now, the two things most remembered about this spectacle are (a) the seemingly insane people standing along the highway who witnessed the chase in person, and (b) the insane number of television viewers who watched the chase from the comfort of their own living rooms. It is the defining night of the nineties and a phenomenon that is somehow both difficult to understand and entirely unsurprising.

-- Chuck Klosterman, The Nineties

The "both" thing grated on me. All real examples:

• "both famous and incorrect"
• "both explicable and debatable"
• "both ubiquitous and impossible to grasp"
• "both upbeat and devistating"
• "both stock and singular"
• "both conformist and unpredictable"
• "both world-shattering and predictable"

The ideal audience for a Klosterman book is someone who is incredibly shallow in the deepest way possible. Someone who is both both a pop culture aficionado and an irredeemable pedant.

See? Now that’s a Klosterman Formula™ ending!

Jennifer Egan’s “The Candy House” straddles the line between magical realism and sci-fi—and I am here for it.

Anthropologist Miranda Kane’s 1995 book, “Patterns of Affinity” lays bare exacting formulas for predicting human behavior. She could never have anticipated Bix Bouton seizing on these ideas to expand his surveillance capitalism juggernaut: “Mandala” (the novel’s answer to Meta/Facebook).

Later, in 2010, while fretting about the future of Mandala, Bouton infiltrates a college discussion group of Kline’s work. There he learns of experiments to externalize people’s memories into machines.

Bix uses the research as the inspiration for “Own Your Unconscious”—a way to relive your past (including everything you’d forgotten).

Later, Mandala introduces “The Collective”—a pool of memories users can tap at the cost of releasing their memories for others. The collective is a database searchable by geolocation and time—enter the date and place and watch events unfold through the eyes of any user who’s uploaded their unconscious to the collective.

The novel is a collection of vignettes—memoirs of people connected to Bounton and Kline.

The world Egan builds is addictive and wonderous, but some stories fall flat. In particular, a second-person spy story that goes on way. too. long.

But the novel still has enough magnetic and beautiful moments to be worth your time.

I love Morgan Housel’s blog (at collabfund). Housel tells engaging stories with sharp writing. And this book reads like a collection of his lean, insightful blog posts—which I enjoyed.

But it had a dearth of actionable tips on spending, investing, and saving.

Although, what little advice it does offer aligns with all my biases, which is always a nice feeling.

I think for most investors, dollar-cost averaging into a low-cost index fund will provide the highest odds of long-term success.

– Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

The title refers to how individuals differ in their approach to money. Housel insists that judging people for their relationship to money is unfair. It’s individualistic, based on their goals and timelines—and, sometimes, their unique blind spots.

The author cites studies showing that people are forever traumatized by the market early in life. If the stock market was crummy in your 20s, you tend to avoid stocks forever.

I found the insight that history is the study of outlier events novel. And that the most crucial part of a plan is what happens when the plan fails.

This was a short, lively read filled with fascinating anecdotes and some modest financial advice. Of course, all advice appears alongside caveats to everything.

“I used to have this crazy idea…” He pauses. “And I guess I still do, that as long as I stay on the ground, the plane will stay in the sky. It’ll keep flying on its normal route to Los Angeles, and I’m its counterweight. They’re all alive up there, as long as I’m alive down here.”

– Ann Napolitano, “Dear Edward”

This is one of those books I found myself ripping through in just a few days. “Dear Edward” was gifted to me this past Christmas, and I was unsure if it would be my cup of tea. But I enjoyed this light, sweet, YA coming-of-age story in sad and surreal circumstances.

Twelve-year-old Edward Adler is the sole survivor of the 191 passengers aboard flight 2977 from Newark to Los Angeles. He was sitting together with his father and brother, contemplating their relocation to LA for Eddie's mother's new TV-writing job. Meanwhile, Jane Adler, Eddie's mom, finishes rewrites to a terrible script alone in first class.

The passengers on flight 2977 include a Forbes richest person, a coked-out business jag-off, a gorgeous flight attendant, a soldier returning from war to ride a desk, a fascinating woo-woo woman in a skirt with bells on it, and a woman who just found out she's pregnant and is hoping her boyfriend will propose when they land.

The novel shifts back and forth—jumping into the passengers' minds during the long flight and following Edward after the crash as he learns to live his new life.

After moving in with his Aunt and Uncle in Jersey, Eddie (who now goes by Edward) cleaves to a neighbor girl his age—Shay. Edward and Shay develop a deep bond that gives him a solid foundation to rebuild his shattered life.

It’s a light read. I found the characters were more interesting than the plot—although some characters are more developed than others (I never entirely understood Uncle John and Aunt Lacey—their marriage seems...singular). The scenes are warm, like a Hallmark movie, and (at times) a bit saccharine. Nevertheless, I found myself persuaded to devour this book—it was a good and touching read.

Plus, I loved the random TILs sprinkled throughout:

• Airplanes mix 50/50 air from the cabin and outside and then pass it through filters before it comes back through the vents.
• The first flying machines—the ones where people strapped wings to their arms to flap—were called "ornithopters."
• Pierre de Fermat's "little theorem" from 1640 helped build the basis of RSA encryption.