shopping cart
Save up to 30% on our Staff Picks
Call us:  800-878-7323 HELP
McAfee SECURE helps keep you safe from identity theft, credit card fraud, spyware, spam, viruses and online scams.
Interviews | November 3, 2009

Sheila A.: IMG On Storytelling: The Powells.com Interview with Donald Miller



donaldmillerDonald Miller is a Christian writer, but the question that Miller asks with his latest memoir, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, is applicable to... Continue »
  1. $13.99 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

by Chuck Klosterman

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

From the kid who brought you Fargo Rock City — the first book in history to garner the praise of Stephen King, David Byrne, Donna Gaines, Sebastian Bach, Jonathan Lethem, and Rivers Cuomo — comes Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs — the first book in history to examine breakfast cereal, reality television, tribute bands, Internet porn, serial killers, and the Dixie Chicks.

Countless writers and artists have spoken for a generation, but no one has done it quite like Chuck Klosterman — with an exhaustive knowledge of popular culture and a seemingly effortless ability to spin brilliant prose out of unlikely subject matter. Whether deconstructing Saved by the Bell episodes or the artistic legacy of Billy Joel, the symbolic importance of The Empire Strikes Back or the Celtics/Lakers rivalry of the 1980s, Chuck will make you think, he'll make you laugh, and he'll drive you insane — usually all at once.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is ostensibly about movies, sports, television, music, books, video games, and kittens...but, really, it's about us. All of us. As Klosterman realizes late at night, in the moment before he falls asleep, "In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever 'in and of itself.'"

Review:

"[D]espite sparks of brilliance, [it] fails to cohere....[A] skilled prose stylist with a witty, twisted brain....Remove all the dated pop culture analyses, and [it] has enough material for about half a really great memoir." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"[M]any of his long argumentative riffs...seem dated and unprovocative. The occasional piece rises above this minor-key white noise....Humorous, slick, aggressively forgettable." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"The funniest thing I've read in an ice age....Chuck Klosterman is a Gulliver among the cult-crit Lilliputians. America should wrap her freckled arms around Klosterman's scrawny neck and press him to her bosom. He may be the last true patriot among us." Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Review:

"Chuck Klosterman has the time and inclination to think through the issues that you didn't even know were issues. Laugh at him, or with him, or both...but you will laugh, dammit, you will laugh." Bob Odenkirk of "Mr. Show"

Synopsis:

From the author of Fargo Rock City — the heavy metal memoir The New York Times Book Review hailed as "ridiculously engaging" — comes another hilarious and discerning take on popular culture, exploring everything from the crucial role of breakfast cereal to how John Cusack films destroy the modern meaning of love. In Fargo Rock City, Chuck Klosterman established himself as one of the funniest and most insightful writers of his generation, with an exhaustive knowledge of eighties culture and an enviable ability to spin brilliant prose from unlikely subject matter. Now, in the natural successor to that acclaimed debut, he examines every cultural phenomenon of modern times, from Internet porn to tribute bands, from Billy Joel to basketball rivalries, in a book as thought-provoking as it is entertaining. Part hipster rant, part (semi-) sophisticated cultural criticism, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is filled with observations that will have every reader laughing in recognition. Reality television is both tragic and irresistible. Internet porn completely baffles him. The Dixie Chicks are the new Van Halen because teenage girls are the new teenage boys. Each topic is connected by small passages that pull together a massive cultural quilt, one that Chuck has stitched to "playfully help people understand what they know through who they are." Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is an intelligent look at the "trivial" subjects that shape our lives, and a compulsively readable gem.

Synopsis:

From the author of "Fargo Rock City" comes another hilarious and discerning take on popular culture, exploring everything from the crucial role of breakfast cereal to how John Cusack films destroy the modern meaning of love.

About the Author

Chuck Klosterman is the author of Fargo Rock City and a senior writer for SPIN magazine. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and The Washington Post. He is six-foot-two and does not suffer from lycanthropy.

Table of Contents

Contents

1 This Is Emo

(carnivore interlude)

2 Billy Sim

(reality interlude)

3 What Happens When People Stop Being Polite

(Pat Benatar interlude)

4 Every Dog Must Have His Every Day, Every Drunk Must Have His Drink

(Monkees = Monkees interlude)

5 Appetite for Replication

(an interlude to be named later)

6 Ten Seconds to Love

(metaphorical fruit interlude)

7 George Will vs. Nick Hornby

(Ralph Nader interlude)

8 33

(Fonzie recalibration interlude)

9 Porn

("kitty cat as terrorist" interlude)

10 The Lady or the Tiger

(hypothetical interlude)

11 Being Zack Morris

(50-50 interlude)

12 Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth

(anti-homeless interlude)

13 The Awe-Inspiring Beauty of Tom Cruise's Shattered, Troll-like Face

(punk interlude)

14 Toby over Moby

(Johnny Cash interlude)

15 This Is Zodiac Speaking

(Timothy McVeigh interlude)

16 All I Know Is What I Read in the Papers

(boom!)

17 I, Rock Chump

(waiting to die interlude)

18 How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found

Product Details

ISBN:
9780743236003
Subtitle:
A Low Culture Manifesto
Author:
Klosterman, Chuck
Publisher:
Scribner Book Company
Location:
New York
Subject:
General
Subject:
United states
Subject:
Civilization
Subject:
Popular Culture
Subject:
Popular Culture - General
Subject:
General Humor
Subject:
General Social Science
Subject:
United States Civilization 1970-
Subject:
Popular culture -- United States.
Copyright:
Series Volume:
108-21
Publication Date:
August 26, 2003
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
256
Dimensions:
8.75x5.74x.88 in. .80 lbs.

Other books you might like

  1. $6.25 Used Hardcover add to wish list
  2. $7.98 Sale Trade Paper add to wish list
  3. $4.95 Used Trade Paper add to wish list

    The Hipster Handbook

    Robert Lanham
  4. $7.50 Used Trade Paper add to wish list

    High Fidelity

    Nick Hornby
  5. $22.00 New Hardcover add to wish list

    The Anomalies

    Joey Goebel
  6. $5.95 Used Hardcover add to wish list

Related Aisles

  • back to top

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.