Americans need Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Chuck Klosterman’s book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is a collection of thoughts of topics seemingly normal. He succeeds in stimulating his reader’s thoughts by finding the bizarre in extraordinarily ordinary topics. A lot of his observations seem to have been born in his college years. From his obsession with the “Real World” to his hate for soccer; his respect for Pamela Anderson to his criticism of the widely renowned Star-Wars films, he keeps readers not only turning pages but also so confused and amused that they can’t fully understand everything he says. The book opens with an essay on the impracticality of love and relationships because of the unrealistic conditions we see in movies. This sets the tone of pessimism with slightly humorous overtones throughout the book. Because we are not happy in real life we turn to something we can control, something that we feel safe in- video games. A prime example seen in the book is the collection of the computer game from Electronic Arts, The Sims. The Sims are people whose lives you control. This includes buying them appliances, feeding them, sleeping, etc, things a normal person would do everyday. We actually see a good response from Klosterman, ultimately, the Sims only care about materialistic ends. However, we are above that, no matter how much computers try, they can not completely grasp humanity. Thus, fears of robots taking over the world are grounded. Other subject areas move on to discuss the Celtic versus Laker rivalry and how the demographic of fans act as proof that the two teams can classify everyone in America. We then come to Porn and how it has made the internet what it is. Would the Internet have taken root as quickly as it did had it not provided endless pictures of so called “whores” and “sluts” on its pages? According to Klosterman, no, Porn has caused technology to flower and become applicable to everyone. He is emotionally involved with TV; a lot of his content is based on his viewing of at least 10-year-old TV shows. Interestingly, by commenting on them now he can include information on how the kid stars have turned out. These include commenting on how Elizabeth Berkley from “Saved by the Bell” has stared in soft-porn films, or the subtleties of budding relationships on “The Real World.” The book ends rather unceremoniously with views on religious individuals and how they annoy him.

This basically sums up the feel of his book. He finds something that has stuck in his mind, either because he drew an interesting explication that he wants to share or because it annoys him and he feels like ranting. Klosterman’s writings are quick-paced yet short-lived and are a bit overwhelming. He moves from subject to subject in relatively short twenty page intervals and some of the connections he makes seem only plausible to his mind. These chapters seem to remark on the average American’s short attention span just by being so diverse and short. They include observations from his childhood and through his life until now and it seems that many of his arguments have had time to fester. He is very personal in his writing, he constantly writes as if he is talking to the reader, and remarks on the time he has spent writing. This awareness of time is also somewhat humorous, for example his remarks on how he wrote an article on someone’s life based on a ten minute phone interview (in which he barely touched on his subject’s accomplishments); or how he realizes that he draws out an argument in thousands of words which he could have expressed in a few. Some words seemed overly used such as “unironically” or “pundits” and while his vocabulary is impressive, a more colloquial use of language would have served him better. Especially since his book seems to attract more young readers than the highly educated.

I neither liked nor disliked this book. At times, I found myself mildly interested, but was never completely satisfied at any point. While there was a lot of buzz going on about this book, I did not find it that great. There is no doubt in my mind that Klosterman could counter any criticism I could make and turn it into an issue of how my views of the world equate to those of a cartoon character’s-and that is exactly how it feels to read this book. He writes in a sort of roundabout way that is not very hard to grasp, but incredibly difficult to argue against. Some topics seem so esoteric or so essentially basic that no one else would have the mind, or even want to rebuke his thoughts. His ideas stem from the medium he chooses to use, the interpretive lens of criticisms are largely negative and therefore readers are constantly subjected to Klosterman’s assessment of the American culture. That is, one- we create fake characters that live fake lives. Two- we then escape to those characters, whether they are on the television or in a video game; and ultimately three- we are hiding from reality by doing so.

He was deemed the master of pop culture and is named so for a reason. Overall, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is a good escape from the norm, and would be a good book on seeing other perspectives. While not a fictional piece or a textbook, this book still feels like it is lecturing you on subjects that are only figments of one’s imagination. Though many people will sympathize with the Trix Rabbit, how many will break down the psychological workings of Sonny the bird from the lesser known Cocoa Puff commercials? Though I did not fully enjoy this book, I do recommend that others decide on their experience of the book for themselves. Comical yet somehow profound sentences end many chapters and somehow tie this messy work together. These make the experience more bearable and we glimpse the effort in his writing. He really does put a lot of thinking into these analogies and is not just trying to be the funny guy he frequently makes himself out to be. He leaves us thinking with lines such as “Saved by the Bell wasn’t real, but neither is most of reality.” (147) Or “Neither one of us understands how the world works.” (185) By no means was this book boring, dull, or a waste of time.