I think millennials have reached a point where we have a history to write about, fresh feeling to put into form, and not just propaganda. It’ll be interesting to see this literary shift, if it happens.

Thanks for another excellent and entertaining review! I always enjoy your insights!

“The Shards” by Bret Easton Ellis is magnificent. It has not received its due. The antipathy towards the author is most certainly the reason.

"You're all a lost generation." Gertrude Stein. How many lost generations have we had since then? The Beats, Boomers, Gen X, Gen Z, Millennial. A century of lost generations. Jim Morrison said, that in America to be a superstar you have to be an assassin. It seemed almost instantly clear that Columbine changed things.

Fantastic review - This is why I love listening to your reviews Cliff. I think I will skip this book but yet I am still fascinated by your review. I do remember this strange time and would be my oldest daughters time frame of growing up and I remember it well. Explains so much as to why so many of us do not understand our adult children and they do not understand us. I think I will be reading this book. There is always something new to learn.

I lost it at the James Duvall cameo comment because I was already instinctively picturing (young) Duvall as Lu.

I saw your face and "Bret Easton Ellis" and for a second I thought this was a review of The Shards XD ! Great and insightful review, as usual.

@niffelac8594

8 ай бұрын

Been putting that one off forever, is it any good?

@alexbielovich

8 ай бұрын

@@niffelac8594 My favourite read this year

I was very loath to click on this, because I love your reviews, and I read an ARC of this book a while ago and I HATED it. Like, I had a visceral gut reaction against it, and I'm not even quite certain why, apart from I hated the actual prose itself. But this was actually a highly nuanced and brilliantly thought out review and I do actually agree with you on a lot of it. I still dont like the book, but I agree that it makes you think, plus, I do love that fact that it's severely polarising people. I think in this very MEH era, we need more books that have a LOVE/HATE relationship around them. So. Long story short. Agree to disagree, but also slightly agree too. Lol. Love your work btw

Another fantastic review about a book that I would most-likely never read otherwise... and now it's in a wishlist. Cheers. Keep 'em comin'.

Tumblr and similar environments are, in my opinion, a seriously underestimated place for genuinely must-read thought. Happening right now, and happening for well over a decade now. This feels really interesting and unique - literature that deserves consideration, straight out of AO3. EDIT: You reminiscing about that era of music and Smash Mouth-induced panic attacks was hilarious, absolutely love this video! Also about the possibility of deep and cathartic online conversations that we just don't have IRL, or not even attempt to, I really feel that. It's still a thing - I've seen more genuine human emotion and exposing of self-introspection on small friend Discord servers than I have in most live interactions with these same people, and definitely wrote my share of confessions I would die to not have to articulate in spoken words.

This is your best review yet.

Damn.. I feel like I could have written this book. This was my high school experience to a T. I’ll definitely be checking this out.

I was born in 83 and graduated in 2002. I'm sure I would recognize so much of this. It's bringing to mind the horrors of Woodstock 99 blended with the joy of The Smashing Pumpkins "1979" for some reason.

Your first album was Eiffel 65? 😂 Great review as always.

a great review as always definitely something I need to read. This book seems refreshing and really honest about the post modern condition and beginning of the break down of society

I watch Malcolm in the middle when I want to relive that time

currently reading this one!!

I just finished this book tonight and feel extremely similar, you summed it up perfectly. also, I kept waiting for butterfly by crazytown to be mentioned but it never was. but the myriad of other references had me cringe laughing 100%

i think what Kazemi did was create a very true sentiment of the y2k era in terms of toxic masculinity and isolation that i don't think any other work has achieved. but in the same vain as lark clark or harmony korine, there's the real dark stuff and the satire thrown in to sort of balance everything out. i felt incredibly uncomfortable throughout the reading experience of this, but it's when i'm in moments outside of my comfort did i realize a lot: holy heck, yeah, that was a really gross time where homophobic and misogynistic slurs were thrown around in such casual language that any outside of that time period would probably deem it incredibly alien. Kazemi does not hold back, and its written from a place of experienced nostalgia that i think brings the work to a strange truth to such a time (y2k) that is celebrated in its fashion, but not in its sentiments in suburban sensationalism. it's a romp!

Love the shirt. Finished this book a few days ago (after Alex's appearance on the BEE podcast) and thoroughly enjoyed*, especially the final 10%. HAD to know what happens. Born in 1990. * Had to skip the "Rat" scene. For some reason that type of content in American Psycho was tolerable, because it felt even more detached.

I would LOVE to hear your review on JT LeRoy’s books, I am very curious on your opinion.

@marty4349

8 ай бұрын

i agree

Oh my God I have to read this!

Would love to see you interview Alex Cliff

Is that Gene Wolfe behind your left shoulder? Shadow & Claw?

I see Brett Easton Ellis, I watch… 🕶️👓

Europop was also one of the first albums I bought. What an insane time.

In the wake of being put onto Threshold, i would recommend Rob Doyle's first novel Here Are the Young Men. This sounds very comparable.

My Better Than Food coffee mug never arrived...

Excellent review, I don't want to read any all-dilog book, but I get it. I was there, Gen X. I was 20 in '94. Tell me who I was. We were not so ageist then, I wasn't anyway.

@YourFathersDad

8 ай бұрын

I thought I wouldn't like all dialogue until I read Stella Maris. But...McCarthy

jesus ... i was on another tab and i came back when you were doing the clockwork orange thing.... yes im awake now

“That’ll be 6.66”

Skinny puppy... dang, haven't thought about them in a while

Old person here. I thought MTV was over by the 1990s. It started in the early 80s. From the 1990s I just remember Beavis and Butt-Head. They were kind of fun, but I suppose there were real people like them. Maybe the real people were not as funny as those characters.

Please please read “The Cook” by Harry Kressing. It’s an odd tale that follows a mysterious cook. A truly twisted, cruel diabolical read, but also charming in a way. I’ll add that very little is known about the author, much like the protagonist of story, to me that makes it all the more interesting.. Please help revive this disgustingly neglected gem.

Great choice for a video Cliff

Well....Punk in the uk happened in the late 70's early 80's Well before all this so called tech bs 😢😢

I would revive myself if Smash Mouth was the last thing I heard

To like hear the author like interview like in Vanity Fair is like a turn OFF. Go easier on the coffee. 😊

rip steve harwell

22:40 is so poignant man, and I’m only 29

😂

You've fallen off, Cliff. This book is utter charlatanism.

Eiffel 65 isn’t the worst. I remember buying Americana from whatever the music store at Tuttle Mall was. It’s now a defunct FYE I believe. First album I ever bought was probably Crazy Sexy Cool, Dookie, or No Fences. I do remember begging my mother to buy me the Shaq rap album, Shaq Diesel. Cassette too. CD players weren’t common in the early 90’s. It is honestly a pretty damn good album and even has a song featuring the great Notorious BIG. To be serious for a second though. Columbine lit the fuse on the bomb that was 9/11. The dual meteors of the end of American exceptionalism, hegemony, and influence. The tragically unhip barbarians pounding on the gates of the Pax Americana. Through our own folly and foible we heedlessly helped them inside with alacritous dexterity.