Chuck Klosterman: evaluation

Transcript context

…What is it in non-American culture that you’re most interested in? Canada not counting — no Neil Young, no Joni Mitchell. Non-American culture. Boy, I am a pretty American person in a lot of ways. I’m sure a criticism of this book is that instead of being called The Nineties, it should be called The American Nineties. I have a somewhat myopic view about how culture works, but in 2008, I was a guest professor at the University of Leipzig, and I taught American studies there for a semester. It was in East Germany, so it was very interesting. German’s the main language. The second most popular language was Russian. I could teach a class at this university, but I couldn’t mail a letter because I’d go to the post office and no one knew what I wanted. Being in East Germany, the thing that fascinated me was talking to Germans, especially German students, about their perception of America. I think that the most valuable thing about traveling is the greater understanding you have of the place you’re from, from the way it is perceived, and your natural inclination is to almost argue with these people. I was teaching a class called 20th-Century Pop Culture, and it’s the first day, and I’m walking to class, and a graduate student starts walking alongside of me. He seems like a nice guy, and he asked me what I’m doing, and I tell him, “I’m teaching this class on 20th-Century Pop Culture.” He’s like, “Well, that should take 10 minutes.” Because they perceive America as having no culture, but it was crazy because they all loved hip-hop. I would be like, “Well, hip-hop is American culture.” And they’d be like, “Oh, no, that’s an immigrant culture.” I’m like, “Well, not really. That’s a weird way to perceive it.” I know what you’re really asking more about is, what are things that come from — Well, like Asian cinema in the ’90s was a big deal for me. I discovered —…

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