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A review by mandirigma
But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman
4.0
I'll admit it -- this was actually a refreshing read amidst the insane news cycle we've been having for the past two years. His chapters on science and politics and simulation all took me a little bit longer to follow (also, I know he's famed for his pop culture criticism and I'm actually a huge fan of his writings on pop culture, but I actually skipped the chapter on the Beatles entirely). But this was really a fun, low-stakes mental exercise in asking somewhat absurd questions. I had fun with the process.
What made it an even weirder and more fascinating read was knowing the book had only been published in pre-election 2016, and already some of his examples had new layers to complicate things. For one, he cites recently-disgraced Junot Diaz (who was once my favorite author) regarding how the literary canon might look in a few hundred years. Diaz's answer is essentially that the canon will belong to the marginalized, which I don't disagree with, but it calls to mind the power structure among the marginalized. Knowing what we know now, are we cool with abusers deciding who belongs in the canon?
Similarly, the TV show Klosterman chooses for its ancillary verisimilitude ("a TV show that provided the most realistic portrait of the society that created it, without the self-aware baggage embedded in any overt attempt at doing so") is Roseanne, or at least its 90's version. Again, I don't disagree with this, but I have to wonder if the surrounding drama (Roseanne Barr as a personality in general, the recent revival, and the downfall) will have an impact on how the entire series is viewed in history. It's entirely possible that people 200 years from now will be able to separate the original series from all that, but WHAT IF I'M WRONG? What's the next best tv show to provide ancillary verisimilitude? I don't even think it exists!
I think I was most fascinated by the chapter The Case Against Freedom, mostly because it had a lot of arguments that many marginalized people have long been familiar with (namely the idea that the Constitution has not been applied to all people evenly and is therefore fallible), but Klosterman's cishet white guy perspective actually gave the issue room to breathe. His take on it didn't carry the weight of emotion and personal stake, and so he was able to ask questions and look at the Constitution and our political system and write about it in a way that most people can't or aren't allowed to, which I appreciated. This one is just a really good essay to read on its own.
The final chapter also added his human perspective to the whole book, which I appreciated. Most of the time, the book is a fun exercise until you think about its practical application. The topics he chose were high level enough that its easy to NOT think about its proximity to your daily life, but then what about climate change? In the last chapter, he actually explains why he did not include it in this book, and also talks the fears this stoked for him, and it was honestly kind of a relief for me. Like, thank god I'm not the only person who sometimes "catastrophizes" as my therapist likes to say.
Overall a great book, much like his other essay collections.
What made it an even weirder and more fascinating read was knowing the book had only been published in pre-election 2016, and already some of his examples had new layers to complicate things. For one, he cites recently-disgraced Junot Diaz (who was once my favorite author) regarding how the literary canon might look in a few hundred years. Diaz's answer is essentially that the canon will belong to the marginalized, which I don't disagree with, but it calls to mind the power structure among the marginalized. Knowing what we know now, are we cool with abusers deciding who belongs in the canon?
Similarly, the TV show Klosterman chooses for its ancillary verisimilitude ("a TV show that provided the most realistic portrait of the society that created it, without the self-aware baggage embedded in any overt attempt at doing so") is Roseanne, or at least its 90's version. Again, I don't disagree with this, but I have to wonder if the surrounding drama (Roseanne Barr as a personality in general, the recent revival, and the downfall) will have an impact on how the entire series is viewed in history. It's entirely possible that people 200 years from now will be able to separate the original series from all that, but WHAT IF I'M WRONG? What's the next best tv show to provide ancillary verisimilitude? I don't even think it exists!
I think I was most fascinated by the chapter The Case Against Freedom, mostly because it had a lot of arguments that many marginalized people have long been familiar with (namely the idea that the Constitution has not been applied to all people evenly and is therefore fallible), but Klosterman's cishet white guy perspective actually gave the issue room to breathe. His take on it didn't carry the weight of emotion and personal stake, and so he was able to ask questions and look at the Constitution and our political system and write about it in a way that most people can't or aren't allowed to, which I appreciated. This one is just a really good essay to read on its own.
The final chapter also added his human perspective to the whole book, which I appreciated. Most of the time, the book is a fun exercise until you think about its practical application. The topics he chose were high level enough that its easy to NOT think about its proximity to your daily life, but then what about climate change? In the last chapter, he actually explains why he did not include it in this book, and also talks the fears this stoked for him, and it was honestly kind of a relief for me. Like, thank god I'm not the only person who sometimes "catastrophizes" as my therapist likes to say.
Overall a great book, much like his other essay collections.