In taking a month to finish Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman, I have had the opportunity to read and reread the laudatory blurbs that adorn Scribner’s first trade paperback printing.
The Onion A.V. Club calls the book “one of the brightest pieces of pop analysis to appear this century,” and the book reviewer over at GQ notes that the work is “sometimes exasperating but almost always engaging.” The key phrase in the Onion’s comment is “this century.” his book was originally published in 2003; three years is not a very long time in which to accumulate mass amounts of pop analysis. Also important is the GQ book reviewer’s choice to equivocate his or her exultation of Klosterman by including the great attenuator “almost.”
For generations, directors have tried to make Shakespeare more palatable for general (read: non-Shakespeare-reading) audiences with varying degrees of success. Directors of Shakespearean dramas for contemporary audiences generally handle the ever-growing gap betwixt the Bard’s time and today in two ways. Some choose to update the setting (see Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet or Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet 2000); others choose to update the script (see 10 Things I Hate About You, a modern adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew). Rick Miller, creator, writer, and sole performer of MacHomer, has updated the script, the setting, and the players themselves of Macbeth, changing it from the Scottish tragedy to a Springfieldian comedy.