Future generations may well recall the 90s as the decade that
defined itself before it became anything – and that what it became
was not much more than a series of groping definitions of itself.
alt.culture eschews definition except by implication, being
simply a guide to 90s American youth’s iconography and obsessions
with only the minimum of commentary and no analysis. The minimalism
is refreshing and the definitions are there for the readers to
extract. There are entries for everything from Nirvana to Winona
Ryder (she gets landed with the description ‘winsome’), the Church
of the SubGenius to Processed World, Beavis and Butthead
to Beverly Hills 90210. Each entry comes with information
about relevant Internet resources and, true to the book’s Website
aspirations, there are cute – but for obvious reasons, only partially
useful – hypertext-style highlights so you can cross-refer your
way through the pages. The emphasis is on Americana though few
of the entries will be new to British Internet users, the Internet
being the prime obsession of the decade and chief repository for
details of its youth’s iconography.
Entertaining and informative, alt.culture is probably more
definitive that its authors are willing to claim and as a coffee-table
book for hip young things with time on their hands, it is as good
as you can hope for. For seasoned Internet users, however, the
book points to nothing so much as its own redundancy. The authors
contrive to be more or less comprehensive, best efforts have been
made to keep the Internet resource listings up-to-date on publication,
but in the end the book can’t compete with the promised alt.culture
Website. The ersatz hypertext highlighting had my mouse hand itching
to click, but with the result that my overriding feeling while
reading this was of holding a lifeless thing in my hands. The
book as a cultural artefact is a long way from being dead, but
the message here is that the book should probably stick to doing what
it does best – text without the hyper.
Reviewed by Steven Kelly
