“I feel stupid and contagious / Here we are now, entertain us.” The last thing Kurt Cobain meant to do when he wrote these lines—from the lyrics of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”—was define a cultural moment. But then, not wanting to define a cultural moment was a defining feature of that moment.
If you happened to go to college, read books, listen to music, sleep with the wrong person, then the right one, send your first e-mail, and figure out who you were while Alanis Morissette was misdefining “ironic,” you could be a 90s person. If you were a teenage girl, you might have seen Titanic multiple times to swoon over Leo. You might have voted for Bill Clinton—first with enthusiasm, then with cynicism—only to see his popularity peak as he was impeached. You might not have cared about a certain O. J. Simpson until, one day, he was driving that white Bronco to God knows where and he became the most important person in your life.
