what are 'hipster' books?

a. the circle that radiates from Dave Eggers/McSweeney's
b. writing that seems awfully impressed with its own cleverness
c. the novel as Seinfeld episode: perhaps funny and well-crafted but with no moral center or purpose
d. Rick Moody

ahhhhhh....that site is like a collection all those people i've met in the past who were too snobby to talk to me

Boy, do I sound embittered today... but... eh?

Bookbloggers often sound selfconsciously hip. "Bookslut", for example, and "Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind". Um, how sluttish or idiosyncratic can you be if you read that many books.

I believe that at the moment it's hip to like Kafka. When I've tried to argue against him, the response from Kafkaettes has pretty much been that there must be something wrong with me. It's someone akin to the jeering that ensues when it emerges that there's always a Bananarama track buried somewhere in my dance mixes.

Terms used to define hipster books: underground, experimental, meta. Of course the product is really none of these, as they are not underground nor experimental, and perhaps pseudo-meta but only because they use lots of footnotes.

Other books/writers included on the reading list: Mark Danielewski, Will Self, et al.

I suppose it's the rise of 'youth culture' as defined by not-clever-by-half white male writers who produce 'biting' commentaries.

(Although I rather liked Generation X.)

Other hipster writers: Martin Amis (thanks to London Fields), Dennis Cooper, Bret Easton Ellis.

"That's not writing, that's typing!" - Truman Capote on On The Road

There have been alot of good, even great writers listed here - why would you call "Everything is Illuminated" shit based on who reads it then dismiss him as a "one hit wonder"? Well he has only written one book so far but I doubt it will be his only succesful one - and even if it is then so what? Its still a good and interesting book.

My one problem with alot of the people who read some of these books is that they have generally only read about 10 books yet they still try to force them on you.

Well he's a different type of hipster, one who wears a suit and bathes. And he could actually write.

I thought the purpose was to identify what books/authors are labeled 'hipster' reading material and perhaps why. Who said anything about slagging?

Well he's a different type of hipster, one who wears a suit and bathes. And he could actually write.

alot of this is slagging.

I think 'hipster books' is a pretty silly label, mind.

And Burroughs is just unreadable.

He just chose not to write like that for much of his life.

Anyway, I'd say that I agree with Tico in that a lot of this stuff goes together and a certain group will be drawn in, but that doesn't mean the work is without merit. At least not all of it.

Am I a bad person for buying my mother an Eggers book and White Teeth for Christmas? I got them for her based on excerpts I'd read, but now I'm thinking that I may be accidentally training her to be a hipster.

For the eager, the post-bookish, the future-but-not-current MFAs: it's generally Eggers &c., anybody mentioned on Baum's Eggernomicon, the fetching Zadie Smith, the overbright+neurotic D.F. Wallace, the well-connected Safran Foer or Eggers, with any of whom one may want to identify one's life. Perfect metrosexual accoutrements, in general. This says nothing about the books themselves, which, obviously, differ in quality quite independently of their desirability among the current jetset.

There's, natch, also the cyborg/trans-humanist/metasexual agenda, starting with Gaiman and Dick and Stephenson and Ballard, moving on from there.

For the young, in general, you've got the business above, maybe, with some Beats thrown in-- the same sensibility, aged, leads one to authenticity-charged authors, Frey mayhaps, who decided to offer his vision of the real against the coy feints and stabs of the Fence/3rd Bed/McSweeney's generation.

But no one really calls something a "hipster book" unless they're meaning to slag, I wouldn't think. Even if I like a book, the H.Q. (hipster quotient) is going to be a social if not a private ill associated with the book, ie, I enjoy much of Foster Wallace's fiction but am unlikely to talk about him much unless I know which ear's bent, just because there's too much baggage trundled into the room with his name. And who wants to just put more garbage into the air, hm?

The hipster mess, with the lit hipsters and the whole cult of resentment surrounding them, the incestuousness, the connection-envy: it all seems inevitable, and non-new. But it's easy enough just to make like Mailer and crash Isherwood's breakfast table, isn't it? Isn't it?

M.

Hipster lit=what hipsters read

That's different from anything to do with Isherwood: perhaps his broad 'set' was a kind of 1930s hipster circle (Auden, Lehmanns Rosamund and John, Henry Green, Cyril Connolly) but somehow I think not; rather that literary society back then, in England, was almost exclusively upper-middle class and that these ppl may well have known each other even if they'd never written a word.

It's different now, so we don't have groups like that. I quite like groups, but only because I like comparing takes on things, as well as feuds, etc (ie Green vs Waugh, or Connolly vs Orwell).

As a general rule I try to stay away from anything that is suffering from over the top hype because it usually means the emperor has no clothes. A little hype is okay -- otherwise how would you know it's out there?

bulgakov's "the master and margarita"

i swear to god, for 2 or 3 weeks early in the year every fucking indie scenester kid that came in the store i worked at wanted a copy.

SIMON RECOMMENDS:
"The Master and Margarita"
by Mikhail Bulgakov

A testament to the axiom "always judge a book by its cover", It's during the recording of So Red The Rose, I'm browsing through the English section in a left bank bookstore when I happen across this little minx, drawn to it by a pretty painting of a magic black cat on the jacket. So I slip it under me coat sharpish-like, when no-one's looking and make for the exit- the evening rush of Boulevard St Germain. (Can you tell I've been reading Pynchon? - No, neither can I) Months later I opened the book and I was captivated and surprised by what turned out to be a surreal literary classic. Bulgakov's hilarious black comedy takes place in early 20th Century Moscow, beginning late one afternoon when the devil decides to come in for a couple of wild nights on the town. He is accompanied by a retinue which includes "Behemoth" a talking 6' black cat and various other assorted benign but mischievous demons in earthly form. Bulgakov uses the havoc that ensues as a vehicle to satirise his contemporary poetry and art scene. It's as entertaining now as it must 've been when it was written. Of all the books looked at here this one is a real gem; please read it...

Martin Amis is not hipsterish in the U.S. I think he's considered just a good, solid, literary man here, and read by as many middle-aged women as young males.

(sorry that was terrible)

Hipster books!

i go to ilx for interesting opinions on many things but 'defining hipster books' is probably not one of them

considering the # of posters that never post abt novels except on dfw threads i think ilx probably has a good grasp of what 'the hipster novel' represents

lol

that would be 'the hipster novel' in the singular, then

it's a weird thing about him how popular he is amongst people who don't read, really

― thomp, Wednesday, August 24, 2011 10:27 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark

lol

― brrr-icane aye-rene (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, August 27, 2011 3:03 PM (4 minutes ago)

lol

http://i1224.photobucket.com/albums/ee366/lamp11/IMG_0040.jpg

is that the forsyte saga?

haha it is

theres an even better pile of uncool books on the other side but i decided not to post that one

nice collection of Everyman's Library, Lamp!

abhorrence of bookcases is probably a h_____ trait

carver - cathedral, so good, prob a good hipster one too

u have a lot of penguin modern classics huh. i know i read norman mailer's the fight in that particular design

abhorrence of bookcases is probably a h_____ trait

lol were painting the office

i mostly stop reading after world war 2 except for patches here and there, and by the 1980s i've halted completely (except for dfw, yes). i dunno how H that is. most people i know (who read) seem to start around catch-22.

i mostly stop reading after world war 2 except for patches here and there

how old are you man?

haha i mean "i don't read much postwar".

i'm 24 tho

lol

having worked in bookstores for years, i can say w/o equivocation that hipster all-star books are:

master and margherita
confederacy of dunces
perks of being a wallflower
atlas shrugged
choke
catch-22
house of leaves
underworld

the atlantic
the new yorker
the believer
monocle
new republic

rly? that list is like the stuff my nerdy friends were reading in my suburban high school.

atlas shrugged

lol rly? oh, america

'catch-22' just seems like one of those 'everyone likes this' books; im sure hipsters are part of the venn diagram tho

i had no idea the bulgakov was such a thing.

rly? that list is like the stuff my nerdy friends were reading in my suburban high school.

― *steens furiHOOSly* (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Sunday, August 28, 2011 5:58 PM (3 seconds ago) Bookmark

haha or this is the other answer. 'this is a hipster book now? i remember reading it in '93.'

rly? that list is like the stuff my nerdy friends were reading in my suburban high school.

― *steens furiHOOSly* (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Sunday, August 28, 2011 9:58 AM

yeah, exactly. it's not exactly a deep list, but it's got an appropriate affectation of darkness. kind of like tim burton.

fair point.

http://blog.fourfront1602.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/tumblr_l34zh0UsiU1qzzhzdo1_500.jpg

^^^ likes bulgokov, irvine welsh, chuck p, one novel by bret easton ellis (but the others are crap!), that book by jared diamond that everybody read, and maybe murakami

one novel by bret easton ellis (but the others are crap!)

it would be cool if this were lunar park

maybe most hipsters are actually entry-level.

any stats on hipster dvd purchases?

requiem for a dream for sure

'the only easten ellis book worth reading is the informers' - someone on the second level

that list is like a Fopp stock-check

idk does hipster imply "kind of clueless" or is it interchangeable with "snob"

cuz I'm sure people could call me a snob for ignoring Toni Morrisson but getting excited about Arno Schmidt or whatever

any stats on hipster dvd purchases?

can't say with the same certitude as books, but at borders in seattle the hits were

slc punk
me and you and everyone we know
big leibowski
say anything
fear and loathing in las vegas
royal tenenbaums

i.e. suburban people buckin' against de mans ^^^^

i feel like mb u dont know what a hipster is

hipster definitely do not buy dvds

i feel like the h*ipster cannon is like:

the tunnel (whg)
cat's cradle
infinite jest
quartet (rhys)
confessions of a justified sinner
the sheltering sky
the cairo trilogy
bukowski's poetry
a biography of david hume
orwell's 'essays'

also probably a book abt the velvet underground that i havent read

i feel like mb u dont know what a hipster is

idk mb if u like found the directors label boxset at a goodwill or like the oop john woo criterion dvds or s.thing

a lot of these have in common that they are not very challenging

ehh compared to what?

required reading in american high schools?

once again im just coming away from this thinking hipsters basically means young university graduates with basically intelligent tastes and a kind of identifiable dress-code. that's already a tiny demographic and doing anything more is splitting hairs/self-identifying as top-tier.

corey let us know what books you think are more challenging + also worth reading

mainstream books are going to be less demanding than 'infinite jest' or 'the sheltering sky', on the whole.

confederacy of dunces is like the Pabst Blue Ribbon of books

ehh, no xp

tbh I know more hipsters who probably don't read at all than hipsters who know who david hume is

corey let us know what books you think are more challenging + also worth reading than 'infinite jest' or 'the sheltering sky' or 'a biography of david hume'

All my Wburg hipster friends are super into Vonnegut tbh

Vonnegut, Pynchon and DFW are p much the Animal Collective of authors

again, nobody is really a ''''pure hipster'''' but I don't necessarily think it entirely - or even overwhelmingly - overlaps w/ 'intellectual'/stereotypes about intellectuals/stereotypes about people who read a lot

a lot of these have in common that they are not very challenging

idk i feel like at least some of the h*pster cannon is self-consciously 'challenging' like i never got more strangers approvingly remarking on my subway reading than when i was reading 'the recognitions' but mb that was because the cover is bright pink idk

i kinda think that 'hipsters' arent ppl that are good @ school but still think of themselves as 'smart' rather than than 'young university graduates with basically intelligent tastes'

also iatee otm books arent really a 'hipster' thing like art or vintage synths or tumblr or w/e

xpost otm, but obv there's a hueg crossover in the hipster/intellectual Venn diagram since white/pampered/college-educated/leisure class/etc/etc/etc

a lot of these have in common that they are not very challenging

this is the most hipster thing posted in this thread tbh

remy has already said everything i wanted to say on this thread except: master and margherita x 100000

Vonnegut and Bukowski

vonnegut and bukowski are 'hardy perennials' of youth culture aren't they? which isn't to say they are hipster stock reading too.

that reprint of the recognitions had the most horrible cover

Vonnegut, Pynchon and DFW are p much the Animal Collective of authors

― brrr-icane aye-rene (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, August 28, 2011 6:13 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

i feel like you can probably expand this analogy productively

like i think maybe tao lin is the animal collective of orders, DFW is more the neutral milk hotel

people actually listen to Animal Collective though

bukowski is the hardy perennial of 'heavy social drinkers'

bulgakov isnt a . author hes a 'cool nerd' author which is p different

zamyatin is probably closer to being a . author

an overdue rented dvd of 'bed and sofa' is .

shoplifting from american apparel only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who read it went out and formed a tumblr

bulgakov isnt a . author hes a 'cool nerd' author which is p different

zamyatin is probably closer to being a . author

i think this is totally backwards

an overdue rented dvd of 'bed and sofa' is .

― Lamp, Sunday, August 28, 2011 7:24 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i need numbers -- for hipsters to be a thing they really can't all be aware of this p obscure movie that i know lots about

nah i think a patchy knowledge of obscure film/lit is a strong grouping characteristic, what the actual obscure works one is aware of is kind of immaterial

haha that's a pretty solid point

i have an overdue rented dvd of tarkovsky's the mirror at the moment am i doomed

in the UK it'd be ___________ mr bongo dvd

http://www.moviemail-online.co.uk/scripts/specials.pl?offer=2459

xposts

Eggers = Pavement
Franzen = Shins
Ben Marcus = Battles
Sam Lipsyte = LCD Soundsystem
Zadie Smith = Echobelly
Lydia Davis = Joanna Newsom
Jonathan Lethem = REM
Don DeLillo = Radiohead

well that has successfully made me feel defensive about the equation of bands i like to authors i dont and authors i like to bands i dont and in some cases even authors i like to bands i like so i would say over all that is a pretty successful characterisation

where does Jonathan Safran Foer fit into this band scheme

JSF = Beiruit

sp.

bulgakov isnt a . author hes a 'cool nerd' author which is p different

zamyatin is probably closer to being a . author

i think this is totally backwards

really? idk i feel like ppl itt arent making a distinction btw like kinda 'alt' av club reading 'pop cult omnivores' who care a lot abt top ten lists and 'quality' and who ime wld be the main consumers of like eggers and bulgakov and 'say anything' and like actual 'hipsters' who are in part defining themselves against those ppl

Stevie, your list reminds me that you told me that CHRONIC CITY was full of references to the CHRONIC TOWN ep, and when I read it I couldn't find a single one.

Maybe I was reading the REM-free edition?

hipsters should read rebel inc. and city lights and new directions and payback press and nyrb pub imo

confederacy of dunces is like the Pabst Blue Ribbon of books

― brrr-icane aye-rene (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, August 28, 2011 6:10 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark

irl loling ty

zvookster otm tho

like if we are discussing the hipster subcategory 'literary hipster' rather than just 'what books does a hispters have'

really? idk i feel like ppl itt arent making a distinction btw like kinda 'alt' av club reading 'pop cult omnivores' who care a lot abt top ten lists and 'quality' and who ime wld be the main consumers of like eggers and bulgakov and 'say anything' and like actual 'hipsters' who are in part defining themselves against those ppl

right - one of the big aspects 'hipster' (at least the ilx use of the term, which isn't necessarily universal) is 'into obscure stuff'. if you took 100 'hipsters', looked at their book/record/whatever collection and made a list of the things they had in common, your end result would be the least 'hipster' list possible. no matter what's on the list, it's 'things people agree on' and (our use of the word) hipster is someone reactionary towards things people agree on.

idk i feel like ppl itt arent making a distinction btw like kinda 'alt' av club reading 'pop cult omnivores' who care a lot abt top ten lists and 'quality' and who ime wld be the main consumers of like eggers and bulgakov and 'say anything' and like actual 'hipsters' who are in part defining themselves against those ppl

― Lamp, Sunday, August 28, 2011 7:40 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think the cultural phenomenon 'HIPSTERS' only exists bc of this confusion. without the mass of footsoldiers no-one would have heard of hipsters. im sure tru hipsters define themselves against the others but that's always the way with these things. except that by now og hipsters are too old to be worrying abt this shit, or so youd think?

what's the difference between a "hipster" and an "alt"?

don't think there really is a concept of og hipsters cause

a. by definition nobody can self-identify as a hipster

b. more than that I think nobody really 'is one' in the same way that you could have been a hippie or punk rocker or whatever - it makes more sense as an adjective than a noun.

c. the whole thing is sorta a slow shift starting w/ 80s/90s era attitudes and trends and you can't really draw a line as to when this started. I guess you could arguably use the term to describe someone who was acting like a hipster back before the concept existed.

lol how did this turn into this again

btw, since like 2006 "hipster" has been a vague catch-all that now includes even neckbearded Muppet-shirt-wearing AV/Club commenter saddos, thus making the convo even harder to have

yeah pinefox is sitting back rubbing his hands together i imagine

by definition nobody can self-identify as a hipster

because no one would or because if you claim to be then really you ain't one?

xpost. whiney i don't know, i feel like the conversation can happen but it just involves establishing a taxonomy of 'hipster' first and then allotting books to each entry in the taxonomy. which is what we're doing, i mean, it's not curing cancer or anything

both xp

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWa0dZMHYeE

establishing a taxonomy of 'hipster' first and then allotting books to each entry in the taxonomy.

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172219146l/150790.jpg

(read this in the store at 14, which probably explains a lot)

lol how did this turn into this again

― *steens furiHOOSly* (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Sunday, August 28, 2011 12:11 PM (6 minutes ago)

truth

genuine attempt to define hipster?

http://nplusonemag.com/pamphlet-3/

hipster book

or at least

hipster pamphlet

the whole 'define a hipster' game is kind of a moot issue b/c, let's face it, we all generally know one when we see one, but any theory anybody puts up is gonna be poked full of holes by one of the next five posters or whiney, whoever comes first.

btw, since like 2006 "hipster" has been a vague catch-all that now includes even neckbearded Muppet-shirt-wearing AV/Club commenter saddos, thus making the convo even harder to have

― brrr-icane aye-rene (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, August 28, 2011 12:14 PM (5 minutes ago)

yeah, isn't the concept of the "hipster spectrum" or the "hipster continuum" what spawned hipster puppies?

otm

its something you literally can't define on something like a message board because it always means something different based on your own place in the world and the ways you self-identify

I read the n+1 thing and it's like 20% awesome insight hidden inside 80% twaddle

like i can propose some tiered system like:

1. people who are more concerned with and knowledgeable about what is cool than i am = hipsters
2. me
3. people who are less concerned with and less knowledgeable about what is cool than i am = maybe hipsters?
4. people who are even less concerned and less knowledgeable about what is cool than the category above = normals
5. my mom

but it's totally subjective

post something abt books or self-ban imo

the fact that you can't get one universal definition doesn't mean that it's useless to talk about the various uses of the word! it's an interesting chameleon word and its existence says something* about our time and place in the world.

*not so positive

anyway, confederacy of dunces. i think we solved this one.

Sarahel, your top 3 categories all appear to be hipsters.

so i like a lot of these books and like comparing to don delillo to radiohead is fucked up

there should be a law

It is quite interesting to think that the original take on this thread was 2003, which seems or is ages ago, and in the n+1 discussion apparently belongs to an earlier era.

So the people posting in 2003 might by default be considered to have some kind of intuitive knowledge that we in 2011 don't.

I like DeLillo like everyone does, but he and Radiohead both 'became more experimental and abstract as we entered the anxious 2000s'?

all right, have at this one:

hipster is a tendency of (mostly) white kids with (mostly) college educations in their (mostly) 20s who identify (mostly) with a few narrow social trends including (but neither exclusively nor limited to) 'indie' and faux-indie and experimental/electronic music, DIY-craftiness and pastiche art, 'dirtbag style' and retro pop-cultural aesthetics and artistic reappropriation, the whole local-organic-sustainable food matrix, have a high degree of internet, videogame, and telephone savvy, and stay up late to go dancing, see live music, or sing karaoke. there are ideas-germs-'memes'-fads that support/challenge/coincide with this lifestyle, and many of them are represented in a particular band of literature: this literature is not intended to span the spectrum of hipster-dom (which, by the way, is a dumb idea), but represent the 'average' taste of an 'average' hipster –– and represent no actual person.

defining hipsters is like playing that dinner party game where you see if any person is different from the host in more than three categories out of 'religion' 'level of education' 'racial/ethnic identity' 'income bracket'

oh i forgot 'sexuality' and 'political party'

So, Vonnegut, Pynchon and DFW.

sounds like a swell party!

don't disagree with your definition.

Nah, comparing Pynchon and Vonnegut to bands that have only been around less than a decade isn't really apt

So, Vonnegut, Pynchon and DFW.

― brrr-icane aye-rene (Whiney G. Weingarten),

I'd argue against Pynchon on the ground that a lot fewer people read him than own him, but maybe I'm being defensive b/c he's the only one on the list I really like? As I said upthread I'd add 'Confederacy of Dunces/Master and Margherita/Perks of Being a Wallflower to the list, but Vonnegut and DFW would be good inclusions too.

Vonnegut = Merle Haggard
Pynchon = Zappa

Nah, comparing Pynchon and Vonnegut to bands that have only been around less than a decade isn't really apt

― sarahel, Sunday, August 28, 2011 3:40 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Fine, they're like Gang Of Four and R Stevie Moore.

I'd argue against Pynchon on the ground that a lot fewer people read him than own him

this is about "hipsters" right? Does actually reading the book matter so much as owning it?

^ probably true

I think when it comes to understanding Hipsters ca. 2011, I think me, sarahel, Lamp and MFB are like professors with tenure

well it is technically your career

I can't imagine that's a point of pride, Whiney.

Tbh its low level sense of accomplishment on the level of "returning all your Netflix envelopes," "getting the last coffee before they close," and "only having to wipe once"

outstanding post ^

maybe a more fruitful discussion would be how are books successfully marketed to hipsters, or what the 'hipster' looks for in a book, or trends in hipster lit ... i dunno. Like "Shoplifting from American Apparel" reminded me of "Generation X" in some ways, and i feel like it functions similarly.

I didn't know that was a real book.

footnote to Remy Bean's good definition: male hipsters often seem to do things with their appearance that make them look worse than they already would, eg big beard, huge glasses, stupid cap, deerstalker hat, or something

I doubt that this is true of the female ones.

i'm not _that_ old, but contemporary discussions about hipsters just seem like a retread of late 80s/early 90s Gen X concerns, in a lot of ways.

Absolutely true with female ones

Coupland = Soul Coughing

lol

footnote to Remy Bean's good definition: male hipsters often seem to do things with their appearance that make them look worse than they already would, eg big beard, huge glasses, stupid cap, deerstalker hat, or something

I doubt that this is true of the female ones.

― the pinefox, Sunday, August 28, 2011 8:50 PM (20 seconds ago) Bookmark

otm and im not even sure if women are excluded

my mom was the one who recommended i read 'confederacy of dunces.' i think i dont have any literary-focused hipster friends or something. i read all the time but have basically no perspective on the *discourse of literature*.

so tao lin = hinder

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110611133207AAv8I6C

nah my mom just reads about books

i mean confederacy of dunces may be big w/ hipsters, idk, but its also just like, an acclaimed book, big with anyone who reads acclaimed books

I had no idea you were half-hipster by birth, d

one drop rule

deej's mom

http://b.vimeocdn.com/ps/160/160955_300.jpg

i thought we agreed thats a 'scene kid' not a hipster

we did, i'm just trolling u

WS tbh

http://i43.tower.com/images/mm107311561/spanking-monkey-dvd-cover-art.jpg

u'd sleep w/ yr mom?

i mean confederacy of dunces may be big w/ hipsters, idk, but its also just like, an acclaimed book, big with anyone who reads acclaimed books

― D-40, Sunday, August 28, 2011 12:55 PM (2 minutes ago)

exactly -- also supports spectrum theory

last person who recommended confederacy of dunces to me was a 50 yr old medical consultant. maybe he thought i was a hipster.

it's also kinda lame

*ducks*

wow, some of our dads know who band of horses is, that doesn't make them hipsters iirc

like I'm more interested in talking about something like the Lucky Peach magazine, which confused me when I got exclamation-filled fb notices from a local magazine/book store that it had arrived, and then that there was only one copy left, and then that it was sold out ...

wow, some of our dads know who band of horses is, that doesn't make them hipsters iirc

― brrr-icane aye-rene (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, August 28, 2011 3:02 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

NPR covering band of horses is not the same as the new york times book review writing about ... anything they acclaim

deej, you're coming in here setting up a false dichotomy and I don't like it

Whiney, do you have a copy of Oran Canfield's memoir? Also, where would that fall on the hipster lit spectrum?

false dichotomies!!!!!!!

deej, i love u like a brother, but u did the same thing with Gucci Mane. Just because a bunch of hipsters like something that the "normals" in your world of young ppl and moms like, it doesn't mean that A) it makes your friends/families hipsters or B) these things don't have a unique life of their own in hipster circles

i really want to read oran's memoir. his band is on the hipster puppies tape!

i know, i bought the book from him when they were on tour last fall!

is it good?

haven't read it yet ;/

i never claimed "a" and wtf is a 'unique life of their own'

YOU did the same thing w/r/t gucci mane -- just because hipsters do something doesnt make it unique to hipsters or a characteristic of hipsterdom. "hipsters breath -- ergo..."

"because hipsters do something" kind of by definition makes it a characteristic of hipsterdom

i bet hipsters tie their shoelaces much the same way i do -- i must be a hipster

a 'unique life of their own' is being street music in atl and flav of the month in billysburg

i guess the question is whether something as overground as confederacy can be said to have its own unique hipster life...probably it can

are you saying you aren't a hipster, deej? That a proper definition of "hipster" would exclude you?

the counterpoint to whiney's point against deej is that the boundaries of these "hipster circles" are subjectively defined by a critical mass of "these things" that people need to accrete. there is no "correct" or "accepted" definition for that critical mass.

every hipster human life is unique like a snowflake, guys.

are you preparing to be a contestant on jeopardy? is that why your posts are always in the form of a question? xxp

like for my teenagers in my classes, white sunglasses = hipster.

but in my world, everybody from the bro-iest brah to the dirtiest dirtbag has white sunglasses.

i mean vonnegut and wallace are kind of rock n roll

cofederacy guy died in obscurity that's kind of rock n roll

bolano died young that's kind of rock n roll

i think u can get more hipster, like actual counterculture presses, counter to the culture or just the publishing culture, see my post above for big little presses or some of the more fringe stuff like semiotext(e) or the stuff sarahel mentions

a 'unique life of their own' is being street music in atl and flav of the month in billysburg

i guess the question is whether something as overground as confederacy can be said to have its own unique hipster life...probably it can

― zvookster, Sunday, August 28, 2011 3:16 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

maybe this is LOL chicago but i never heard ppl in wicker park repping for gucci mane but w/e

deej, i don't know whether to feel dissed or grateful that you don't pay much attention to my posts.

I Love Books is the place to be seen

zvookster that stuff is generally the worst but i still have a HAKIM BEY book somewhere does that make me a hipster y/n

i sort of want to post pics of my bookshelves and see if i meet the criteria

sarahel your post was a corny 'gotcha' that im above
feel dissed

we should really just turn this into who has the hipsterist bookshelves photo thread

the hipster-iest books i have are probably the music related ones

I lost all my McSweeneys and 33 1/3s in the fire and now no one knows I'm smart and cultured when they come over

pretty sure i would win by a country mile

your post was a corny 'gotcha' that im above

There's a first time for everything.

idk if u mean the fringe stuff but "rebel inc. and city lights and new directions and payback press and nyrb pub" as generally the worst is really really stupid

but i am applying a value-neutral attitude to the "hipster book", could be good, could be bad, but "is it brostep hipster?"

There's a first time for everything.

― sarahel, Sunday, August 28, 2011

lol!

Agree with mr Klata, this extended thread discussion has joyously made quiet ILB into Kreuzberg for one night only.

I'm having a miniature penguin logo tattooed behind one ear in celebration

http://www.nogoodforme.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/damonpenguin2.jpg

i still have a HAKIM BEY book somewhere

lolll

pretty sure i would win by a country mile

i have a stack of two dozen-ish nyrb classics sitting next to me as a post this...

actually really tempted to post more photos i took of the books piled in our living room (lol)

s.thing like confederacy of dunces feels again to me like the sorta thing that some .s might like but has lost meaning as a 'hipster book' as it became more widely read... regardless of the actual cannon i think a sensitivity to a title's cultural currency is one of the hallmarks of the . & so there will always be some fluidity in the 'cannon' e.g. pynchon or murakami becoming increasingly passé and ppl getting into knut hamsun (growth in the soil is total top tier hipster title imo)

in some ways i think its easier to describe a set of criterion that defines a 'hipster book' and/or 'hipster cinema' the primary quality of which imo is a sense of inclusive exclusivity e.g. it has to be both difficult or obscure or gauche enough that 'alts with good taste' or whoever wont be into it but recognizable and relatable enough that it can serve as a currency w/in the . community

Lamp otm

I accused my ex-bf of reading hipster lit because he was reading a Murakami book.

His response, "My dad bought it for me for christmas. He read it and thought i might like it."

i would have assumed hipster lit was like joy williams, french post 68 theory and like ursula leguin or someone who is like the timbaland of novelists maybe

plax! didn't we have a discussion about a year ago or so about whether Deleuze & Guattari were hipster lit?

haha i just read 'a thousand plateaus'

what did you guys decide, ive read deleuze -- this might have a bearing on the deej hipster poll thread

my man

by standards of the last couple dozen posts i have a lot of 'hipster lit' on my i-really-should-read-this pile. i mean it may exclusively be hipster lit, right now, except for a steve erickson novel. there is a hakim bey. lots of zizek. is zizek passim yet?

this thread sucks, it's like it's been booby trapped so you can't say "oh how was that i've been meaning to check it out?" without collaterally revealing your plaid-gang membership. HOW WAS A THOUSAND PLATEAUS, i was just thumbing a copy, social baggage bedamned.

i think we've progressed to the point where "revealing your plaid-gang membership" is totally ok and nothing to feel self-conscious or negative about. At least that was my goal.

but do we want to proudly belong to a club in which no-one else is proud to be a member

I've been wanting to read Murakami for a while actually

xp - we post here, don't we?

ha sure but i thought that was more of an support group dynamic

we can think of it in the same way, is what i'm sayin'

ive read murakami. liked it. i read it bcuz when i was in college a hip lit friend told me it was good. it was

my mam really likes murakami

like i think these are really just famous books but its the organising curatorial choices that connect them as a canon that make them hipster lit. like the books themselves individually are just books really, i mean im p sure my 50smthng english lecturer friend isn't reading anti-oedipus bc its hip

or that anybody is *really* reading something *because* its hip, but things come up on diff ppls radars and insularity of scenes and buzz cycles and its not really a linear process and also i mean i could actually maybe have some coherent thoughts on this but it seems kindof pointless for various reasons. deej is not a hipster tho.

but things come up on diff ppls radars and insularity of scenes and buzz cycles and its not really a linear process

like that's what's interesting to me, and how this nebulous distinction of "hipster" plays into that.

i think like a big part of the problem is that hipster is attached to fashion so its always a kind of relative stance, like people try and list these stupid hallmarks of hipsterdom or w/e but like unless you are a crap hipster those are always changing and also there's like the level of +1 irony involved where you have to create rings of contrarianism that you can refract your taste through

exactly, i mean i thought of starting a tumblr comparing pictures of hipsters to pictures of the developmentally disabled people that live in the group home across the street, to illustrate several of the points you are making, but i decided that wasn't a very good way of making those points.

Jesus, THIS is the thread you all come in to ILB to join?

some thoughts i had abt .s today:

- iatee kinda sd this but imo the biggest problem in discussing a subject like 'hipster books' is that .s arent really that interested cultural products as products but more as signifiers like if yr spending most of yr time at gallery openings or retro dance nights or trying to score coke yr probably not actually reading all that much, period

- but like even if yr 'personal brand' is sorta founded on some idea of individual taste in practice ppl still end up reading/seeing/doing the things their friends are doing so there is some conformity/continuity w/in the larger 'community' and so you can probably identify specific works that are in vogue at any moment as a means of 'identifying hipsters'

- however these specific books are always situational/relational/transitory as 'hipster signifiers' and so its more useful to think of the set of values or connotations that these products have that might make them attractive to .s

- there is no such thing as a 'hipster book' in practice since any actual book is freighted w/ all sorts of contradictory connotations that can disqualify it any time but you cld describe a 'hipster book' in theory p accurately if u tried

well go on then

is zizek passim yet?

haha is this a super-hibrow way of saying 'passé'??

i like murakami but to my knowledge this has never gotten me any credit for hipness or lubricated my social life among hip people.

yes. yes, it is

i mean

well go on then

lol f u 2

just wanted to stop by and say that confderacy of dunces sucks and so does murakami

armscrossed.gif

always felt like hipster ANYTHING was defined by genre exceptions. hepcats will listen to townes van zandt and ancient string band comps, but not, you know, 99% of the country music that most people would listen to. people will read jim thompson novels but avoid most crime/mystery novels completely. etc. etc. (PKD being the one exception as far as SF goes for most people)

its the willful narrowness that bugs me. but, you know, this isn't JUST hipsters that do this. lots of people do. metal for people who don't like metal. jazz for people who don't like jazz. its a thing. i understand it. and i get it with books too. people want to be in on the cool thing. there will always be cool things.

always felt like chuck fight club was horror for people who don't read horror.

^^^ this is a good point; so is lamp's a few back. i wonder how far apart they are? isn't the idea of literature (or any art, really) as 'personal brand' defined a little bit by dilettantism and a lack of actual understanding but an appropriation of the exceptional w/in(out) a certainc canon?

219 posts on an ILB thread and i excitedly click to read...this

wait this is an ilb thread?

loling

ILB is like a soiled, rumpled, sweaty bed now

"ursula leguin or someone who is like the timbaland of novelists maybe"

??? please to unpack.

hey, you guys up there, don't you worry, ilb will never become hip. you're safe. i only started this board cuz i was a sad stay at home dad living on a rock in the ocean. i'm glad if anyone still comes here. and i'm no help cuz i forgot how to read.

maybe he meant octavia e butler?

is cormac mccarthy the townes van zandt of lit? he must be. how else could you get someone to read a western?

he's more like johnny cash american recordings

or mayble uncle tupelo

uncle tupelo, particularly their version of 'no depression'

jeff tweedy and cormac mccarthy, together at last

hey, you guys up there, don't you worry, ilb will never become hip. you're safe.

Hey, I'd love this much participation every day--I was just disappointed that we finally got so many visitors, but to such a worthless discussion

"ursula leguin or someone who is like the timbaland of novelists maybe"

??? please to unpack.

― Philip Nunez, Monday, August 29, 2011 3:54 AM (4 hours ago)

fantasy is a fairly maligned genre like r'n'b but it's good to have a couple of auteurs you can pick out and like tokenistically for reasons that aren't necessarily the reasons that genre fans will give you straight off (2002 hipsters comparing timbaland to aphex twin, ursula leguin as like gender studies undergrad accessory) I used timbaland and not say the dream or like the weeknd or something here because those are different examples. timbaland is hipster personal brand component where you are "getting" something that is also mainstream popular but for, like, more highbrow reasons.

I don't find this a worthless discussion

I've found it enjoyable, funny and interesting

I think it's great to see an ILB thread with 200 posts, that isn't 'what are you reading?'

http://dvdspindoctor.typepad.com/dvd_spin_doctor/images/2007/08/27/ringo_brimley_hard_days_night_2.jpg

Hey, I'd love this much participation every day--I was just disappointed that we finally got so many visitors, but to such a worthless discussion

well i had fun

a worthless discussion

Nah. The people have spoken and they considered it worthwhile. Not deep, mind you, but worthwhile.

i bought the nyrb edition of euripides' plays today, am i a hipster now

i think that depends if you're going to make a purse out of it.

re: leguin, i thought the gender studies aspect and the SF fandom appreciation was more or less aligned, the same way horror fans and kubrick fans like the shining for pretty much the same reasons?

Nah. The people have spoken and they considered it worthwhile. Not deep, mind you, but worthwhile.

Fair point. Sorry, I realise I was being like a grumpy old man in the library, wondering why all the kids were borrowing DVDs rather than books.

i have read through this thread but am stuck on why these people are reading a biography of David Hume, and which one they are reading.

you probably haven't heard of it

I don't know if anyone has posted this because I didn't read this thread but there are no such things as hipster books

oh.

maybe someone cld get in touch with joni & let her know the outcome.

Joni!

Would Pessoa's Book of Disquiet appear on a list of hipster books in 2011? Or has it become too widely known to qualify?

hip, but not hipster

(immense feeling of relief) thx

guys I 'pounded some pavement' and I went on the streets to find out what hipster books really are

I took this photo of an urban outfitters display window of course would a real hipster work at urban outfitters?? likely no but maybe a pseudo hipster who works at outban urfitters would copy what a real hipster outfitter likes to read

so I present to you HIPSTER BOOKS, EMPIRICALLY COLLECTED

http://i.imgur.com/9LUUQ.jpg

good work

where is "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"

it's inside the bag

where is hipster puppies

i am mad that there is a rob sheffield book in that pile

fuck u urban outfitters u can't have that book

i know what i'm doing this weekend.

i guess i missed the 'books deej reads' joek

anyway:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/CalamityPhysicsBookCover.jpg

no i don't think so

(posts cover of 'a short history of tractors in ukrainian')

(posts cover of 'gould's guide to fish')

(posts cover of 'ella minnow pea')

paul reiser - couplehood

am ghoulishly interested in what a chip kidd cover design for paul reiser would be. even more so for new printing of seinlanguage

i feel like the fact that popular science books aren't at urban outfitters says something about hipsters shallowness

WELL DONE Dayo!

when i briefly had a store in philly in the 90's people from urban outfitters would come in and take pictures of our hipster wall/art displays and buy all our pulp fiction paperbacks.

where is hipster puppies
--D-40

For real tho

my list itt is still the definitive one, nice try tho urban outfitters

lot of my kids have those bags this year

where is hipster puppies
--D-40
For real tho

― delmar dillinger (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, September 3, 2011 5:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i went to UO today and they had it and i lold for like 3 minutes straight

XD

NSFW: http://4gifs.org/gallery/d/224092-1/Camera-collection.jpg

lol @ 150 best loft ideas

how creepy is the dude who lives in that apt tho

how do you know it's not that girl's apartment?

controversial bod edit

Seriously would love a poll on all the books we can recognize

so is Sudoku a hipster thing?

lol although most lol is 'running with scissors' i think

you can make out a lot more books in the original resolution
(even more nsfw)

http://insuh.tumblr.com, scroll down a lot

Top shelf, right side, left to right:

obscured
Emerick, Here There and Everywhere
A. Burroughs, Running With Scissors
two unknowns
Georg Groddeck, Exploring the Unconscious
Freud, Dora
Hallowell and Ratey, Driven to Distraction
Wheelwright, The Presocratics
unknown
Bettelheim, Freud and Man's Soul
Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
" The Complete Short Stories
" A Farewell To Arms
" The Old Man and The Sea

Next shelf down, right side, left to right

Masters, Spoon River Anthology
Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
Vranckx(!), 150 Best Loft Ideas
Goodman, 75 Short Masterpieces
O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Cohen, Beautiful Losers (this one is appropriate)
Coelho, The Alchemist
Burroughs, unknown title
Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night
Camus, The Stranger
Camus, The Plague
Kafka, Metamorphosis
Kafka, The Trial
unknown

Just to the left of her pelvis is Lord of the Flies

god, tumblr prn is just ... the worst

Ugh. Misread the guy's name and thought it was gonna be nabisco's site.

looool

got tired of looking at skinny blond chicks with boring tattoos, didn't get that far

http://i.imgur.com/lP1xT.jpg

Haha. Is that for real? Probably not. Reminds of when Momus made up all these fake foreign language book covers of his imaginary books, although I can't remember how to find them and I think he has published a book for real since then.

http://imomus.com/lifeofmilk.html
(Note grammatical error in the German title)

ya s'real

sub[kultura]

A Russian translation of this I'm guessing, not a book about today's "stilyagis".

http://i652.photobucket.com/albums/uu241/dnvnoo/small_figures.jpg

that's more 'nerd with vague occasional hipster leanings'

do you mean the dude whose collection that is, or the authors of the books in that collection?

presence of tony tanner also makes me want to say 'english undergraduate'

my list itt is still the definitive one, nice try tho urban outfitters

Is pulp crime fiction hipster lit?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-osMFxN_b1qg/Tq0eOP01SiI/AAAAAAAADX0/l0qrThGIyVY/s400/Parker+Black+Ice+US+and+UK.jpg

no

that's more 'nerd with vague occasional hipster leanings'

basically i guess

march 1997 issue of disney adventures definitely tilts towards nerd

i really must get around to reading the tunnel

looks like the right sort of Crash, but hipster should have Dick in 70s Panther not 90s Vintage surely.

I don't know what Panther is but there is some 70s Dick on another shelf

You can just barely make out 70s editions of The Adolescence of P-1 and Barth's "The End of the Road" on the second shelf there

btw this is a shelf in my old room at my parent's house that's been untouched since around 2002. wow, 10 years, that seems impossible.

in 02 these wouldve been a lot closer to h1pster books i think

MIRANDA JULY

lydia davis

where does Jonathan Safran Foer fit into this band scheme

― corey, Sunday, August 28, 2011 1:38 PM (2 years ago)

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/05/chipotle-cups-will-now-have-stories-by-jonathan-safran-foer-toni-morrison-and-other-authors

The truth is, that’s not really why I did this. I mean, I wouldn’t have done it if it was for another company like a McDonald’s, but what interested me is 800,000 Americans of extremely diverse backgrounds having access to good writing. A lot of those people don’t have access to libraries, or bookstores.

What an elite prick

"People who have access to a Chipolte but not a library or a bookstore"

Can only imagine how bad the Saunders story will be

Will probs feature a talking burrito

que?

Foer didn’t know what to expect, but Ells went all in. Starting Thursday, VF Daily can exclusively reveal, bags and cups in Chipotle’s stores will be adorned with original text by Foer, Malcolm Gladwell, Toni Morrison, George Saunders, and Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Lewis. Foer says ,” Chipotle refrained from meddling in the editorial process for the duration of the initiative, which the burrito chain has branded Cultivating Thought. “I selected the writers, and insofar as there was any editing, I did it,” Foer said. “I tried to put together a somewhat eclectic group, in terms of styles. I wanted some that were essayistic, some fiction, some things that were funny, and somewhat thought provoking.”

http://imgur.com/vRLeaHD.jpg nsfw

If anyone could pull off a good short story on a chipotle cup, it's george saunders. no idea what the fuck waterface is talking about.

i think it sounds like a bad idea thats what im talking about

the whole idea yes, but IDG what you're talking about wrt saunders

these are all oprah winfrey writers, what do you expect. promoting people hurting themselves for bags of cash is sorta the deal.

yeah saunders is the most promising name here, in context. (also out.) all the ones printed in that vf piece suck as far as i can tell.

wait no sorry i didn't see gladwell's name. gladwell is perfect for this obv.

Saunders is not an Oprah writer

but Oprah is a Saunders character

that neuromancer cover is hilarious

https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/los-angeles-review-cups

chipotle cup reviews

Jonathan Safran Foer, “Two-Minute Personality Test”: A series of would-be thoughtprovoking questions that instead provoke total exasperation. They are all terrible, but I found the last one most particularly and powerfully irritating: “You know it’s a ‘murder of crows’ and a ‘wake of buzzards’ but it’s a what of ravens, again? What is it about death that you’re afraid of? How does it make you feel to know that it’s an ‘unkindness of ravens’?”

Foer’s casual presumption and smug moral certainty drove me up a tree in record time. While it is completely unsurprising to learn that he is not a fan of the greatest British crime novelist of the last several decades, Ruth Rendell, surely Foer might at least have heard of the (excellent) mystery, An Unkindness of Ravens. Also no, I did not know it was a “wake of buzzards.” Entirely grating, from stem to stern.

Thoughts Cultivated? No.

jonathan safran foer is such a piece of shit

I don't really think of his books as hipster books, more like mainline young democratic NPR-listener books, although I get that those are the same things to some people.

A writer I think of as a hipster writer, perhaps unfairly, is John Fante -- he just seems like someone people want to be seen reading and I unreasonably don't believe that his books can actually be any good based on who has recommended him to me.

i overheard a non-hipster woman recommending john fante to her father in a used bookstore the other day

John Fante is actually very good, BUT I suspect you have to first read him when you're young

lots of people came to him via bukowski/black sparrow. thus the cool dude cred or whatever.

I never really liked Bukowski, but when I was a struggling young writer with no money, Fante's books about struggling young writers with no money definitely worked for me