what are 'hipster' books?

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

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