what are 'hipster' books?

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