what are 'hipster' books?

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.