Dear Independent Bookstore Owners of the US and Canada: The hipster book is in our hands. “The most divisive publication since the Report of the Warren Commission1” it has seen limited release in select bookstores, mostly in New York and Los Angeles. Now we’re ready to go nationwide. Please call us (or, rather, call us back) at (718) 797-0750 and join Book Culture, Book Court, Book Soup, Family, Idlewild, Labyrinth, Mac’s Back Paperbacks, McNally Jackson, Politics and Prose, Powell’s, Porter Square Books, PS, Quimby’s, Skylight, Spoonbill & Sugartown, St. Mark’s, Talking Leaves, Women and Children First, and Word. You can also see the table of contents online and read our column documenting media responses, and here’s some actual bookseller testimony—
A text documenting a symposium discussion about the hipster: what exactly is/was one? Do/did they truly exist? Are there different types? These questions and more are discussed in this intelligent and humorous volume, which is more fun than academic but more academic and self-aware than parody. Engaging.
And the best one yet, from Justin at Skylight Books in Los Angeles:
A conversation every bit as complex, post-modern, ironic and humorous as the subculture it explores . . . . As is pointed out in the preface to the book, the very idea of an academic discussion of hipsters has been greeted with smug faces screwed up in wry (that is to say, not unhipsterlike) grins as they deem the topic ‘too stupid and demeaning’ to broach, as well as being ‘very, very sad.’ And yet no one has a problem devoting entire schools of critical and subcultural theory to exploring, with seriousness of intent; Punk, Goth, Hip-Hop, Teddy Boys, Nascar dads, Soccer Moms, and/or Teabaggers. I’ve even heard a few flat out denials of the existence of hipsters as a singular subculture, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Make no mistake, the hipster does (or did, depending) exist–some of them may even work here at Skylight. But I’ll let you, dear readers, be the judge of that. Either way, there’s no better place to start than with the first serious study of the subculture that conquered the aughts.
And it’s just ten bucks!
Booksellers know the bottom line. We think this could be big.
Snipe. October 8, 2010. ↩