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Thursday, March 8, 2007
Books Here’s How We’ll Get Hipsters To Read…
Posted by on Thu, Mar 8 at 3:33 PM
Most of the people I’m friends with read books. We’re all between 21 and 35 years old, we all go to rock shows, some of us are into art, some are into drugs, we all do our fair share of “hanging out,” and with only a few exceptions, we read books. But book publishers—as much as the music industry—are freaking the frack out right now, unsure of their future, wondering what ebooks are all about, and trying to figure out how to make Oprah shill their books to middle aged housewives (who constitute an enormous percentage of America’s book-reading population, Oprah or no). Just as chick-lit and its infinite variations (Asian American chick lit; vampire chick lit; vegan college dropout chick lit) have flooded the bookstores in recent years, here comes a wave of hipster lit. This wave, which laps at the shores of Powell’s tonight, is still too small to surf, but it grosses me out all the same.
John Sheppard will read from Small Town Punk and Evan Mandery will read from Dreaming of Gwen Stefani tonight at Powell’s (1005 W Burnside, 7:30 pm). STP is about, a, uh, kid who grows up in a small town and falls in love with punk rock, and here’s what Marjorie Skinner has to say abot the Gwen Stefani book:
About a smart guy with very poorly directed ambition who went from studying at Columbia to using his near-savant mathematical skills to become the universe’s most precise and efficient hot dog vendor. His life “changes” when he sees the Behind the Music of No Doubt and becomes obsessed with making Gwen Stefani the perfect hot dog, and shortly thereafter, his mate. “Dreaming” seems like it’s setting itself up to make a profound statement about celebrity obsession, and obsession itself, but doesn’t end up overtly theorizing anything. It’s just a short, weird story about an eclectic, pathetic person, and is palatable as such, but don’t expect any grand conclusion. Certainly as a reader you could draw your own, but (author) Evan Mandery isn’t going to help you out with much of the legwork.
So yeah, you can read books about Generation Why stereotypes and giggle with recognition when the authors write about “iPods” or namedrop “Dinosaur Jr.”—or you can put Green Mind on your own ipod and spend your time reading a book that tells you a little bit about the world outside of the tiny bubbles we all occupy. Your call, hipster.
Comments
Chas, I didn't know you watch Battlestar! So... who do you think is hotter, Boomer or Starbuck?
Never heard of it. too busy reading.
Well... alright. Boomer!
Publishing is as trendy as any other industry. Look at the recent surfable waves of fantasy titles pursuing that lucrative Harry Potter demographic, or the weird little spurt of crypto-catholic/knights templar whodunnit's following in the dubious footsteps of Dan Brown. You can even blame the Chucks (klosterman and Palahniuk) for this recent trend (if indeed it turns out to be a trend).
Anyway, thanks Chaz. It's always fun to talk about books.
Here's an idea for a blog post - the Merc Staffers recommend their faves.
Orf—asking me about my favorite anything is like asking your great uncle what it was like in the old days. I'm so more than happy to dig into this one. I'm not in front of my bookshelves now, but off the top of my head, here are some of my favorite books of adulthood:
Boogaloo: The Quintessence of Black Popular Music
For Kings and Planets by Ethan Canin
everything by Murakami and Carver, natch
River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit
Confederacy of Dunces
Selected Poems of James Tate
On Parole by Yoshimura
Careless Love (the second volume of the Elvis biographies) by Peter Guralnick
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by you-know-who
Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware (token graphic novel)
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Brothers by Frederick Barthelme
The Sportswriter Trilogy by Richard Ford
100 Poems from the Japanese, edited by Ken Rexroth
Jesus, there are so many more. I'm sure I'll wake up in the morning kicking myself for leaving off all my favorites.
Now it's somebody else's turn to make a list. Go.
I suck at this question so bad. I don't think I can do it.
The best stuff i've in the past month: The Rachel Papers, Martin Amis; Brian K. Vaughan's Y:The Last Man series; Enders Game, Orson Scott Card; and rereads of perennial faves Howard's End by EM Forster and The Bone People, by Keri Hulme.
OK, some books I've enjoyed recently or just general all-time faves: (sorry Chas, we have some in common, so I have to repeat)
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami
Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
Give us a Kiss - Daniel Woodrell
Cockfighter - Charles Willeford
Confederacy of Dunces
Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijii
Self Portraits - Osamu Dazai
The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. - Sandra Gulland
A Face at the Window - Dennis McFarland
Loads more, just ones I can think of off the cuff!
Here's a few from me:
Coronado - Dennis Lahane
No Country for Old Men - Corman McCarthy
Russian Journal - John Steinbeck
The Foreign Correspondent - Alan Furst
March Violets - Phillip Kerr
Happy Baby - Stephen Elliot
Man, that No Country for Old Men was incredible! Thanks for invoking that one here.
Can't resist a list.
Frisk, Dennis Cooper
Jealousy, Alain Robbe-Grillet
Days Between Stations, Steve Erickson
Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald
Life: A User's Manual, Georges Perec
Libra, Don DeLillo
The House of Breath, William Goyen
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
The Atrocity Exhibition, JG Ballard
Valis, PK Dick
and on and on and on....
Here are a few of my favorites, off the top of my head:
Riding in Cars With Boys, Finding Mary by Beverly Donofrio
Ella Price's Journal by Dorothy Bryant
Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurty (yeah, laugh it up)
Absalom Absalom - William Faulkner
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Conferacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Vurt - Jeff Noon
Dune - Frank Herbert
Sister Carrie--Drieser
McTeague and Vandover and the Brute--Norris
The Great Gatsby and The Crack Up--Fitz
Chocolates for Breakfast--Pamela Moore
The Group--Mary McCarthy
Valley of the Dolls plus basically any trash by Jackie Susaan
Libra-DeLillo
All of the Best American Crime Writing series
Everything ever read by Raymond Carver
Erasure--Percival Everett
Courtney, nice taste in books!
I'll second that on Lonesome Dove. My brother gave me this book, "dude, you have to read this." I laughed it up too until I started reading it. I got so into it, I probably didn't sleep for a week until I finished it!!
Anyways, here's a few more:
The Master & Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
No Logo - Naomi Klein
Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey
God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
A Separate Peace - John Knowles
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Larry McMurtrey is no laughing matter. Amazing writer!
The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
Too Loud a Solitude - Bohumil Hrabal
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Violent Bear it Away - Flannery O'Connor
A Walk on the Wild Side - Nelson Algren
The Gambler (and Brothers K) - Dostoevsky
Grendel - James Gardner
Sometimes A Great Notion - Ken Kesey
East of Eden - Steinbeck
Infinite Jest- David Foster Wallace
I'm going classic:
My Ántonia by Willa Cather
Cannery Row by Steinbeck
Despair by Nabokov
The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols
Dandelion Wine by R. Bradbury
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
Uh oh! Looks like John Sheppard didn't appreciate your opinion too much, Chas.
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Did Chas really just say "freaking the frack out"? He did? Okay. Just checking.