n+1 posts several amusing excerpts from their “What Was The Hipster?: A Sociological Investigation” piece to be released in full later this month: “Like ‘douchebag,’ ‘hipster’ was a name that no one could apply to oneself. But the opportunity to call someone else a ‘douchebag’: that offered the would-be hipster a means of self-identification by a name one could say, looking outward. In the douchebag, the hipster had found its Other.”
What Was the Hipster?
The Lives of Women
The Feminine Mystique turns fifty this month, and to mark the anniversary, Noah Berlatsky wonders how Agnes Grey, an Anne Bronte novel, illustrates and critiques the arguments made in the book.
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Smaller Items
Last week I asked “What about J.T. Leroy?” I was wondering when the Leroy hoaxers were going to come forward. Now, one of them has. Warren St. John of the New York Times got Geoffrey Knoop to come clean on the record. Knoop also said that he didn’t think Laura Albert, who wrote the Leroy books, would ever come forward: “‘For her, it’s very personal,’ he said. ‘It’s not a hoax. It’s a part of her.'”Meanwhile, PopMatters put together a special section about Leroy and James Frey. I enjoyed The Rake’s related comments on why Frey can’t hold a candle to Charles Bukowski.I saw Brokeback Mountain a few days ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. In an excerpt from Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay, Annie Proulx describes what it was like seeing her story on the screen: “I felt that, just as the ancient Egyptians had removed a corpse’s brain through the nostril with a slender hook before mummification, the cast and crew of this film, from the director down, had gotten into my mind and pulled out images.” (via Maud)This Boston Globe column articulates quite precisely how I feel about the strife surrounding the cartoons of Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper.
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Some Thoughts on Celebrity Book Clubs
“A few weeks ago, I texted my writing group, ‘All I really want is to be just famous enough to have my own celebrity book club.’ I was kind of kidding. But I kind of wasn’t. Because, like portion-packaged organic snacks delivered to your door, isn’t book club ownership one step closer to having it all?” Laura Briskman on the faux intimacy of celebrity book clubs, as more and more celebrities start their own post Oprah.
I Is for Impressive
“It all started with A Is For Alibi, then came B Is For Burglar, C Is For Corpse and on and on through the alphabet.” NPR interviews Sue Grafton about her Kinsey Millhone series, currently spanning 25 letters – the newest and penultimate entry, Y for Yesterday, comes out today – and 35 years. Pair with Ujala Sehgal‘s list of five crime novels where women are the true detectives.
Digital Death
“In its clumsy, ad hoc way, Facebook has brought death back into the public sphere in a way death hasn’t been for more than 100 years.” To celebrate Facebook’s 10th birthday, The Missouri Review has unlocked its Alexander Landfair essay on how we deal with death on Facebook. For another look at Facebook, read our essay on how the timeline changes the way we tell stories.
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