On my recent seemingly endless flights to and from London, I finally read Leland's Hip: The History. It was actually pretty good--an interesting look at America's racial and cultural history. For Leland, American culture is all about the evolution and pursuit of hip. There are moments where Leland's prose becomes a bit ridiculous, a little too hip--mostly when he is presenting a summary of of one of his points. For instance, "The hipster, viewed coolly, is the outlaw as metaphor" or "If a tree fall in the forest and no one notices its fundamental dopeness, it is not hip." Luckily, sentences like these only come at the end of sections or chapters, and the rest of the book is quite lucid and full of illustrative examples. It's a smart book full of entertaining pop culture references. (and it is quite lame that he titles his acknowledgement page "shout outs")
After reading this book, I'm thinking that we need to add hip theory to the lit-crit cannon. It seems just as justifiable as feminist theory or queer theory--especially if we're talking about American lit. Leland gets it started with his list of hip authors: Emerson, Twain, Whitman, Raymond Chandler and the like, and of course all of the Beats. He talks more about the writers and their cultural moment than he does aobut the texts themselves, but I think a lot of American lit could be explained by considering it through the lens of the hip. Take The Great Gatsby. Sure it's about class, but I think part of the downfall might be explained by a misguided pursuit of the hip. So, you lit teachers, I think you should start up this movement.
9 comments:
Yo, dawg, that's so skank!
Yeesh. I hate it when authors resort to slang to sound cool. Slang is a generational and cultural signifier and when outsiders take it on they just look plain foolish. It is like Pat Boone singing "Tuiti Fruiti." He can't get on beat with his snapping and doesn't seem to get that what he is singing about is pretty risque.
Yo yo yo yo yo yo yo!
Oh and anyway, there is also the whole "pursuit of cool" cultural analysis that is pretty much the same thing. What was the name of that book that talked about American's need and pursuit of "cool?"
I don't think his use of slang is totally inappropriate--he's a pretty young guy, I think. And, despite some awkward bits of writing, it is actually a pretty good book. Don't know the book you mention--maybe pretty similar. Although, for this guy, cool and hip are different things.
Hip theory? Coolness theory? A Poetics of Hip?
Of course, the problem with making hip the object of academic inquiry is that academic inquiry of any kind of intrinsically unhip. Can you imagine my students, looking at me in my khakis, wrinkle-free plaid shirt, and my chunky brown loafers lecturing on hipness?
Then again, I am hip. I am. Good recomendation. I'll have to read this one.
But if you wear your new funky shirts, maybe you can get away with a discourse of hip in the classroom.
Well ok then. I despise posers. I think I'll get a tee shirt that says that.
In the mean time how is hip different from cool? If one is cool isn't one, therefore hip? Or is hipness the ultimate in uncool at times?
I agree lis, it all depends on the funky shirt project. I need more funky shirts, perhaps even some funky shoes.
Today, however, I taught Howells and Norris. I am wearing khakis, chunky brown shoes, and, of course, a poly-blend, wrinkle-free, short-sleeve, plaidish shirt.
The second you take something with one oz. of hipness and turn it into a "discourse,"--whoops! there it is, or goes. It's boring, because it's school.
I try never to talk about anything I love, pop culture-wise, in a classroom, because it ruins it. For me, the hell with the kidz.
I talk about RockStar: INXS obsessively in 1010. Not because I think I'm hip, but because I'm obsessed with how each RockStar has adopted the RockStar Uniform and the RockStar Hip Gyration (TM), and the RockStar sneer, and the RockStar Hair Toss (TM). For me, it all goes back to high school when we chose up teams and were committed to that definition of hip (or cool), even though some of us (hmm) thought we were being Individuals, but we were really just committing ourselves to a (slightly?) less popular version of cool. But it was a version of cool we had not invented ourselves. And if we codify cool, is it still cool? Or does it become (in Theory World) "cool"?
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