Variations on a Theme

Dana,

This is one is for you and others who may be wondering what a hipster is. I hope this is helpful.

Let's start generic.

Sir OED says:
"One who is ‘hip’; a hip- (or hep-)cat. Also attrib. Hence hipsterism, the condition or fact of being a hipster; the characteristics of hipsters. Cf. HEPSTER." Some sources, while not necessarily helpful but colorful, that are given is:
1948 Partisan Rev. XV. 722 Carrying his language and his new philosophy like concealed weapons, the hipster set out to conquer the world.
1956 Observer 23 Sept. 2/5 ‘Hipster’ is modern jazz parlance for ‘hep-cat’.
1959 ‘F. NEWTON’ Jazz Scene 291 Jive~talk or hipster-talk is..an argot or cant designed to set the group apart from outsiders.
1967 Lancet 15 July 150/2 The ‘hipster’ movement in California..seemed to be an outright rejection of accepted standards and values."

Okay, let's do irony and cite The Hipster Handbook, useful - yes - but overdetermined historonically (wow, that sounds pretentious!):

"One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool. (Note: it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; a Hipster would instead say "deck.") The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. A Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat."

Time to get serious. And by this I mean, literary ...

Allen Ginsberg, from Howl: "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly / connection to the starry dynamo in the machin- / ery of night ..." (9). I.e, a druggie.

Jack Kerouac, in On the Road mentions the hipsters haunting the jazz and bop joints in his jaunts across the country. Here the hipster is defined by his "hip" style - zootsuits - and "hip" musical taste. Yeah, the cat knows what's up.

William S. Burroughs, in Junky, on our contemporary condition (Dana: think of The Black Cat club here):

"The young hipsters seem lacking in energy and spontaneous enjoyment of life. ... They jump around and say, 'Too much! Crazy! Man, let's pick up! Let's get loaded.' But after a shot, they slump into a chair like a resigned baby waiting for life to bring the bottle again" (123).

Finally, I give you the source himself, Norman Mailer:

"...the American existentialist - the hipster, the man who knows that if our collective condition is to live with instant death by atomic war, relatively quick death by the State ... or with a slow death by conformity with every creative and rebellious instinct stifled ... why then the only life-giving answer is to accept the terms of death, to live with death as immediate danger .... One is either Hip or one is Square ... one is a rebel or one conforms, one is a frontiersman in the Wild West of American night life, or else one a Square cell, trapped in totalitarian tissues of American society, doomed willy-nilly to conform if one is to succeed" (2-3).

Them are fightin' words. A far committed-cry from the button-covered messanger-toting "hipsters" you see around Brooklyn or your local "indie" show.

Alright. This probably didn't help one bit. But hopefully it has colored Hipster a bit.

:-)


P.S. Maybe the most important thing to remember is the jagged-androgynist-dyed-black-hairdos.