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Hip: The History
Hip: The History is the story of how American pop culture has evolved throughout the twentieth century to its current position as world cultural touchstone. How did hip become such an obsession? From sex and music to fashion and commerce, John Leland tracks the arc of ideas as they move from subterranean Bohemia to Madison Avenue and back again. Hip: The History examines how hip has helped shape -- and continues to influence -- America's view of itself, and provides an incisive account of hip's quest for authenticity.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
405 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
62 people are currently reading
826 people want to read
About the author
John Leland
3books15followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the ŷ database.
John Leland (born 1959) is an author and has been a reporter for the New York Times since 2000, and former editor in chief of Details, and he was an original columnist at SPIN magazine. Robert Christgau of the Village Voice called him "the best American postmod critic (the best new American rock critic period)," and Chuck D of Public Enemy said the nasty parts of the song "Bring the Noise" were written about him. He lives in Manhattan's East Village with his wife, Risa, and son, Jordan.
John Leland (born 1959) is an author and has been a reporter for the New York Times since 2000, and former editor in chief of Details, and he was an original columnist at SPIN magazine. Robert Christgau of the Village Voice called him "the best American postmod critic (the best new American rock critic period)," and Chuck D of Public Enemy said the nasty parts of the song "Bring the Noise" were written about him. He lives in Manhattan's East Village with his wife, Risa, and son, Jordan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
March 7, 2013
A book that turns out to be more about whiteness, than the cross-racial hybridity it ostensibly claims. Even though Leland sees hip as the point of mixture between the races and having a tense relationship with the mainstream, he fails to take note of the fact that "hip" is always only declared so when it encounters white society deems it so and finds value in it. In a sense, whiteness is the only constant in his understanding of hip. And that the author does not perceive or name this is an indication of his limited perspective. (For some reason, his chapter on the internet was the point at which this became sadly clear.)
Still an interesting read.
Still an interesting read.
September 28, 2019
You might be pardoned for thinking that this is simply a catalog of past trends. But Leland is more interested in the history of Hip as an idea rather than a list of things to which that idea may have applied.
The word itself traces back to West Africa. In the Wolof language, there are the verbs hepi--”to see�--and hipi--”to open one’s eyes.� The modern meaning of the word arose from the interactions between, as Leland puts it, “former Europeans and former Africans.� Hip is subtly distinct from Cool, though the terms are frequently used interchangeably.
Leland doesn't neglect the History aspect of the title, covering the development of jazz, the Beats, cyberpunk, Walt Whitman, the 60's, punk rock, why Warner Brothers cartoons were better than Disney, and countless other topics, always circling back to his central idea of Hip being born when disparate cultures are thrust into close proximity, each adopting different pieces of each other and forming something new and different that catches on and begins to spread.
The book flows nicely. Despite Leland’s protests that writing a history of Hip is a very un-hip thing to do, I would rank this as one of the more with it books it's ever been my pleasure to read. But what do I know? I am, arguably, less hip than anyone. I just want to pursue whatever interests me and let others fret about whether it qualifies as hip or cool or whatever.
This book was more enjoyable than I expected. Recommended!
The word itself traces back to West Africa. In the Wolof language, there are the verbs hepi--”to see�--and hipi--”to open one’s eyes.� The modern meaning of the word arose from the interactions between, as Leland puts it, “former Europeans and former Africans.� Hip is subtly distinct from Cool, though the terms are frequently used interchangeably.
Leland doesn't neglect the History aspect of the title, covering the development of jazz, the Beats, cyberpunk, Walt Whitman, the 60's, punk rock, why Warner Brothers cartoons were better than Disney, and countless other topics, always circling back to his central idea of Hip being born when disparate cultures are thrust into close proximity, each adopting different pieces of each other and forming something new and different that catches on and begins to spread.
The book flows nicely. Despite Leland’s protests that writing a history of Hip is a very un-hip thing to do, I would rank this as one of the more with it books it's ever been my pleasure to read. But what do I know? I am, arguably, less hip than anyone. I just want to pursue whatever interests me and let others fret about whether it qualifies as hip or cool or whatever.
This book was more enjoyable than I expected. Recommended!
January 20, 2011
I really enjoyed this book! John Leland proved himself a great pop culture critic with his Singles column for Spin during its early run (for curious readers, troll Google Books for the August 1989 issue, which includes "Temporary Music" -- it's about dance, temporality, and the Protestant work ethic). I had no doubt he'd pull off a comprehensive history of hip. In doing so, he really gets at the formation of the United States, class conflicts, hip's entrepreneurial spirit, and the racial tensions and collaborations always at the heart of that union. He even manages to incorporate women into that ongoing history rather than give us a token chapter's worth of consideration. A lot of the limitations I noted in n+1's What Was the Hipster? are resolved here, which makes it both a good companion and a necessary citation.
It's not a perfect book (why does he just discuss heroin when talking about hipsters and drug culture, for example?), but it's interesting and lots of fun. It's totally one of those books some cool American Studies professor assigns for a youth culture upper-division undergrad class, and one of those books that makes it through the next apartment move after the class concludes. A big reason you'd keep it around is the writing. Though 356 pages long and at times repetitive, the connections Leland makes and the sentences he strings together make the words fly off the page. Also, I like any book that refers to "camp" as hip's unruly nephew, if only because I like the mental image of Jerri Blank kicking at some beatnik uncle.
It's not a perfect book (why does he just discuss heroin when talking about hipsters and drug culture, for example?), but it's interesting and lots of fun. It's totally one of those books some cool American Studies professor assigns for a youth culture upper-division undergrad class, and one of those books that makes it through the next apartment move after the class concludes. A big reason you'd keep it around is the writing. Though 356 pages long and at times repetitive, the connections Leland makes and the sentences he strings together make the words fly off the page. Also, I like any book that refers to "camp" as hip's unruly nephew, if only because I like the mental image of Jerri Blank kicking at some beatnik uncle.
June 8, 2017
"Hipness" has been stolen from black people and men have traditionally been more hip than women because they didn't get pregnant and could leave their house/children and write their great novels.
August 31, 2020
It kept me interested longer than I thought it would. I was surprised to like some chapters (like the Beat one) more than others (the women and Internet culture ones).
April 14, 2012
In detailing his history of hip, John Leland touches on a range of fascinating cultural touchstones: Mark Twain, Miles Davis, Jack Kerouac, Lou Reed. But he turns them all to dubious ends, borrowing their cache to make himself the authority on hip.
Hip, it turns out, is whatever John Leland says it is, and the definition drifts from page to page. The book's real purpose, beyond giving the author an uninterrupted platform for 356 pages, is to show that whatever hip may be, John Leland is hipper than it.
He's at his best when he offers a compelling analysis of the marketplace of hip--it's diffusion into the marketplace of mass culture. But too much of the book consists of the author giving us a quick dose of the real thing, followed by paragraphs of dilution.
Quotes
"One of hip's paradoxes is that even as it professes antipathy to the market, it takes the shape the economy needs it to. For all their critique of American consumer culture, the Beats filled a Darwinian market niche. Their popularity complemented the postwar buildup in production capacity. American industry was turning out new stuff; the Beats prescribed an ethos of lifestyle change. Malcolm Cowley, who championed and eventually edited On the Road, against Kerouac's wishes, had observed this phenomenon among his own Lost Generation. Bohemianism, he remarked wryly, serves late capitalism by promoting a "consumption ethic." Writing about an earlier Bohemian moment, he noted that all of its individualist or anti-establishment tendencies were also grounds for spending: "Self-expression and paganism encouraged a demand for all sorts of products--modern furniture, beach pajamas, cosmetics, colored bathrooms with toilet paper to match. Living for the moment meant buying an automobile radio or house, using it now and paying for it tomorrow. Female equality"--not exactly a major Beat concern, but still--"was capable of doubling the consumption of products--cigarettes, for examples--that had formerly been used by men alone."
"To return to Kammen's terms, this hip capitalism was a form of mass culture playing with the toys of popular culture. A soloist at Minton's or a poet at the Six Gallery could inspire and influence a roomful of people; a Blue Note recording or City Lights book could reach thousands. Either was a form of popular culture. It required attention, effort and an open mind. You could argue with it. It lent itself to hours of discussion, by which it reached larger circles of coconspirators. Mass culture, by contrast, could distribute the same values or gestures to millions instantaneously, with no demand for participation or further inquiry. You didn't argue with it, you just changed the channel. It called only for approval or disapproval, and provided rewards for each."
Hip, it turns out, is whatever John Leland says it is, and the definition drifts from page to page. The book's real purpose, beyond giving the author an uninterrupted platform for 356 pages, is to show that whatever hip may be, John Leland is hipper than it.
He's at his best when he offers a compelling analysis of the marketplace of hip--it's diffusion into the marketplace of mass culture. But too much of the book consists of the author giving us a quick dose of the real thing, followed by paragraphs of dilution.
Quotes
"One of hip's paradoxes is that even as it professes antipathy to the market, it takes the shape the economy needs it to. For all their critique of American consumer culture, the Beats filled a Darwinian market niche. Their popularity complemented the postwar buildup in production capacity. American industry was turning out new stuff; the Beats prescribed an ethos of lifestyle change. Malcolm Cowley, who championed and eventually edited On the Road, against Kerouac's wishes, had observed this phenomenon among his own Lost Generation. Bohemianism, he remarked wryly, serves late capitalism by promoting a "consumption ethic." Writing about an earlier Bohemian moment, he noted that all of its individualist or anti-establishment tendencies were also grounds for spending: "Self-expression and paganism encouraged a demand for all sorts of products--modern furniture, beach pajamas, cosmetics, colored bathrooms with toilet paper to match. Living for the moment meant buying an automobile radio or house, using it now and paying for it tomorrow. Female equality"--not exactly a major Beat concern, but still--"was capable of doubling the consumption of products--cigarettes, for examples--that had formerly been used by men alone."
"To return to Kammen's terms, this hip capitalism was a form of mass culture playing with the toys of popular culture. A soloist at Minton's or a poet at the Six Gallery could inspire and influence a roomful of people; a Blue Note recording or City Lights book could reach thousands. Either was a form of popular culture. It required attention, effort and an open mind. You could argue with it. It lent itself to hours of discussion, by which it reached larger circles of coconspirators. Mass culture, by contrast, could distribute the same values or gestures to millions instantaneously, with no demand for participation or further inquiry. You didn't argue with it, you just changed the channel. It called only for approval or disapproval, and provided rewards for each."
December 30, 2015
I had an incredible amount of fun progressing through this well organized catalogue and chronicle of how hip came to be and what it has been and is (please tell me) in America. The author articulated more than a few of my intuitions into truths (for example, the notion that "hip" is uniquely American and that everyone else has to import it from us, not that this makes us any less ugly).
What made this book much richer than, say, Lewis MacAdams' also worthwhile Birth of the Cool is the power of Leland's central thesis: hip was spawned from the nuanced and complicated juxtapositions and exchanges between the cultures of white and black people who found themselves in a new rough beast of nation being born some 240 years ago. Calm down all PCs and members of world-saving Justice League of America. Leland neither denies nor minimizes that this juxtaposition has also been the cradle of immeasurable injustice and inhumanity which sticks with us today, but his focus is that between the cracks of that wall of evil and woe, in sneaked "Hip".
A prime example of how Leland is more comparative and integrating of the hip themes than MacAdams was would be Chapter 4 (Would a Hipster Hit a Lady?) in which he makes some deep but fairly apparent connections between pulp fiction and film noir but is then able to stretch to encompass Gangsta Rap in the same theme. Not so tough a stretch one might say after reading the chapter, but were you mindful of it before you did?
A particular thrill to read the Hip has Three Fingers chapter too. Is it any wonder that I am so transgressive when it comes to what passes for social probity in these United States? Those cartoons I consumed unfiltered and in huge doses when my brain was forming were out and out subversive. I realized, with a fair amount of perverse pride, the extent to which Mad Magazine had warped my views so far out of kilter from the unwoken ofay myrmidons, but not until reading Hip: The History did I realize the gratitude I should have toward Bugs Bunny.
I recommend the book, it's a goody. Leland has several other books and writes for the New York Times.
What made this book much richer than, say, Lewis MacAdams' also worthwhile Birth of the Cool is the power of Leland's central thesis: hip was spawned from the nuanced and complicated juxtapositions and exchanges between the cultures of white and black people who found themselves in a new rough beast of nation being born some 240 years ago. Calm down all PCs and members of world-saving Justice League of America. Leland neither denies nor minimizes that this juxtaposition has also been the cradle of immeasurable injustice and inhumanity which sticks with us today, but his focus is that between the cracks of that wall of evil and woe, in sneaked "Hip".
A prime example of how Leland is more comparative and integrating of the hip themes than MacAdams was would be Chapter 4 (Would a Hipster Hit a Lady?) in which he makes some deep but fairly apparent connections between pulp fiction and film noir but is then able to stretch to encompass Gangsta Rap in the same theme. Not so tough a stretch one might say after reading the chapter, but were you mindful of it before you did?
A particular thrill to read the Hip has Three Fingers chapter too. Is it any wonder that I am so transgressive when it comes to what passes for social probity in these United States? Those cartoons I consumed unfiltered and in huge doses when my brain was forming were out and out subversive. I realized, with a fair amount of perverse pride, the extent to which Mad Magazine had warped my views so far out of kilter from the unwoken ofay myrmidons, but not until reading Hip: The History did I realize the gratitude I should have toward Bugs Bunny.
I recommend the book, it's a goody. Leland has several other books and writes for the New York Times.
November 28, 2019
2.5
I don't remember how I found this book so I don't remember what made me want to read it but the chapter titles sounded interesting. While it was informative reading about the history of what's cool and counterculture, eventually all of his ideas started to cross into each other and it was hard keeping track of what he's talking about and how it relates to each other. I guess I liked learning about what 20 somethings in the city did in the 1800's and the development of single life but his ideas were way too broad for me. The book isn't literally like this but he relates Jack Kerouac to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Kurt Cobain to Tupac to Silicon Valley nerds and how everything can be hip if you try! If you're intentionally hip, that's uncool which is kitsch which makes it hip. If you don't try to be cool, you're being outside the system which is cool. Maybe I'm just too used to 2010's discussion of cool/cultural appropriation for "the insiders make fun of the outsiders then steal their qualities" but it was too much. On top of that, his writing style is like the episode of Daria where Jane dates the guy who is obsessed with the 40's and talks like he's in a film noir. Hey, maybe I should dust off my Daria DVD.
I don't remember how I found this book so I don't remember what made me want to read it but the chapter titles sounded interesting. While it was informative reading about the history of what's cool and counterculture, eventually all of his ideas started to cross into each other and it was hard keeping track of what he's talking about and how it relates to each other. I guess I liked learning about what 20 somethings in the city did in the 1800's and the development of single life but his ideas were way too broad for me. The book isn't literally like this but he relates Jack Kerouac to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Kurt Cobain to Tupac to Silicon Valley nerds and how everything can be hip if you try! If you're intentionally hip, that's uncool which is kitsch which makes it hip. If you don't try to be cool, you're being outside the system which is cool. Maybe I'm just too used to 2010's discussion of cool/cultural appropriation for "the insiders make fun of the outsiders then steal their qualities" but it was too much. On top of that, his writing style is like the episode of Daria where Jane dates the guy who is obsessed with the 40's and talks like he's in a film noir. Hey, maybe I should dust off my Daria DVD.
Read
February 5, 2009In Hip: A History, Leland goes far beyond our standard definitions of "hip," defined by various American writers, artists, and musicians. Critics agree that Leland's done his homework__what's more fun than listening to jazz, reading Beat generation literature, or watching old movies? But in his exploration of hipness, Leland leaves a little something to be desired. The book is eclectic, but not always choosy in its examples or satisfying in its analysis. While fun, Hip contains glib, overly detailed, and even offensively smug passages that can kill the life of his subject. You may not need this book to tell you what hip is__we're sure you know it when you see it.
This is an excerpt from a review published in .
February 17, 2022
What is hip (to borrow from both the intro and the song)? This book explores what it means to be "hip" - enlightened - and the movements that can be considered hip - from literature to music to television, etc.
The author makes a case that it's never a case of either/or, or one of "purity" of hip. He also shows that, in some cases, that pursuit can be self-destructive.
I like some of his arguments and don't buy some of the others. The book teeters on the line of academic and mass media - it struggles itself with being hip. Also, since it was published in 2004, it of course misses a deeper analysis of the beginning of the internet, and misses the iPhone and social media influencers and streaming TV years, which has again redefined hip.
The author makes a case that it's never a case of either/or, or one of "purity" of hip. He also shows that, in some cases, that pursuit can be self-destructive.
I like some of his arguments and don't buy some of the others. The book teeters on the line of academic and mass media - it struggles itself with being hip. Also, since it was published in 2004, it of course misses a deeper analysis of the beginning of the internet, and misses the iPhone and social media influencers and streaming TV years, which has again redefined hip.
September 9, 2024
Review title: Passing hip
Leland conquers a daunting task: writing a serious historical study of hip, of the same complexity and elusiveness as "If you have to ask you'll never know" or trying to catch lightning in a bottle. I found this 2004 book in a used book sale two decades later, so definitions of hipness have definitely (surely?) shifted, haven't they? And Leland, identified as a "reporter on race and pop culture" on the book cover whose current Wikipedia entry lists no later books, surely knows this risk and addresses it: hip is "a perpetual reinvention of the now. . . . hip offered a way of rationing time into microfine slices of the present." (p. 138). "Yesterday's crime [becomes] tomorrow's recreation. In between it is hip." (p. 224)
The word "hip" is actually derived from a Senegalese language brought to America by captured and enslaved black people, the word hepi or hipi meaning "to see" or "to open one's eyes", along with the words degi ("to understand", dig it?) and jev ("to disparage or talk falsely"--jive talking) (p. 5-6). So from the beginning, hip was about "black and white in America, and the dance of conflict and curiosity that binds it."(p. 6). Hip is "hopelessly hybrid" (p. 133) even as those who craft it "stand out more for what is uniquely theirs." Hip was about playing with language in ways to bridge those cultures with ambiguity and clarity, for those who if you know you know. Hip was expressed in the mid 19th century in minstrel-show language and blackface and later in the century by blues music, using music and humor to bridge race and culture. The rise of advertising during the century reflected and paralleled the rise of hip: for people as for products, "what matters is not the essence of the thing, but the perception of it." (p. 55)
Hip in literature, according to Leland, started with Whitman, Melville, Emerson, and Thoreau in the 19th century, then early in the next century found a home in Paris with Hemingway, Fitzgerald,and Gertrude Stein, then moved back home between the wars in hard-boiled pulp fiction and film noir. In New York, New Orleans and other population centers where cultures collided, jazz became the hip language of music, feeding the post World War II Beat generation of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and William Rice Burroughs. Leland traces the influences between forms and genres of art, music, literature, and even cartoons, in a chapter documenting how animators of movie-show shorts could use the form to depict "hip's underlying anxieties: the unreal lines of race, class, sex, ethnicity, power, righteousness and the hep-daddy zest of jazz." (p. 187). Bugs Bunny was hip; Mickey Mouse was not.
Leland doesn't shy away from the dark side of hip, including chapters on mistreatment of women in hip over the decades, the prevalence (but also the purpose) of destructive drug use in hip culture, the outlaw mystique in hip culture that ends up emulating or escalating criminals, and the co-option of hip culture by capitalism. When ads promote products with Jimi Hendrix songs, or when "hipsters . . . promote newness itself, and maybe appear in an occasional ad for Nike or the Gap," (p. 284), is it a sellout, or just a preview of today's influencer marketing? Or, in a chapter on the extension of hip into the digital age, is hip, "the presence of information without a material dimension" (like influencer marketing), "fundamentally metaphysical . . ., pretty close to a definition of God"? (p. 328)
As Leland brings his history to a close in 2003 at what in 2024 looks like an early midpoint to the digital era (and who can know what's coming after?) he concludes that perhaps the best way to look at hip is as a "map of people in motion" (p. 341). Hip is both cause and effect of immigration from other cultures and countries and movement from outlying areas to centers of convergence that "attract diverse people to a place, then accrues from their density, diversity and tolerance." (p. 347). In an era when immigration and diversity and inclusion are bitter polarities, where does that leave hip?
Where indeed? This is both an interesting historical artifact and an analytic analysis that will spark your thoughts on what is hip when and where you read it.
Leland conquers a daunting task: writing a serious historical study of hip, of the same complexity and elusiveness as "If you have to ask you'll never know" or trying to catch lightning in a bottle. I found this 2004 book in a used book sale two decades later, so definitions of hipness have definitely (surely?) shifted, haven't they? And Leland, identified as a "reporter on race and pop culture" on the book cover whose current Wikipedia entry lists no later books, surely knows this risk and addresses it: hip is "a perpetual reinvention of the now. . . . hip offered a way of rationing time into microfine slices of the present." (p. 138). "Yesterday's crime [becomes] tomorrow's recreation. In between it is hip." (p. 224)
The word "hip" is actually derived from a Senegalese language brought to America by captured and enslaved black people, the word hepi or hipi meaning "to see" or "to open one's eyes", along with the words degi ("to understand", dig it?) and jev ("to disparage or talk falsely"--jive talking) (p. 5-6). So from the beginning, hip was about "black and white in America, and the dance of conflict and curiosity that binds it."(p. 6). Hip is "hopelessly hybrid" (p. 133) even as those who craft it "stand out more for what is uniquely theirs." Hip was about playing with language in ways to bridge those cultures with ambiguity and clarity, for those who if you know you know. Hip was expressed in the mid 19th century in minstrel-show language and blackface and later in the century by blues music, using music and humor to bridge race and culture. The rise of advertising during the century reflected and paralleled the rise of hip: for people as for products, "what matters is not the essence of the thing, but the perception of it." (p. 55)
Hip in literature, according to Leland, started with Whitman, Melville, Emerson, and Thoreau in the 19th century, then early in the next century found a home in Paris with Hemingway, Fitzgerald,and Gertrude Stein, then moved back home between the wars in hard-boiled pulp fiction and film noir. In New York, New Orleans and other population centers where cultures collided, jazz became the hip language of music, feeding the post World War II Beat generation of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and William Rice Burroughs. Leland traces the influences between forms and genres of art, music, literature, and even cartoons, in a chapter documenting how animators of movie-show shorts could use the form to depict "hip's underlying anxieties: the unreal lines of race, class, sex, ethnicity, power, righteousness and the hep-daddy zest of jazz." (p. 187). Bugs Bunny was hip; Mickey Mouse was not.
Leland doesn't shy away from the dark side of hip, including chapters on mistreatment of women in hip over the decades, the prevalence (but also the purpose) of destructive drug use in hip culture, the outlaw mystique in hip culture that ends up emulating or escalating criminals, and the co-option of hip culture by capitalism. When ads promote products with Jimi Hendrix songs, or when "hipsters . . . promote newness itself, and maybe appear in an occasional ad for Nike or the Gap," (p. 284), is it a sellout, or just a preview of today's influencer marketing? Or, in a chapter on the extension of hip into the digital age, is hip, "the presence of information without a material dimension" (like influencer marketing), "fundamentally metaphysical . . ., pretty close to a definition of God"? (p. 328)
As Leland brings his history to a close in 2003 at what in 2024 looks like an early midpoint to the digital era (and who can know what's coming after?) he concludes that perhaps the best way to look at hip is as a "map of people in motion" (p. 341). Hip is both cause and effect of immigration from other cultures and countries and movement from outlying areas to centers of convergence that "attract diverse people to a place, then accrues from their density, diversity and tolerance." (p. 347). In an era when immigration and diversity and inclusion are bitter polarities, where does that leave hip?
Where indeed? This is both an interesting historical artifact and an analytic analysis that will spark your thoughts on what is hip when and where you read it.
July 3, 2020
An intriguing book (written in 2004, before internet became the foremost driver of mainstream culture—let alone the identity building/altering way of being hip provided by social media...) that tackles “Hip� as a uniquely American ideal/system, born out of, and forever shaped by, the complex relations between (primarily) White and Black Americans—from the initial days of slavery and “America� itself through various epochs like the late 1850-1870 period, 1920s, 1950s to the dawn of the internet age in the late 90s and early 2000s (patterns identified by influxes of immigration and migrations of American populations—every 50 years or so). This was an enjoyable read, with lots of noting and quoting, but it was accessible as it followed the same handful of scenes/movements throughout the book; the author using them and how they were born, functioned and eventually replaces to make his points about Hip being driven by the complex relationship between Blacks and Whites in America, forever trying to understand one another while avoiding taking on any true burdens or missing some subtext while still adopting various postures, styles, tastes and verbiage. This was an educational read, especially as I’ve actively been trying to educate myself to be anti-racist and understand our country’s (true) history more truthfully. Recommended to those who especially have interests in language, music/famed figures of the arts, authors, drugs, the rural/farm migration to urban centers and how gentrification manifests itself and of course how Hip is always a two way street of cultural sharing, despite feeling and sounding like the center of a wheel stoking outwards to the tire and scenes that surround and overlap it.
Male figures do get the majority of coverage...p.87: “hip’s central romance, the myth of reinvention, is a quintessential male fantasy. It allows birth without a womb. Though women can reinvent themselves as well as men, either scenario knocks a leg from under female authority: if anyone can create identity from scratch, then women are not the only ones who can generate life.�
p. 353, closing pages. Relevant to today’s BLM movements, white privilege/ambivalence and the collective awakening to systemic racism in America: “If white supremacy is America’s original sin, the white negro is a character born after the fall, conjured to imagine a return to grace without sacrifice. As Greg Tate put it in the title of a 2003 essay collection, the wigga as cultural emissary takes everything but the burden. Like many characters in this book, the white boy who stole the blues is a trickster of sorts: self-serving, indeterminate, navigating between two worlds. He trespasses where he is not wanted...he reveals inaccessible knowledge, but never directly, only through his own second-hand translations. His thefts are the beginning of meaning. As Lewis Hyde notes, things don’t need meaning until they can be moved from one context to another; before that they just need names.�
Male figures do get the majority of coverage...p.87: “hip’s central romance, the myth of reinvention, is a quintessential male fantasy. It allows birth without a womb. Though women can reinvent themselves as well as men, either scenario knocks a leg from under female authority: if anyone can create identity from scratch, then women are not the only ones who can generate life.�
p. 353, closing pages. Relevant to today’s BLM movements, white privilege/ambivalence and the collective awakening to systemic racism in America: “If white supremacy is America’s original sin, the white negro is a character born after the fall, conjured to imagine a return to grace without sacrifice. As Greg Tate put it in the title of a 2003 essay collection, the wigga as cultural emissary takes everything but the burden. Like many characters in this book, the white boy who stole the blues is a trickster of sorts: self-serving, indeterminate, navigating between two worlds. He trespasses where he is not wanted...he reveals inaccessible knowledge, but never directly, only through his own second-hand translations. His thefts are the beginning of meaning. As Lewis Hyde notes, things don’t need meaning until they can be moved from one context to another; before that they just need names.�
May 4, 2021
Good example of a book I like but don’t love. Found myself dragging my feet to finish it, and yet, practically each time I had the book in my hands, I’d find something interesting.
The fatal flaw is that Leland refuses to settle on a definition of hip, despite an introduction called “What is hip?� So, in each chapter, or even each section, hip is taking on new meanings and shedding ones you thought the author was using. To an extent, you understand that he is trying to illustrate that this concept is a shapeshifter, but I didn’t find that satisfying.
A key question that would have gotten him closer: “Is racial difference what creates hip?� The book gives chapter-long examples of hipness that do not revolve around race, so his answer should be “no�, and yet, he doesn’t consider this frame. I would argue that it is cultural difference, in the many senses of the word "culture", rather than racial. Yes, White:Black, but also Mainstream:subculture, Nationality:other nationality, and Older generation:younger generation. Some cross-national examples would have been great here. This book could have focused entirely on the racial dimension of hip, or entirely on non-racial examples, and could have worked either way.
You get the sense that Leland wants to break the mold, to exhibit some creativity of his own in this discussion. Reminded me of reading , though Hip: The History isn’t nearly as back-heavy with endnotes. Many will consider that comparison high praise, though personally, I like being able to say I read these books more than actually reading them. There is no doubt that Leland (and Marcus) are bright as well as (yes) hip to how American pop culture operates. But did you enjoy reading their books? I got tired of the many paragraphs where he used the word “hip� over and over again as though it were a name with no known pronoun, or used the word to define itself, or gave yet another meaning and then acted as though nothing had changed or was inconsistent in his argument. A more patient reader might give this a higher score, but if you’re a type like me who can get angry at authors while reading, you might think twice.
(By the way, my copy was a P.S. edition, and I could only laugh at how straightforward and lucid Leland is capable of being when pressed into the Q&A or list format, though admittedly the fireworks disappeared. If only an editor could have helped him find a middle ground.)
The fatal flaw is that Leland refuses to settle on a definition of hip, despite an introduction called “What is hip?� So, in each chapter, or even each section, hip is taking on new meanings and shedding ones you thought the author was using. To an extent, you understand that he is trying to illustrate that this concept is a shapeshifter, but I didn’t find that satisfying.
A key question that would have gotten him closer: “Is racial difference what creates hip?� The book gives chapter-long examples of hipness that do not revolve around race, so his answer should be “no�, and yet, he doesn’t consider this frame. I would argue that it is cultural difference, in the many senses of the word "culture", rather than racial. Yes, White:Black, but also Mainstream:subculture, Nationality:other nationality, and Older generation:younger generation. Some cross-national examples would have been great here. This book could have focused entirely on the racial dimension of hip, or entirely on non-racial examples, and could have worked either way.
You get the sense that Leland wants to break the mold, to exhibit some creativity of his own in this discussion. Reminded me of reading , though Hip: The History isn’t nearly as back-heavy with endnotes. Many will consider that comparison high praise, though personally, I like being able to say I read these books more than actually reading them. There is no doubt that Leland (and Marcus) are bright as well as (yes) hip to how American pop culture operates. But did you enjoy reading their books? I got tired of the many paragraphs where he used the word “hip� over and over again as though it were a name with no known pronoun, or used the word to define itself, or gave yet another meaning and then acted as though nothing had changed or was inconsistent in his argument. A more patient reader might give this a higher score, but if you’re a type like me who can get angry at authors while reading, you might think twice.
(By the way, my copy was a P.S. edition, and I could only laugh at how straightforward and lucid Leland is capable of being when pressed into the Q&A or list format, though admittedly the fireworks disappeared. If only an editor could have helped him find a middle ground.)
July 13, 2020
I’m having trouble with this one, I’d give it 2.5 if I could, I think, but will give it the benefit of the doubt for having more footnotes than I do; there are some interesting points made, but the book and its underlying thesis suffers from what it itself refers to as “the white boy who stole the blues.�
Published nearly 16 years ago, it lacks any of the foresight to predict the reactionary and revolutionary ups and downs of the last 10 years, let alone of the last 10 months, and as a result there’s a naivety and an unfortunate tone of “white-mansplaining� that leaves a sour taste in one’s mouth.
Published nearly 16 years ago, it lacks any of the foresight to predict the reactionary and revolutionary ups and downs of the last 10 years, let alone of the last 10 months, and as a result there’s a naivety and an unfortunate tone of “white-mansplaining� that leaves a sour taste in one’s mouth.
October 11, 2018
I loved this book so much I used it to teach what applied social justice could look like through music and art -- when I was a lecturer at UCLA.
November 7, 2008
Hip : characterized by a keen informed awareness of or involvement in the newest developments or styles
--
In Hip: The History, John Leland paints an American tale of the birth and development of hip. His journey through the generations begins with the slave trade and ends right here -- on the Net. This historical account is detailed enough to be taught in any college sociology/American history class but hip enough for students to enjoy. The anecdotes Leland provides drag you into the dark depths of jazz, Beats and heroin, while also throwing you into the lap of Merrie Melodies vs. Walt Disney and the "irony" of mesh hats.
Amidst the trivia and historical accounts are some provocative theories about what is hip and how hip affects American culture. He explains that hip is American born and bred. It is cyclical and flourishes with industrial and technological development. Thus, it is also an economic stimulant, which is extremely apparent in our money, media driven society.
If hip was an epic, the "trickster" would be the main character, the star of the show. Leland introduces the reader to a cornicopia of tricksters including Walt Whitman, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac and the Notorious B.I.G. The stories he provides are intriguing and entertaining -- in one chapter he describes how posers start wearing their pants zippers at half mast because Dizzy Gillespie was spied on stage with his half down.
Through the stories of these tricksters, Leland describes the constant movement, the chaos of hip.
Like humor or the blues, hip is a system of order that incorporates chaos. It refutes purity. It calls out the African element in the pale man, and the unseen European in his darker neighbor. If the result is chaos, it is also intellectual growth. As children, we are taught to learn from our mistakes, meaning that once we suffer the consequences we won't make the same error again. But for societies, the errors are the learning: having confounded the conventional wisdom, we learn that it was flawed to begin with.
By the end of the book, Leland is describing present time as "post-hip." We're in a stagnation period. We are surrounded by too many people who think they know what's best for us. They are the purists, those who think we should all believe the same, look the same, teach the same, learn the same, love the same. The stagnation occurs when the chaos slows, when we push all the chaos away. There is plenty of chaos in this world. Our government tries to push it outside of our boundaries. But in the rest of the world, where there is chaos, progress and change follow. It is imperative to keep Americans safe, but does it have to be at the cost of new ideas and what it means to be truly American? If the result is chaos, it is also intellectual growth...
But I digress.
At the start of Hip: The History Leland emphasizes the fact that hip is subjective. So I tried to not be too offended when certain items that I find incredibly hip were left out. But one point that I feel was strongly overlooked, and the reason for the B+ rating, is the lack of female representation in Leland's history of hip. There is one chapter, "Where the Ladies At? Rebel Girls, Riot Grrrls and the Revenge of the Mother," that covers women and their role in this context. The 20-page chapter mostly draws attention to the fact that women are mostly missing throughout the rest of the book. Besides a few mentioned, like Gertrude Stein and Ma Rainey, the women throughout the book are used mostly to fill in the blanks of the male story.
This is the exact point he makes in the chapter. According to the book, most women couldn't be involved in the development of hip because the hipsters were of the road and were always abandoning their women and children. The women had responsibilities and couldn't fully sell into the hipster lifestyles because of it. This might have been the case for the Beats, which he mainly focuses on, but for all of hip's history? The chapter does graduate into a hipper female story, highlighting the careers and stories of rockers like Patti Smith and the great Kim Gordon. But I could not help but come away from this book thinking there was another part of the story untold. The contributions to hip through fashion, entertainment, intellectual and activist circles deserves better representation than what was provided here.
Overall the book was highly entertaining. Leland's thought-provoking premise regarding the origins of hip -- and it's full-circle rotations -- are a round robin of lovable and pitiable characters. At the conclusion of the book, the reader is left wondering, if this is the post-hip era, what's next?
--
In Hip: The History, John Leland paints an American tale of the birth and development of hip. His journey through the generations begins with the slave trade and ends right here -- on the Net. This historical account is detailed enough to be taught in any college sociology/American history class but hip enough for students to enjoy. The anecdotes Leland provides drag you into the dark depths of jazz, Beats and heroin, while also throwing you into the lap of Merrie Melodies vs. Walt Disney and the "irony" of mesh hats.
Amidst the trivia and historical accounts are some provocative theories about what is hip and how hip affects American culture. He explains that hip is American born and bred. It is cyclical and flourishes with industrial and technological development. Thus, it is also an economic stimulant, which is extremely apparent in our money, media driven society.
If hip was an epic, the "trickster" would be the main character, the star of the show. Leland introduces the reader to a cornicopia of tricksters including Walt Whitman, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac and the Notorious B.I.G. The stories he provides are intriguing and entertaining -- in one chapter he describes how posers start wearing their pants zippers at half mast because Dizzy Gillespie was spied on stage with his half down.
Through the stories of these tricksters, Leland describes the constant movement, the chaos of hip.
Like humor or the blues, hip is a system of order that incorporates chaos. It refutes purity. It calls out the African element in the pale man, and the unseen European in his darker neighbor. If the result is chaos, it is also intellectual growth. As children, we are taught to learn from our mistakes, meaning that once we suffer the consequences we won't make the same error again. But for societies, the errors are the learning: having confounded the conventional wisdom, we learn that it was flawed to begin with.
By the end of the book, Leland is describing present time as "post-hip." We're in a stagnation period. We are surrounded by too many people who think they know what's best for us. They are the purists, those who think we should all believe the same, look the same, teach the same, learn the same, love the same. The stagnation occurs when the chaos slows, when we push all the chaos away. There is plenty of chaos in this world. Our government tries to push it outside of our boundaries. But in the rest of the world, where there is chaos, progress and change follow. It is imperative to keep Americans safe, but does it have to be at the cost of new ideas and what it means to be truly American? If the result is chaos, it is also intellectual growth...
But I digress.
At the start of Hip: The History Leland emphasizes the fact that hip is subjective. So I tried to not be too offended when certain items that I find incredibly hip were left out. But one point that I feel was strongly overlooked, and the reason for the B+ rating, is the lack of female representation in Leland's history of hip. There is one chapter, "Where the Ladies At? Rebel Girls, Riot Grrrls and the Revenge of the Mother," that covers women and their role in this context. The 20-page chapter mostly draws attention to the fact that women are mostly missing throughout the rest of the book. Besides a few mentioned, like Gertrude Stein and Ma Rainey, the women throughout the book are used mostly to fill in the blanks of the male story.
This is the exact point he makes in the chapter. According to the book, most women couldn't be involved in the development of hip because the hipsters were of the road and were always abandoning their women and children. The women had responsibilities and couldn't fully sell into the hipster lifestyles because of it. This might have been the case for the Beats, which he mainly focuses on, but for all of hip's history? The chapter does graduate into a hipper female story, highlighting the careers and stories of rockers like Patti Smith and the great Kim Gordon. But I could not help but come away from this book thinking there was another part of the story untold. The contributions to hip through fashion, entertainment, intellectual and activist circles deserves better representation than what was provided here.
Overall the book was highly entertaining. Leland's thought-provoking premise regarding the origins of hip -- and it's full-circle rotations -- are a round robin of lovable and pitiable characters. At the conclusion of the book, the reader is left wondering, if this is the post-hip era, what's next?
March 14, 2013
“For better and worse, hip represents a dream of America. At its best, it imagines the racial fluidity of pop culture as the real America, the one we are yearning to become� (6). Hip, an ideal eternally sought after, yet undeniably difficult to define is the subject of Hip: the History written by New York Times reporter and former editor-in-chief of Details magazine, John Leland. Leland traces the provocative history of hip and its influence on American popular culture from proto-hip mixing of African and European cultures at colonial plantations, the trickster, the “white boy that stole the blues� to the significance of the Trucker hat. According to Leland, hip is fluid and tricky to define, an issue that is apparent as he spends much of the book defining and redefining it; this is the nature of hip itself. Hip is a rebellion, a “reaction to the mundane� but it is mainly the history of relations between blacks and whites and their ability to emulate, then alter each other’s cultures creating a new American mythology( 7, 123).
Leland argues that there are six distinct convergences of hip each corresponding to influxes of immigration and migration, changes in the economy and advances in technology, each flourishing in periods when it is needed... (13)� He then explores each of these convergences, linking each one to the one that came before, providing a rich history of American popular culture.
At the genesis of hip, the first hip convergence takes place in the 19th century, evidenced by black face minstrel shows and the blues, which Leland calls the first responses of blacks and whites to each other. He goes on to place provocative titles upon the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Hermann Melville and Walt Whitman declaring them the O.Gs (Original Gangstas) of hip and then proceeds to prove his point. These men advocated individualism, non-conformity, “sexual outlawry� and individual liberty, which at the time made them very bohemian and at the base of American hipness, influencing those who came after them.
Each of Leland’s convergences of hip adds an important layer to the essence of what it means to be hip, each layer building upon the last, evolving into what will be the next cultural obsession. Mass migrations of people from the country to the cities, the invention of the phonograph and subversive politics during the early twentieth century culminated in the Village’s Lost Generation (white) and the Harlem Renaissance (black), each creating new urban intellectual and cultural identities around music and literature. There was also common ground and it was jazz, “but it was also a field of contention, creating unstable alliances and divisions among blacks and whites (82).� Leland argues that this period was the beginning of America’s dominance in the realm of popular culture throughout the world and music was key and the phonograph made it all possible (85). Literature and poetry was also significant in the making of and evolution of hip. The pulp novels of Faulkner, Cain and Leonard laid the groundwork for the thug mythology of gangsta rap and just as the beats, enamored with the romanticization of black culture, found them drawn to jazz; the cyclical nature of hip continues.
Leland definitely accomplishes what he sets out to do here with Hip, taking the reader on a wild ride through the origins and meaning behind the culture that is truly American adding to the ongoing search for shared American mythology. His is the idea that American race relations gave birth to hipness, which in turn gave America its own self-image. Leland’s work is well written and his argument is convincing as he provides the reader with ample evidence to make his case. The only criticism that applies here is the length of the tome and that at times the author can come off as pretentious. However, mostly he engages his audience with prose that is worthy of his subject matter. Anyone who considers themselves among the hip must read this book.
Leland argues that there are six distinct convergences of hip each corresponding to influxes of immigration and migration, changes in the economy and advances in technology, each flourishing in periods when it is needed... (13)� He then explores each of these convergences, linking each one to the one that came before, providing a rich history of American popular culture.
At the genesis of hip, the first hip convergence takes place in the 19th century, evidenced by black face minstrel shows and the blues, which Leland calls the first responses of blacks and whites to each other. He goes on to place provocative titles upon the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Hermann Melville and Walt Whitman declaring them the O.Gs (Original Gangstas) of hip and then proceeds to prove his point. These men advocated individualism, non-conformity, “sexual outlawry� and individual liberty, which at the time made them very bohemian and at the base of American hipness, influencing those who came after them.
Each of Leland’s convergences of hip adds an important layer to the essence of what it means to be hip, each layer building upon the last, evolving into what will be the next cultural obsession. Mass migrations of people from the country to the cities, the invention of the phonograph and subversive politics during the early twentieth century culminated in the Village’s Lost Generation (white) and the Harlem Renaissance (black), each creating new urban intellectual and cultural identities around music and literature. There was also common ground and it was jazz, “but it was also a field of contention, creating unstable alliances and divisions among blacks and whites (82).� Leland argues that this period was the beginning of America’s dominance in the realm of popular culture throughout the world and music was key and the phonograph made it all possible (85). Literature and poetry was also significant in the making of and evolution of hip. The pulp novels of Faulkner, Cain and Leonard laid the groundwork for the thug mythology of gangsta rap and just as the beats, enamored with the romanticization of black culture, found them drawn to jazz; the cyclical nature of hip continues.
Leland definitely accomplishes what he sets out to do here with Hip, taking the reader on a wild ride through the origins and meaning behind the culture that is truly American adding to the ongoing search for shared American mythology. His is the idea that American race relations gave birth to hipness, which in turn gave America its own self-image. Leland’s work is well written and his argument is convincing as he provides the reader with ample evidence to make his case. The only criticism that applies here is the length of the tome and that at times the author can come off as pretentious. However, mostly he engages his audience with prose that is worthy of his subject matter. Anyone who considers themselves among the hip must read this book.
February 19, 2017
As someone who is the living embodiment of "not hip", I wanted to read this book to better understand the history behind, and the world of, being hip.
What I learned was hip is nearly a pure American song, pieced together with tidbits of white and black cultures, taking nuances of past / present / future, and swirling them into a chaotic melange. It is self consuming, ever present, fast forwarded, and never satisfied. A ceaseless struggle to be "hip", the chaos of the times and cultures jamming together leaves a battlefield of wreckage, strewn to the side of "what was", and leaves a winding small trail behind it for commercialism to dutifully follow.
This book was highly entertaining, lead me along like a good poem or a soulful song, and at the end, made me realize that hip is entirely subjective, that the "movement" is already dead it just doesn't know it yet, and combining the previous two facts, I can gleefully declare with only some of my tongue in my cheek that I too am hip.
Great book. Read it.
What I learned was hip is nearly a pure American song, pieced together with tidbits of white and black cultures, taking nuances of past / present / future, and swirling them into a chaotic melange. It is self consuming, ever present, fast forwarded, and never satisfied. A ceaseless struggle to be "hip", the chaos of the times and cultures jamming together leaves a battlefield of wreckage, strewn to the side of "what was", and leaves a winding small trail behind it for commercialism to dutifully follow.
This book was highly entertaining, lead me along like a good poem or a soulful song, and at the end, made me realize that hip is entirely subjective, that the "movement" is already dead it just doesn't know it yet, and combining the previous two facts, I can gleefully declare with only some of my tongue in my cheek that I too am hip.
Great book. Read it.
September 17, 2020
John Leland's Hip:The History is the sort of book I like to read on the bus, the portentous social study of an indefinite essence that makes the reader of the book appear, well, hip. This is the perfect book for the pop culture obsessive who wonders, indeed worries and frets over the issue as to whether white musicians can become real blues musicians or whether Caucasian jazz musicians have added anything of value to the the jazz canon besides gimmick.
Leland, a reporter for the New York Times, has done his research and brings together the expected doses of cultural anthropology, literature and, of course, music to bear on this sweeping, if unsettled account as to what "hip" is and how it appears to have developed over time. Most importantly he concentrates on the lopsided relationship between black and white, each group borrowing each other's culture and suiting them for their respective needs; in the case of black Americans, rising from a slavery as free people in a racist environment, hip was an an ironic manner, a mode of regarding their existence on the offbeat, a way to keep the put upon psyche within a measure of equilibrium.
For the younger white hipsters, in love black music and style, it was an attempt to gain knowledge, authenticity and personal legitimacy through a source that was Other than what a generation felt was their over-privileged and pampered class. Leland's range is admirable and does a remarkable job of advancing his thesis--that the framework of what we consider hip is a way in which both races eye other warily--and is sensitive to the fact that for all the attempts of white artists and their followers to cultivate their own good style from their black influences, the white hipsters is never far from black face minstrelsy.
For all the appropriation,experimentation, and varied perversions of black art that has emerged over the decades, there are only a few men and women who've attained the stature of their African American heroes, people who, themselves, were the few among the many.
Leland, a reporter for the New York Times, has done his research and brings together the expected doses of cultural anthropology, literature and, of course, music to bear on this sweeping, if unsettled account as to what "hip" is and how it appears to have developed over time. Most importantly he concentrates on the lopsided relationship between black and white, each group borrowing each other's culture and suiting them for their respective needs; in the case of black Americans, rising from a slavery as free people in a racist environment, hip was an an ironic manner, a mode of regarding their existence on the offbeat, a way to keep the put upon psyche within a measure of equilibrium.
For the younger white hipsters, in love black music and style, it was an attempt to gain knowledge, authenticity and personal legitimacy through a source that was Other than what a generation felt was their over-privileged and pampered class. Leland's range is admirable and does a remarkable job of advancing his thesis--that the framework of what we consider hip is a way in which both races eye other warily--and is sensitive to the fact that for all the attempts of white artists and their followers to cultivate their own good style from their black influences, the white hipsters is never far from black face minstrelsy.
For all the appropriation,experimentation, and varied perversions of black art that has emerged over the decades, there are only a few men and women who've attained the stature of their African American heroes, people who, themselves, were the few among the many.
September 27, 2011
Hip: The History by John Leland chronicles what it means to be hip by finding its African origins on the plantations of the 17th century to the hip enclaves in places like Williamsburg, Brooklyn today. He sees that the mixing of groups were instrumental in creating a synthesis of ideas and finds that much of the white co-opting of black culture contributed to this throughout culture from minstrel shows to Elvis to Eminem. New York was often ground zero for new aspects of hipness due to the mixing of immigrants and black. He notes the role of Jewish producers, and songwriters in the role of the Blues and R&B. He looks at different movements like Jazz, bebop, pulp fiction, film noir, and The Beats. I particularly like the chapter, in which he discussed the O.G.s: Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Whitman, who were the literary influence of hipness in American literature. Ralph Ellison and the Beats carry on this tradition. He also notes the importance of trickster, to which he sees manifested in Bugs Bunny-who gets a whole chapter. He also notes the contributions of outsiders like outlaws, gangsters, players, and hustlers. Meanwhile, he notes a connection between hip and consumer culture—the selling of the idea of “hip" either through records or a fashion, which is sad, but true. William Burroughs selling Nikes and the like. Commercialism and marketing attempt to capture and market hip to use as a selling point, I think is undeniable. It was a well written and researched book that I found to be a compelling read.
February 1, 2020
"Hip requires a transaction, an acknowledgement. If a tree falls in the forest and no one acknowledges its fundamental dopeness, it is not hip." (8)
"Hip is the difference between Frank Miller's brooding Dark Knight comics and the traditional Batman lines; between the X Games and the Olympics; between Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant; Snoopy and Linus; a Glock and a Colt." (10)
"Living in rhythm -- sonic, visual, intellectual, philosophical -- is an essential promise of hip." (194)
"Like many characters in this book, the white boy who stole the blues is a trickster of sorts: self-serving, indeterminate, navigating between two worlds. He trespasses where he is not wanted. Like Esu-Elebara the Yoruban trickster who brought humans the gift of divination, he reveals inaccessible knowledge, but never directly, only through his own second-hand translations. His thefts are the beginning of meaning." (353-4)
"Hip is the difference between Frank Miller's brooding Dark Knight comics and the traditional Batman lines; between the X Games and the Olympics; between Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant; Snoopy and Linus; a Glock and a Colt." (10)
"Living in rhythm -- sonic, visual, intellectual, philosophical -- is an essential promise of hip." (194)
"Like many characters in this book, the white boy who stole the blues is a trickster of sorts: self-serving, indeterminate, navigating between two worlds. He trespasses where he is not wanted. Like Esu-Elebara the Yoruban trickster who brought humans the gift of divination, he reveals inaccessible knowledge, but never directly, only through his own second-hand translations. His thefts are the beginning of meaning." (353-4)
October 25, 2009
I had a love/hate relationship with this book. While I enjoyed Leland's comprehensive review of the origins of "hip," his smarmy, self-important tone drove me crazy. I loved learning more about why white people love minstrel shows, the historical importance of Williams Burroughs and why trucker hats were briefly considered hip, but I'm not sure if slogging through Leland's insufferable musings was worth it (for a prime example of this, read his passage on 353 & 354 justifying the age old story of "the white boy who stole the blues" - he actually says that "[the white boy's:] thefts are the beginning of meaning." I might vomit.). It's clear that Leland considers himself hip, and is therefore going to insert his opinions into what could have been a straightforward historical review of "hip" as an idea. If he'd been able to separate the two, this would have been a much better book.
April 26, 2010
Hip: The History is a breath of fresh air. In a society obsessed with race that tries so hard to dissolve this dichotomy, John Leland presents us with a history of the concept of hip, which he uses to present the reader an inclusive, rather than divisive notion of race, and how it has come to solidify what we can understand as American culture. A constant reader of books on race relations in America, it can, many times, be overbearing to read about the stringent line that is black and white. Leland provides us with a view that our culture is created by a "mashup" of races and nationalities that constantly feed off of each other. I can see where one might be sceptical of such an idea as being a fantastic vision of our society, but he addresses it in a historical context following a timeline over numerous generations.
January 3, 2010
Leland’s book doubles as both a narrative history of what is hip in America and as a look at how race, language and culture have intermingled to become known as hip over the past century. Hip, argues Leland, runs almost right through from novelists like Herman Melville to performers like Notorious BIG, with stops along the way in Beat and Jazz culture. Leland’s account is detailed, although he tends to move around from topic to topic, and at times almost feels like a textbook.
Still, he does a great job cataloging just how language and ideas are redefined and pushed to extremes, letting the mainstream come to them before they push out again into uncharted waters. For one interested in how and why the culture of America is pop culture, Leland’s book is a must.
Still, he does a great job cataloging just how language and ideas are redefined and pushed to extremes, letting the mainstream come to them before they push out again into uncharted waters. For one interested in how and why the culture of America is pop culture, Leland’s book is a must.
September 25, 2014
An interesting history of an interesting topic. However, I did feel like his definition of "hip" was a little too narrow. There was a lot of reference to drug use as being "hip" while there was little mention of how eating organic, shopping at whole foods and doing yoga is "hip". I think that "hip" is an abstract concept that happen in specific waves and that the focus of the drugs and the racial aspect of "hip" is just one wave out of many that could also be considered "hip" for completely different reasons. I did like the history of hip hop being related to slave spirituals though. I don't think I'll be able to listen to it in the same way. I'm probably not cool enough to really "get" it though.
June 5, 2007
In the midst of a veritable research abyss whilst writing a major investigative paper on [what else?] hipsters, my Research Assistant [Mia Steinle] discovered this books in the depths of the AU library, bless her heart! Leland writes for Spin and the NY Times, about pop culture and music, mostly, and this piece is a very thoroughly written investigation of the different stages of hip throughout the 20th Century.
My favorite chapter is the one about gender and it looks at the different feminisms present in hipster culture, with a compare-and-contrast look at Patty Smith and Kim Gordon as feminine icons.
My favorite chapter is the one about gender and it looks at the different feminisms present in hipster culture, with a compare-and-contrast look at Patty Smith and Kim Gordon as feminine icons.
December 10, 2009
There is something un-hip about reading a history book on hipness. But I did it anyway, and I liked it. Leland traces the history of hip from the slave trade through the civil war all the way to white hipster williamsburg. Hip, he argues, comes from the convergences and tensions between cultures - more specifically, between black and white. It flourished in times of migration and flux, such as the Great Migration, which brought 1.4 million African Americans from the South to the cities of the North.
I like the stories about the Beat Generation. I wished he would have focused more on contemporary hipness (I know, I know: it's a history).
I like the stories about the Beat Generation. I wished he would have focused more on contemporary hipness (I know, I know: it's a history).
July 19, 2011
A compelling and entertaining history of that most American of cultural phenomena: hipness, that quality of being in the know and a step ahead of your mainstream counterparts. Leland builds well on other cultural historians like Ann Douglas in arguing that the intersection of American ethnic and racial factions produced a cultural space in the cracks that hipsters have been occupying since at least the middle of the 19th century. Comprehensive in its research and outrageously funny at times in charting the paradoxes of hipness, especially in its always uneasy relationship to the marketplace.
March 10, 2015
"I used to be *with it*, but then they changed what *it* was. Now what I'm with isn't *it*, and what's *it* seems weird and scary to me." - Abraham Simpson
Conventional wisdom says you can't define what is hip, but you know it if you see it. But John Leland makes a pretty valiant effort, outlining the history of successive generations of hipness from the 19th century counterculturalists like Twain and Whitman, through Hemingway's Lost Generation, the days of jazz and bebop, the 50's beatniks, 70's punks, and 90's hip-hopsters.
Conventional wisdom says you can't define what is hip, but you know it if you see it. But John Leland makes a pretty valiant effort, outlining the history of successive generations of hipness from the 19th century counterculturalists like Twain and Whitman, through Hemingway's Lost Generation, the days of jazz and bebop, the 50's beatniks, 70's punks, and 90's hip-hopsters.
January 10, 2008
The subject matter of this book is really fascinating and I had every intention of finishing it. However, the writing style is so dense and somewhat stilted that I just couldn't push through. My biggest complaint is that the author likes to write sentences with long list of names. Names of people I dont know. I guess I am just not hip enough to get it. maybe someday I will revisit in an attempt to reclaim my hipster cred. .
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