review • November 03, 2010
Phoebe Connelly
"There should be no shame ever surrounding the love of or identification with a place, a way of life, a band, or a pair of glasses."
—Maria Bustillos, from The Awl's "Being a Hipster Is An Excellent and Wonderful Thing!"
It's difficult to get a grasp on What Was The Hipster? This is due in part to the very structure of the book: Divided into three sections, it includes a transcript of an April 2009 panel on the death of the hipster, five responses to the panel (two published at other media outlets, three elicited by n +1), and a final section of four essays loosely taking up the volume's