Blood, Sweat and Tears

Title: Vamped
Author: David Sosnowski
Publisher: Free Press
Rating: A-

When I first read about this book, I was initially turned off. A book about vampires? Not really my thing. I'll leave that for the fantasy gurus and geeks. But the review was intriguing, delving into the book's quirky plot of the world's ratio of mortals to vampires flipped around, with a father-daughter story to boot.

This story has all the ingredients for a real page-turner. Sex, violence, humor and tenderness. The main character is a vampire named Marty who is fed up with eternity. This is a common feeling among vampires in the New World Order that's been created. On a night when Marty was feeling especially low, circumstances drive him to stumble upon a little girl named Isuzu, whose mother has just been killed by vampires. Isuzu is a rarity; her mother and her had escaped from one of the government's "farms," where mortals are raised so they can be sold to the highest vampire bidder.

What ensues is a tale about how a little mortal can warm a vampire's heart, giving him something to live for. Marty adopts little Isuzu as his own. Sosnoski does an excellent job developing the relationship between the two characters. Marty goes through all the problems most parents do, but with the added components of housing a human being in a world of vampires. The chemistry is very real for such a surreal story.

Sosnoski does an excellent job of using humor in his character development as well. Marty is the narrator and has a very cynical, sarcastic way of describing the world that he helped create. But not all the images are funny or tender. Sosnoski juxtaposes these qualities with just as much sadness and violence.

Another great aspect of this book are the themes of materialism and voyerism. Sosnoski gives a view of American culture through a blood-red magnifying glass. Everything from pederast priests to child stars are touched upon with humor and candidness in the world the author creates. There's an underlying commentary going on in this book that makes it a real treasure.

Overall, this book is a great read. Despite the too happy ending, I highly recommend it.

What is Hip?

In the future I will be using this forum occasionally to provide book reviews. Below is my premier attempt.

Title: Hip: The History
Author: John Leland
Publisher: HarperCollins
Rating: B+

Hip : characterized by a keen informed awareness of or involvement in the newest developments or styles

-- www.merriamwebster.com

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?