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HIPSTERISM

                                              December 22, 2002

Philo Vance is portrayed as
this intellectual effette
snob, who's discursive,                   GREENE_MURDER
encyclopediac discourse
annoys the more
straight-forward
professional law-men he
hangs out with.

   Pretty clearly, Philo Vance
   is supposed to be a hipster
   of sorts, a guy who's up
   on what's going down.

      He looks pretty ridiculous
      by today's standards, but
      yesterday's hipster always       Possible counter-argument:
      looks like a self-deluded        Dorothy Sayer's Peter Whimsey, who
      square by today's light.         holds up pretty well, in comparison.

                          STYLE_IMPAIRED

Might be interesting to
track the image of the
intellectual in pop                 intellectual?
fiction, and the way it             hipster?
mutates over time.                  connoisseur?

                                       Maybe if I throw
                                       enough crude synonyms
James Bond fits into this              at this a concept
continuum somewhere.                   will emerge.             FUND_OF_HEDGES

  John Steed and Emma Peel.

                                        Homer Evans...
Austin Powers is supposed
to be some sort of spoof                LIFE_OF_HOMER
of something though it's
hard to say of what.

  The James Coburn role "Flint"?

  Lawrence Block's eternally
  wakeful Evan Tanner ("The                Not to be confused
  Thief who Couldn't Sleep",               with "The Burglar
  and so on).                              in the Closet"


In the mid-fifties, things
*change* ... post-beat
the "hipster" is named "hipster"
and the game goes underground.




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