The cool school Writing from America's hip underground

O'Brien has been on the cutting edge since his days at Andy Warhol's Interview and through stints at Rolling Stone, Spin, High Times, and GQ, where he's the Style Guy. In his rev-it-up introduction to this brilliantly conceived, must-have Library of America anthology, he orients us to what the original hipster outlaw, misfit, rebel, heretic was all about and how hipster language embodies radical points of view and ways of being. O'Brien also tells us, Cool is like grace. It can be sold but not bought. So who are the exemplars of cool according to O'Brien? The Beats contingent is here, of course, and so are establishment-blasting comedians Lord Buckley, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and George Carlin. Indelible passages from the autobiographies of jazz musicians Mezz Mezzrow, Miles Davis, and Art Pepper cast light on the dangers of all-out creativity. Norman Mailer's knockout manifesto, The White Negro, is as riling now as it was in 1957, as is Seymour Krim's electrifying 1961 riff on making it. With Ishmael Reed, Nick Tosches, Lester Bangs, and dozens more, this is one red-hot book of cool.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist

In his percussive introduction, editor O'Brien ("The Style Guy" column, GQ) writes "cool.can be sold but not bought." This collection proves his point. Apparently, O'Brien has been persuaded that hipsters have sold out, and the current crop lack the same substance and stature of past generations. Collected within are excerpts of fiction, criticism, theory, biography, poetry, and performance mostly from mid-20th-century writers, artists, and musicians. Illuminated by William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, readers bounce with Miles Davis and Mezz Mezzrow over to Henry Miller and Frank O'Hara, linger with Lenny Bruce and Diane DiPrima by way of artist Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga, then over to Lester Bangs and Richard Hell, before heading for the door with Cookie Mueller and George Carlin, with plenty of lesser-known artists along the way. It's truly a wealth of fascinating, diverting reads, but O'Brien's selections do inadvertently raise the question: Where do we find the hip writers who aren't overwhelmingly white, male, and American? Volume 2? Verdict O'Brien offers an entertaining and enlightening anthology, whose shortcomings may be excused owing to the nebulousness and irony of its guiding conceit: hip. Recommended to cultural historians with literary tastes and especially to fans of the early jazz, Beat generation, hippie, and punk eras. Also for wannabe hipsters and those looking to brush up on their artistic roots.-Chris Wieman, Univ. of the Sciences Libs., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.