Review: 6 Sick Hipsters by Rayo Casablanca

I remem­ber last summer’s arti­cle in Time Out New York that offered up the fol­low­ing the­sis: Why the Hipster Must Die — a mod­est pro­posal to save New York Cool (May — June ’07, Christian Lorentzen). It seems debut nov­el­ist and con­fused word­smith Rayo Casablanca took this idea to heart, or missed the point entirely depend­ing how you look at it. His new novel, “6 Sick Hipsters”, is an attempt at intel­lec­tu­al­iz­ing the nomads of Williamsburg who vol­un­tar­ily go by that moniker, a futile effort to say the least. Perhaps, for a fleet­ing moment, Mr. Casablanca for­got how passé it is to call one­self a hip­ster, but alas, let’s try and get to the meat of his novel.

Primarily it is the sto­ry of a boy and a girl who find them­selves in extra­or­di­nar­ily gory cir­cum­stances. Our hero, scientist/porn afi­cionado and author Harrison, spends his time cavort­ing around Billyburg with his equally fame-obsessed gang of pals, the self-titled Whole Sick Crew. It’s hard to tell what has brought this mot­ley bunch together, but to spend too much time won­der­ing would keep you from ever mak­ing it more than 10 pages into the book. In any event, some of his cohorts start draw­ing con­nect­ing the dots between promi­nent hip­ster mur­ders. For some rea­son, Harrison falls in love with Beth-Ann, a knit­ter on the verge of blind­ness who indulges his friends’ detec­tive work.

So the cats all get together and think they can take down the ser­ial killer wreak­ing havoc on hip­s­ter­dom, but things aren’t always what they seem and our boy and girl find them­selves caught in a web of lies, intrigue, and blood that threat­ens their fringe existence.

Look, nobody likes hip­sters, so it would seem a book in which they are dis­em­bow­eled in bloody detail would be appeal­ing, but the author’s car­di­nal sin is that he tries so hard to take a faded and con­fused cul­ture seri­ously, I don’t want to give away the end­ing, but the truth is that his cli­max is actu­ally won­der­ful. He twists the con­tra­dic­tions of hip­ness on its side in an attempt, seem­ingly, to prove how silly the need to be ahead on the hip curve can be. But the road he takes us down to get there is alto­gether bor­ing and poorly linked. The char­ac­ters are devel­oped in all the wrong places, and it is hard to tell any of them apart because their lives are so sim­i­larly mun­dane. They are all equally almost-famous, preter­nat­u­rally vain and inex­plic­a­bly bor­ing, with a cap­i­tal BORE.

Simply because I wouldn’t feel right giv­ing away the twisted end­ing, even though I doubt you’ll ever sub­ject your­self to read­ing this train wreck, I can’t really say any­thing pos­i­tive about this book to you. So for those blood­thirsty for Hipster Horror, look else­where because all you’ll find here is staid schlock.