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. Read on…
