Review: 6 Sick Hipsters

Attacked where it matters: a hipster's taste in music.



Someone is killing the Williamsburg, Brooklyn hipster elite, leaving clues only the most sub-culturally attuned can find and decipher. The police don't seem interested in these seemingly random killings, so it is up to the Whole Sick Crew to find the killer before they become one of his next victims. Set amid the mainstream-eschewing world of hipsters, 6 Sick Hipsters is a conspiracy novel more rounded than most, delivering beautiful pacing and a well-defined ensemble cast told in an often self-depreciating style that perfectly compliments the uber-cool mentality of its characters.

This, Rayo Casablanca's [1] first novel, is filled with obscure and pop references alike along with intelligent slacker character forms reminiscent of Douglas Coupland's Generation X [2], though Casablanca's characters are grounded by plot rather than the social criticism. Though Casablanca does dip into witty satire and deep social commentary, he displays more prominently the gun power and buckets of blood consistent with the conspiracy thriller genre. The novel is more apt to develop a beautifully grotesque description of a head being shot:

"Cooper's head had been there, all bright teeth and receding hair, and then a nanosecond later—just a jump cut—it was a million bits of corpus colossum and eyeball juice. It was like is smile got so wide and bright that it evaporated the face around it. Poof!" [pg. 168]

than to expound upon the contagion of cultural memes:

"You have to understand this battle […] You're not up against a monolithic entity, a bear running at you from the forest. You're fighting for survival against a wave of fads…" [pg. 237]

though both do exist, and deliver beautifully.

The novel culminates to a revelation of a "trend-war" fought on the battle grounds of consumerism, a topic that could easily suffer the ramblings of nihilist angst and anti-capitalism critiques. These moments do appear, but the reader is never bogged down by tales of cultural woe. Instead we are allowed fresh insight into the buyer/seller mentality. I refer specifically to an especially engaging exchange between the novel's villain and hero toward the end of the story. I won't give it away, but not surprisingly the passage comes during another one of the conspiracy-thriller genre's defining aspects: there's always time for a speech before dying/pulling a trigger.

6 Sick Hipsters carries the rogue camaraderie of Joey Goebel's The Anomalies [3]—punk attitude and hipster lifestyles included—along with a less passive social critique found in Coupland's Generation X. Fans of slick conspiracies and vinyl records rejoice.

[Caleb Ross]

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6 Sick Hipsters by Rayo Casablanca.
Kensington Books
288 Pages

Footnotes
[1] Sick Hipster
[2] Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, Douglas Coupland, St Martin's Press, 1991
[3] The Anomalies, Joey Goebel, MacAdam Cage Publishing, 2003

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Caleb Ross has written reviews for Depraved Press, Thirdeye Magazine, and even a couple right here at Dogmatika (Palahniuk's Rant and the Falling From the Sky anthology). Visit his website for a full list of publications: www.www.calebjross.com/work