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The premise
of Casablanca's 6 Sick Hipsters is enticing: someone
is murdering those atrocious denizens of Williamsburg, Brooklyn
known as hipsters. Williamsburg hipsters are not really hip;
they are people who rely on the outward trappings of cool.
They shop at Urban Outfitters rather than at thrift stores,
and what appears to be messy hair is actually perfectly coifed.
The indie rock they listen to is all sanctioned by major label
distributors and mainstream press. They're all on the Atkins
diet. They don't have real jobs—they get money from their
parents—and many of them are in bands that feature Casios.
Who doesn't want to kill a hipster? But the so-called hipsters
of Casablanca's book barely fit the profile at all, and one
has to wonder why he considers his characters hipsters and
why he's set the book in Williamsburg.
The murderer,
who leaves clues indicating that his sobriquet is Doctor Jeep
from the eponymous The Sisters of Mercy song, is a good-looking,
cowboy-boot-wearing uber-geek who challenges some of his victims
to trivia games in their areas of expertise prior to elimination.
Doctor Jeep's nemeses are the Whole Sick Crew, a group of
highly educated and successful 20-something males who somehow
find time to hang out and think about uniforms for their gang.
For some reason, they become intrigued by the murders, which
are occurring mostly in their Williamsburg stomping grounds.
Obviously, hijinx ensue, and in the midst of some gun fights
and car chases, the Whole Sick Crew discovers duplicity among
their ranks, and an insidious plot involving a multinational
corporation that controls the majority of the media consumed
by hipsters. In theory, the story sounds great, but the execution
isn't as powerful as it should be.
The book
is a frustrating mess of weird incongruities and unresolved
threads. There's no indication that "the Whole Sick Crew"
actually are hipsters beyond the fact that some of them live
in Williamsburg. They don't appear to have any of the hipster
accouterments like jutting hipbones, faux-ironic t-shirts,
and trust funds. The character development on some of these
individuals is pretty sparse, so it's hard to keep track of
who's who. There are two main characters with "Rad" in their
names, and one minor character named Rod. Most of the people
who die are not people readers have gotten to know, love,
or hate. The group of heroes are called the Whole Sick Crew,
but the person who named them acknowledges that they bear
no resemblance to the original Whole Sick Crew from Thomas
Pynchon's V. And when they decide to catch the killer,
the crew takes on a different name.
There's
too much ephemera that doesn't advance the plot or characters,
such as one character's sideline of writing paleontology porn,
or another's theme restaurant, Trisome 21, where the waitstaff
all have Down Syndrome. A subplot involving the lead male
protagonist, Harrison, breaking up with his long-time fiancé,
makes Harrison seem like a jerk, which could not have been
the author's intention. Several characters have the same psychiatrist,
but Casablanca never goes anywhere with this. The main female
protagonist—Beth, a woman with advancing macular degeneration—thinks
she has knitted a magic hat with a special stitch that improves
her vision, but it's not mentioned whether or not she's using
it at key times during the book. The back end of the book
is overly long and is rife with stereotypical evil genius
dialog, and the front end, where Casablanca could have spent
some time with character development, seems very rushed. 6
Sick Hipsters tries to be a scathing commentary on the
influence of marketing on youth culture but instead only succeeds
as a fluffy murder mystery with a few plot twists that merely
hint at what it could have been.
That
said, 6 Sick Hipsters has some redeeming qualities.
There are some great supporting characters, like Solange the
mathematician/stripper, the sewer diver who leads the Beth
and Harrison to an underground world (probably the only other
reference to Pynchon's V. ), and the old ladies of
a knitting group that Beth leads at a nursing home. Before
the overly-long ending there are quite a few amusing details
and dialog. And it's funny when Rad, the music-obsessed ER
doctor, keeps correcting his friends when they say "Sisters
of Mercy" instead of "The Sisters of Mercy." Besides,
it's always fun to read about annoying characters getting
their comeuppance. There's enough in 6 Sick Hipsters
that shows Casablanca's talent. It will be no surprise when
his next book turns out to be much better.
(April,
2008)
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