Customer Reviews

The Ancient Book of Hip

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In D.W. Lichtenberg's debut collection, "The Ancient Book of Hip," Lichtenberg's PBR-toting persona reveals insights into the urban hipster mentality while still remaining a part of the culture he attempts to examine. As it's impossible to comment clearly on a situation you're not entirely removed from, the line between statements on others and self-reflection is blurred here.

In "This Heat Box," Lichtenberg looks at sex in the New York City summer and the romantic notions it conjures up. Then, in one quick motion, he turns the concept from the general to the candidly specific with the line "She was romantic. Before you really got to know her (23)."

As the collection continues, you have to wonder if you can really believe this increasingly unreliable narrator at all, with his inability to separate self-realizations from universal truths. Sure, he offers one take on the common hipster, but perhaps that's all it is. Not The history, as the book's (ostensibly tongue-in-cheek) title proclaims, but An ancient book of hip.

Still, there are plenty of relatable moments here, buried beneath layers of generational and regional specificity, that promise to make this book relevant long after the age of ironic sweaters has ended. In "Two Things," G says to B, "I thought maybe it,d all blow over andwe,d share a twix or a reese,s or something else that comes in twos." A hundred years from now, there's a chance nobody will know what a Reese's is. And there's a chance this book might be the true Ancient Book of Hip by then.