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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 306
EAN: 9780306810244
Edition: 1st Thus Edition
ISBN: 0306810247
Label: Da Capo Press
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: March 27, 2001
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Studio: Da Capo Press
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
In a thoughtful mixture of autobiography, journalism, and cultural criticism, Ann Powers examines how "bohemian" culture--which many consider dead and buried--has seeped into the American mainstream. While writing extensively about her own trajectory from communal living and a dead-end record-store job in San Francisco to cohabital bliss and a staff position as a rock critic for The New York Times, Powers also takes great care to include the perspectives of her peers, even when their impressions clash violently with her own. In doing so, she turns Weird Like Us into a frontline analysis of how the members of (dare we say it?) Generation X try to find significance and purpose in their lives.
"It's hard to shock most Americans," Powers notes in a chapter on the shifts in sexual politics and culture. "But it's hard to engage them, too." Weird Like Us shows how this applies to many other aspects of social life besides sex: experimentation and variance have become increasingly normal in everything from drug use to pop-music styles, but with little or no conscious reflection on their consequences. Without that self-awareness, "alternative culture" risks becoming nothing more than an empty pose. "For too long we have united only within a culture of rebellion. What we need to refuse is the negativity that comes from always defining ourselves against a society we can't help but live within." For Powers, acknowledging and accepting one's position within mainstream culture isn't an act of "selling out," but an opportunity to act, in an individual capacity, as an agent for social change, an example of a good life worth living. Weird Like Us demonstrates that you don't have to be a cultural conservative to believe in "values," and Powers's emphasis on integrity, respect, and self-consciousness adds a new and inspiring voice to progressive cultural criticism. --Ron Hogan
Product Description:
American bohemia is alive and well and redefining the way all of us live, love, and work: so declares Ann Powers in an invigorating blend of criticism, journalism, and autobiography that takes us into the heart of alternative America today. Powers, one of the nation's most notable music critics, explores how the generation that inherited the counterculture assumptions of the sixties is transforming youthful rebellion into a sustainable alternative style of living—creating a new bohemia with dynamic citizens who are reinventing shared values from the ground up. Through stories from her own life and those of her comrades—artists, writers, entrepreneurs, queers, and cyber-outlaws—Powers traces the evolution of this world and celebrates those who keep bohemia thriving from coast to coast.
Average Rating: 
Rating: -
This is a much more personal book than I had anticipated. Ann Powers traces her own bohemianism from her childhood in Seattle to her present life in New York, all the while relating the life stories of friends and acquaintances who have defined their lives by their own versions of bohemia. Some of the ideas presented, like those regarding drugs and drug use, appear to be simply justifications of poor choices and bad behavior: junkies masquerading as bohemians. It's almost as if one can't be a bohemian without doing drugs. At the same time, Powers makes allowances for many of the "selling out" behaviors that would normally be scorned by true bohemians, such as working in corporate America.
Powers focuses mainly on her own brand of bohemianism, that of the punk scene of the 1980s. But, she never really delves that deeply into it. After reading this book, I don't feel like I understand the punk scene any better than before. The punk rockers and bohemians, as presented by Powers, feel superficial and somehow as if they're trying too hard. Another drawback is how outdated this book is. Powers devotes a whole section to the Speakeasy internet cafe in Seattle, which actually burned down in 2001, the same year my edition was published. Many of the cultural references are old, which some may think is excusable, but in all honesty, a book devoted to any cultural phenomenon or philosophy should be able to transcend time. This book doesn't do that.
All in all, I enjoyed this book, but there were several aspects of it that disappointed me. But I would still recommend it to anyone interested in counter-culture or music.
Rating:  -
Well written, insightful, entertaining. Suggested reading for anyone interested in the counter-culture/underground of the '80s and for fans of North America's best city, San Francisco.
Rating: -
Very well written, interesting story. Would like to meet Ms. Powers in person and chat with her.
Rating:  -
I sympathize with the author who is trying to document an underground that is genuine and vibrant. But unfortunately she doesn't make it that way for her readers. I suspect it's because she wasn't there long enough; 4 years in a group house and at a minimum wage job at a record store apparently haven't qualifed her perspective. Her descriptions of eating ramen noodles, dying her hair blue, and sharing a bed with housemates while on multiple forms of drugs just sound adolescent. She was out of what she calls "bohemia" by her mid-twenties. She keeps identifying as "weird" but outside the context of a community of freaks. "Weird" becomes a professional identity.
That said, some of the people she interviews are truly living according to bohemian values, and her interviews offer some insight into their lives. The book also has the advantage of her connections as a journalist to provide interviews with some of the more visible of freaks.
But she misses out on the opportunity to really think hard about the complications of bohemia, about issues of class and also, how education impacts someone's social status within society, gentrification and our changing urban centers, and the cooptation of underground aesthetics by mass advertising, especially directed at young people.
Personally, I think she's watching too much TV in that Brooklyn condo of hers. But, then, watching MTV has become part of her job.
Too bad, because it'd be really cool if someone else could do a good job on this theme.
Rating:  -
i snored through this one. I got about 20 pages from the end and finally couldn't take it anymore. it has very little to do with bohemian life. you better have a dictionary ready because she is really trying to impress someone. i can't beleive it got published.
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