The Hipster Handbook by Robert Lanham, Anchor Books, 169 pages, $14.95

The Modern Gentleman: A Guide To Essential Manners, Savvy & Vice by Phineas Mollod and Jason Tesauro, Ten Speed Press, 341 pages, $23.95

I really love your hairdo, yeah / I'm glad you like mine too / see what looking pretty cool will get ya.
         -- from "Bohemian Like You" by the Dandy Warhols

The Hipster Handbook makes no reference to Norman Mailer's 1957 essay "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections On The Hipster." Author Robert Lanham claims his book is "the first guide to what it means to be a Hipster." Better it were the last.

Mailer argued that the hipster was an American existentialist (versus the French variety) -- a mottled combo of bohemian, juvenile delinquent and Negro. The sexual liberation, marijuana inhalation and jazz appreciation of hipsters were not simply outre lifestyle choices, but represented "a psychopathic brilliance" and "a dark, romantic, and yet undeniably dynamic view of existence." To modern eyes, Mailer's essay is a propulsive, albeit overwrought, exultation, but understand: His Hipsters were rebels and frontiersmen while Squares were "trapped in the totalitarian tissues of American society." Hipsters represented a real threat to the Norman Rockwell nation.

If the potential frothed by Mailer represents the high point of the hipster, then Lanham provides "Reflections On The Superficial Hipster." Lanham acknowledges their vague politics ("Hipsters are artists who always lean to the left politically") and love of higher learning and literature, but concentrates on hip music, clothing, tattoos, alcohol, food, mates, jobs, movies and hair (a topic so vital it receives 10 pages). Modern hipsters love to consume as often as squares -- they simply do a better job disguising and justifying it.

The illustrations are many in this thin book; the tone light, fast, clever in places, occasionally quite funny. Lanham on peelers: "Hipsters call it burlesque. And they are dancers, not strippers." On the 1966 film Blow-Up: "A great film for Hipsters who enjoy debating existentialism while looking at boobs." On pickup lines: "I was hanging out in this neighborhood before it got gentrified." Unfortunately, these zingers might be in vain -- Lanham never bothers to prove hipsters have a sense of humour.

Still, those in the know will (one hopes) laugh in recognition at the Bipster (blue-collar hipster) and The Schmooze (a self-explanatory personality type that describes 98 per cent of Toronto media folk). Squares will surely chuckle at the strange and pathetic rituals described within: "It would not be unusual for the Loner to hold on to his/her Intellivision game cartridges from the eighties, even though the player has been broken for a decade."

What ruins an otherwise guilty pleasure is the inclusion of fake lingo. As Mailer put it, "What makes Hip a special language is that it cannot really be taught -- if one shares none of the experiences of elation and exhaustion which it is equipped to describe, then it seems merely arch or vulgar or irritating."

Irritating is the best way to describe the glossary that begins The Hipster Handbook, filled with such words as flubber (breast implants), kale (money) and nancy (ass). As parody it might be tolerable -- getting drunk is deemed to be shellacked -- but Lanham appears serious.

In the fall of 1992, a former record label intern named Megan Jasper hoaxed the New York Times with her non-existent Grunge Lexicon: e.g. wack slacks (old ripped jeans), cob nobbler (loser) and lamestain (uncool person). Those tired of seeing the Seattle subculture commodified into five easy pieces thought this prank was, to borrow a Lanham term, deck (cool).

But the slanguage of The Hipster Handbook has no such noble intent. Worse, this grating faux-vernacular is repeated ad nauseam throughout the book. To use another Lanham word, this decision is very fin (bad).

If this book still interests you, make haste. Certain dairy products expire less rapidly. Remember The Preppie Handbook?

Exactly.

* * *

Where the Hipster defies Square society (while slavishly following their own self-generated set of unwritten rules), the Gentleman actively acquaints himself with etiquette dictums past and present. This veneration for rules is not unique to the gentle variety of male -- from the Ten Commandments to Letterman's Top Ten to the diktats of Fight Club, men have an affinity for list-making, given an attention span that makes reading entire paragraphs wearisome. Maxim has The Code (Rule #8,000: Friends don't let friends wear Speedos. Ever. Issue closed) and Esquire has Rules (No. 175: The fatter the man, the smaller the swimsuit). Ironic, these codes, given how often men seem to break and bend them.

The rules of The Modern Gentleman, however, aren't Square so much as savvy. Save for Chapter Nine, "Trouble," this reads like a best-case scenario guide to life; a how-to do everything book from jukeboxing to dinner party seating arrangements. Part reference, part info, part entertainment, the advice is actually good. Here the authors romanticize mixology:

"Hand off living-room hosting to an able first mate so you can wrestle in the kitchen with tools that sound like Batman villains: the muddler, the jigger, and the strainer. No matter how cold the frosty shaker, grip with vim and hold on like a wing walker."

As you might anticipate from a book with a co-author named Phineas, the wordplay is dense and delicate. Favourites include: rodomontade, gelid, boscage, tintinnabulation, slugabeds and defenestration. Unlike The Hipster Handbook, however, the authors use real words, although you'd be forgiven for looking puzzled at a sentence such as: "Reserve your speed-bag flurry of vituperative slurry for irksome telemarketers."

Lads who read lad magazines will not enjoy the precious diction, and that is the point. Not that The Modern Gentleman is shy about the Mile-High club, strip poker or even threesomes: "Managing one romance is hard enough; balancing two entails the deft touch of a surgeon and the intuitive communication of a mixed-doubles pair."

Ordinary concerns of ordinary men are all analyzed -- with extraordinary language. Both the mundane (jukeboxing) and the scintillating (skinny-dipping) receive the same sheen of tasteful demystification.

This book exudes a refinement and confidence reflected in the lush, smart, exact design and presentation. The illustrations are crisp and charts on kink and neckties and Reported Earnings (a.k.a. How many women have you slept with?) are funny and thorough.

The care and thought evinced herein -- this is the only book I have reviewed in the past few years devoid of typos -- makes this both an aesthetic and mindful pleasure.