Down and Out in the 2020s

You know these people. East Coast writers of varying degrees of seriousness. Center-left on both the political spectrum and the Kinsey scale. Like rap in a Pitchfork sort of way. Surprisingly nerdy about basketball. Pretentious about the cultural niches they know and dismissive of the ones they don’t. We used to call them hipsters; I’m not sure what we call them now. But you know these people. And if you’re a fan of Andrew Martin (check out the excellent collection Cool for America, and his aptly titled debut, Early Work), you might even like these people. This is because these people are also the most astute observers of the micro-signifiers of contemporary American life. At least, they are when Martin’s ventriloquizing them.