The hipster literary movement has officially kicked into disaffected ironic overdrive. Twenty-three year old David Amsden's new book Important Things That Don't Matter chronicles the life of a twenty-year old in Rockville, MD. The character's parents are divorced and a typical scene in the book has "the main character as a child watching a pornographic film on videotape while his father snorts cocaine." Amsden, a former New Yorker intern and sometime pal of photographer Ryan McGinley and Ken Park actress Tiffany Limos, lives in Williamsburg. His mantra: "You've got to have some sort of faith in people...at least in your ability to manipulate them." (He also has a Livejournal blog, but I can't find it. Anyone know where it is?)
Oh, to be a boldface name! [NYT]