Leland, John 1959-

PERSONAL:

Born August 24, 1959; married; wife's name Risa; children: Jordan. Education: Attended Columbia University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY.

CAREER:

Journalist for New York, NY, periodicals, including Spin magazine, columnist, until 1989; Newsday, journalist, beginning 1989; Newsweek, lifestyle section editor, beginning 1993; Details, editor-in-chief; and New York Times, reporter.

WRITINGS:

Hip: The History, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think), Viking (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

John Leland is a well-known entertainment writer whose work has appeared in major periodicals for over two decades. When his literary agent suggested he write a book defining and tracing the origins of the term "hip," Leland was at first reluctant. Yet as he began researching, he found it to be a fascinating topic. "As I learned more, especially about the West African roots of the word hip, I began to see hip as a story we create about ourselves to get around the official racial narratives that we have thrust on us," Leland told Rockcritics.com Web site reporter Joe Estes, adding: "In this sense, I saw hip as ahead of—and in some cases a remedy to—the limited views of race that infuse government, school, church and the workplace. It seemed very central to who we think we are as Americans. And so, important." With this piqued interest, Leland approached the project seriously, first defining in Hip: The History, the term's African origin (from the Wolof "hipi"). Thus Leland writes: "Hip is an awareness or enlightenment across cultural lines. It means that you know more than you're supposed to about the other guy's game," whoever that "other guy" might be. Leland further defined the book this way: "To a great extent it's a book about race and pop culture, and about a paradox that seems to shape so much of America: Even as the nation's history has been defined by racial division and antipathy, in our pop culture, which we invent to tell stories about ourselves, we are at our best wildly hybrid. I question the popular assumption that what we call black culture and white culture are really separate." Indeed, Leland proposes that blacks and whites have long been borrowing facets of each other's cultures and transforming what has been taken. This back-and-forth action is "the heat of hip." He continued: "The book's thesis is that hip emerges originally as an awareness that bridges binary polarities: black and white mainstream and margins, insider and outsider, conformist and rebel, etc. The binaries no longer shape our lives. We're much more complicated ethnically, and the forces that once lined up against hip behavior—church, capital, parents, role models—now all want to see themselves as hip."

In the work Leland discusses such topics as slavery's effect on the blues; Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman as the original gangsters (read individualists); the Harlem Renaissance; bebop; tricksters; the criminally hip (outlaws, gangsters, players, and hustlers); hip ladies; the drug connection; digital hipness. The work caught the attention of many reviewers, including Booklist contributor Mike Tribby, who praised it as "a highly readable, provocative resource"; Library Journal commentator Carol J. Binkowski, who called it an "absorbing analysis"; and Boston Globe reviewer Renee Graham, who dubbed it "entertaining and enlightening." School Library Journal reviewer Emily Lloyd predicted that Hip will be "a surefire way to excite teens about the forces at work in American history."

Leland followed with Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think), published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Kerouac's On the Road. Like other young readers at the time, Leland was enchanted by the characters of Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise who inspired many to pursue their own dreams "on the road." Kerouac grew up in a Catholic blue-collar family and married three times, although none of the marriages lasted for more than a brief period. He returned time and again to the home of his mother, the only woman with whom he could have any kind of relationship, and who supported him even when she did not approve of his choices. Kerouac wrote several books, and in this one Dean represents the author's struggle with morality and religion, while Sal fills in for Neal Cassady, Kerouac' alter ego and traveling companion, a thrillseeker much the opposite of Kerouac. Kerouac wrote of the Beat generation, jazz, art, and freedom, and celebrated alcohol and drugs, and his friends included Beat poets and writers such as Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. The conservative Kerouac, however, voted for Barry Goldwater and idolized William Buckley.

In reviewing the book in Library Journal, William Gargan commented that Sal's "road trips with saintly fool Dean Moriarty constitute an inward journey leading to manhood and maturity." Leland notes that Sal, for all his wildness, was also seeking a more stable life. New York Times Book Review contributor Matt Weiland wrote: "Leland is an amiable and at times instructive guide to On the Road, making his way through the book to reveal what he calls its ‘lessons’ on work, love, art and religion. He rightly argues that the book is as much about bookish Sal as crazy Dean, that grief and atonement lie at the core of the story, and that low overhead and a sense of improvisation make for a good life."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 1, 2004, Mike Tribby, review of Hip: The History, p. 87; August, 2007, Donna Seaman, review of Why Kerouac Matters: The Lessons of On the Road (They're Not What You Think), p. 25.

Boston Globe, November 12, 2004, Renee Graham, review of Hip.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2004, review of Hip, p. 791; June 15, 2007, review of Why Kerouac Matters.

Library Journal, September 1, 2004, Carol J. Binkowski, review of Hip, p. 173; August 1, 2007, William Gargan, review of Why Kerouac Matters, p. 87.

New York Times Book Review, Matt Weiland, review of Why Kerouac Matters, p. 13.

Publishers Weekly, August 16, 2004, review of Hip, p. 51; June 18, 2007, review of Why Kerouac Matters, p. 46.

School Library Journal, March, 2005, Emily Lloyd, review of Hip, p. 245.

Time, October 18, 2004, Richard Lacayo, review of Hip, p. 88.

U.S. News & World Report, November 1, 2004, Thomas Hayden, review of Hip, p. 64.

Weekly Standard, September 24, 2007, Ted Gioia, review of Why Kerouac Matters.

ONLINE

Phawker,http://www.phawker.com/ (October 3, 2007), interview.

Richmond Times-Dispatch Online,http://www.inrich.com/ (September 2, 2007), Doug Childers, review of Hip.

Rockcritics.com,http://rockcriticsarchives.com/ (March 4, 2008), Joe Estes, "History of a Hipster: Interview with John Leland."

San Francisco Chronicle Online,http://www.sfgate.com/ (July 12, 2007), Heidi Benson, "Clash over Kerouac."

World Hum,http://www.worldhum.com/ (September 7, 2007), "Q&A," interview.