All eras considered, the first half of the 2010s was a carefree time to be a young writer living off the bourgeoisie grid. To become an underemployed artist was a brave life choice largely because paying rent in Brooklyn required resources mostly available only in a large trust fund; but unlike the Beat Generation or the children of Woodstock, to be a young hipster was not in itself an act of defiance against the establishment, the political system or the consumer economy.

Nor was such defiance neither a meaningful topic of conversation nor art, and so your main outlets were existential irony with a steady chaser of booze and weed.  The political mainstream itself seemed to be moving closer to the values of the young, multicultural, and gifted—right up until November 8, 2016.

That cutoff date is on Andrew Martin’s mind when we sit down to talk about his first novel, Early Work, which carries the insinuation of autobiography in its title and casts a rancorously comic eye on the lives of hip young writers in those relatively complacent years before Trump’s rise to power proved there is a war of ideals raging within our borders and sounded a call to join the Resistance.

So, I am prepared to ask Martin about the state of being a young hip writer writing about young hip writers in an era that suddenly qualifies as bygone.

Read the full article in NewWorld Review