Thomas W Hodgkinson - How to Be Cool: The 150 Essential Idols, Ideals and Other Cool S***

Praise for How to Sound Cultured

Damn. All my cheating secrets revealed. In book form.

Stephen Fry

Terrific. With almost miraculous concision, they combine biographical information and often quite bracing judgments with jokes, some great quotations and lots of arresting little facts.

Daily Mail

How to be Cool

How to be Cool

THE 150 ESSENTIAL IDOLS, IDEALS AND OTHER COOL S***

THOMAS W. HODGKINSON

Published in the UK in 2016 by Icon Books Ltd,

Omnibus Business Centre,

3941 North Road, London N7 9DP

email:

www.iconbooks.com

Sold in the UK, Europe and Asia

by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House,

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Distributed in India by Penguin Books India,

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ISBN: 978-178578-160-5

Text copyright 2016 Thomas W. Hodgkinson

The author has asserted his moral rights

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher

Typeset in Minion by Marie Doherty

Printed and bound in the UK by

Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

For my parents,
who are both extremely cool.

About the author

Thomas W. Hodgkinson is the co-author of How to Sound Cultured (Icon, 2015) and author of the horror novel Memoirs of a Stalker (Silvertail, 2016). He writes a film page for The Week, travel articles for the Daily Mail and book reviews for The Spectator. A few years ago, he became the first person officially to swim from Albania to Corfu, where he spends a lot of his time.

Acknowledgements

Duncan Heath, Charlie Campbell, Andrew Furlow,
Anna Yermakova, Thomas Fink, Alastair Hall,
Hubert Van Den Bergh, Alice Long, Dominic Hodgkinson,
Nick Thompson, Alexandra Vishnevskaya,
Hettie Harvey, Crispin Ayshford Sanford, Matthew Slater,
Tom Stevens, Antalya Nall-Cain, Andrew Sentance,
Philip OMahony, Jack Churchill, Jonah Wyn Pugh,
John Lahr, Jocelyn Baines, Colin McKenzie,
Robert Hodgkinson, Annabel Long, Jeremy White,
Bertrand Pierret, Nicholas Allen, Martin Amis,
Gina Price, Theo Tait, Caroline Law, Jeremy OGrady,
Miles Crawford, Jason Locke, Robert Posner, Mia Latter,
Daisy Aitkens, Mel Gibson, Benedict Cumberbatch,
Alexander Fiske Harrison, Mark Amory, Kitty Tait,
Anastasia Elisee, Marcus Scott-Barrett, Michael Bates,
Roseanne Kay, Jessica Mayberry, Tom Casdagli.

Cool: An Introduction

Theres a story I remember being told by a friend when I was at school. Back in the 1970s, the actor Clint Eastwood known for playing bestubbled, hard-bitten heroes was being interviewed by the Irish chat show host Terry Wogan. So come on, Clint, Wogan asked him chummily. How is it that youre so cool? To which Eastwood responded by taking out a cigarette, flicking it up in the air, striking a match on the heel of his shoe, and then lighting the cigarette while catching it between his lips on its descent. After taking the first puff, he growled, I dunno, Terry. I guess it just happened that way.

When I was told that story, I thought it was about the coolest thing Id ever heard. So my first advice to anyone who wishes to know how to be cool is: take up smoking, learn a party trick, and maybe develop a trademark growl.

Im kidding.

So what is my first advice?

These are deep waters. You dont want to plunge right in.

Before we go any further, there are four immediate questions raised by the very idea of a book bearing the brazen title of How to Be Cool, and they are these:

1) What is cool?

2) Where did it come from?

3) Has it changed?

4) Can it be taught?

With your permission, Ill give the brief, knee-jerk answers to these questions, and then offer my longer, more considered responses. The brief, knee-jerk answers are as follows.

Cool cant really be defined but it has something to do with style and something to do with emotional composure (aka keeping your cool). It arose out of the New York jazz music scene and was taken up by Hollywood in the 1950s in movies featuring cool characters played by the likes of James Dean and Marlon Brando. The attitude became so popular with the young that the word cool came to mean little more than good. Yet in certain contexts it still retains something close to its earlier meaning. And this is something that cannot be taught. There are cool people and there are uncool people. You either have it or you dont.

Consider those claims, particularly the last one. Now I accept that there are certain physical attributes that cant be taught. You cant teach someone to be tall, for example, although it might be fun to try. But when it comes to character, almost anything can be taught. Virtue. Courage. And, yes, coolness too. So keep an open mind (an essential prerequisite of cool), read on, and see if youre persuaded.

1) What is cool?

Im going to come right out and say it. I have identified the NINE DEFINING QUALITIES OF COOL.

These are the Nine Qualities that you need to know. You wont find them anywhere else. How did I come up with them? That will be revealed in due course. But for now, consider the Nine. How many have you got taped?

• Style
• Rebellion
• Recklessness
• Rootlessness
• Promiscuity/Celibacy
• Self-expression
• Flamboyance/Austerity
• Taciturnity/Eloquence
• Emotional self-control

Wed better unpack these a little. Style: Youre physically coordinated and know how to dress. Rebellion: You question authority. Recklessness: You value present pleasure over future health. Rootlessness: You travel. A lot. Promiscuity/Celibacy: The point is that youre not into the whole monogamous commitment thing. Self-expression: Youre somehow an artist. Flamboyance/Austerity: Either will do. Taciturnity/Eloquence: You make words count. Emotional self-control: Youre pretty relaxed. You rarely lose it.

So how did I compile this list, these Nine Defining Qualities of Cool? Im going to answer that. I am, but not straight away. We dont want to get bogged down in methodology.

2) Where did it come from?

Coolness isnt a 20th-century invention but it is a 20th-century phenomenon. Thats to say, if you look back through the centuries, you can find examples of people who had some or most of the Nine Qualities. In the Middle Ages. In Ancient Greece and Rome. There were probably cavemen who were cool. In fact, now I come to think of it, there definitely were.

But it earned a name only in the 20th century when, for a perfect storm of reasons, an anti-establishment attitude began to exert an extraordinary mass influence among the young. This was an unprecedented cultural shift, which amounted to the rise of a new value system to rival those offered by morality or worldly success. Wed had rich. Wed had good. Now here was cool, which was something completely different.