Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge

by Laren Stover, Paul Himmelein, Izak Zenou (Illustrator)

New and enhanced!! The new eBook version of Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge has new and expanded chapters (new content is sprinkled like pixie dust including bon mots by Josephine Baker, André Gide and Thelonious Monk, the Bohemians' love of boxing and Africa's Les Sapeurs, their version of the Dandy Bohemian), a new preface, a more robust list of books Bohemians will have in their libraries to additional illustrations by Izak and more.

On the print edition:
Bohemians don’t care what the neighbors think. They live free and fearlessly, pursuing their ideals and artistic inclinations. This NEW EDITION of Bohemian Manifesto is an exciting glimpse into the world of counterculture living, full-color dreaming and poetic revelations. Authors Laren Stover and Paul Himmelein deliver wit, whimsy, and insider wisdom as they build upon the five types of Bohemians—Folkloric , Beat, Dandy, Nouveau and Zen—exploring two additional Bohemian subsets: the earth-loving Fairy Folk with their mystical glamour, and the dapper denizens of the shadows, otherwise known as Dandy Goths, charmingly detailing their peculiar eccentricities and styles. The authors also expand on the elevated ethos, ecologically driven aesthetic and herbivore habits of the Zen Bohemian, the modern world’s most likely saviors. With new illustrations by the acclaimed international artist Izak, Bohemian Manifesto dares you to open to any page and let its shimmering descriptions tempt you to live a more authentic life.

440 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

A classically trained artist with literary DNA, Laren Stover writes fiction and nonfiction. She is a melancholy connoisseur, loves to visit faerie wishing wells, is editor-at-large of Faerie Magazine and writes for several publications including The New York Observer and The New York Times.
Laren's first style book The Bombshell Manual of Style (Hyperion), illustrated by Ruben Toledo, was pivotal in exploding Bombshell consciousness into a popular genre of its own when it was published in 2001. Laren has deconstructed the incandescence of Bohemians in Bohemian Manifesto, A Field Guide to Living on the Edge (Bulfinch, 2004 and a new edition with Echo Point Books 2019) a book that captured the attention of a wide variety of readers from Joel Grey to Tom Robbins to Richard E. Grant. Her novel, Pluto, Animal Lover (HarperCollins), was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award and she was named finalist by Anne Tyler for The Loft Award. It was recently optioned by actor Robin Wright.
Laren has done readings/interviews on NPR with Leonard Lopate, The Early Show with Bryant Gumbal and Lisa Birnbach, CNN with Rachel Wells, The Caroline Rhea Show, WOR-TV, Oxygen and more, and her work widely reviewed. Laren has received fellowships to Yaddo and Hawthornden Castle funded by Drue Heintz. Her awards include the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant for fiction and the Dana Award. She has written for The New York Observer, The New York Times, Bergdorf Goodman Magazine, Bomb, German Vogue and her fiction and poetry have appeared in various literary magazines including mrbellersneighborhood.com and Guernica Magazine and her dramatic works performed at venues including Naked Angels Theatre, EST, The Chateau Marmont and the Algonquin. Laren's libretto for Lowell Liebermann, Appalachian Liebesleider, premiered at Carnegie Hall to a standing ovation.
Nick Tosches writes: “Reading Laren Stover is an engagement of the senses…a seduction of the senses—transporting you to the magical and softly illuminating place whence she writes.”
Follow her on INSTAGRAM: Faerie_Style
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Reviews

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The central premise of this book is that not only does the Bohemian artist live on, but she does so in five distinct varieties: the Beat, the Zen Bohemian, the Dandy, the Folkloric Bohemian, and the Nouveau Bohemian. While the title calls this book a "manifesto," the term used in the subtitle, i.e. "field guide," is far more apropos. Like a field guide to birds or mushrooms, it lays out
characteristics and distinctions, the characteristics of Bohemians, generally, and the five flavors thereof, more specifically, and it does so in a way that separates them from the other varieties of human.

One might be wondering, why are these varied categories classed as Bohemian, as it seems they are their own distinct class. One way to understand this is to consider the "Zen Bohemian," who often bears little resemblance to the "Zen Buddhist" for which one might mistake him. The Zen Buddhist has both a strong connection to and a depth of knowledge of Zen Buddhism, but the Zen Bohemian often rather has a strong connection to a broad hodge-podge of Eastern philosophies and spiritual traditions that he may or may not properly understand the distinctions between.

This book is quite readable, and informative in an easy-going way, but it's also perplexing. It's informative in that it clarifies the characteristics of Bohemians across many criteria (e.g. food, clothing, tastes in literature, art, movies, and music, interest in boxing, etc.) It's perplexing in that it starts with the premise that Bohemians are, at their core, free spirits who refuse to be hemmed in by convention, but then the bulk of the book is about the various tribe-signaling boxes that the Bohemian puts himself within to conform to the norms of the group. It seems that the authors are aware of this and actually produce humor through oddly specific statements such as, "They [Bohemians] still adore Laurie Anderson even though their yuppie brother went to see her." It feels like they are aware that, to the extent Bohemians are truly free spirits, any description the authors give will be wrong at some level of granularity, and so they lean into it with great (sometimes comedic) specificity.

I enjoyed reading this book and picked up a number of interesting references to other books and whatnot. (I'm currently reading Kliph Nesteroff's "The Comedians" because of a reference to it in this book.) I did find bits on subjects like wardrobes and astrology to be a bit tedious, but just skimmed through them.