Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude by Dick Pountain and David Robins: book review

Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude (2000, this edition 2013) is the author’s attempt at defining what is cool, after some dispute with his children about music. 

 

Pountain examines (seriously) history, psychology, and anything else to determine the roots of cool in European, Asian, and African cultures. Although cool became mainstream about 60 years ago, Pountain traces it back further. His first sentence is about Levi jeans, but he covers ancient history, although he is more focused from about the 1940s onwards, as he  looks at subculture art, music, cinema, language, and literature. 

 

He states at the outset what the book does not do: ‘What we will notbe doing here is presenting Cool as an ideology with any particular content; on the contrary, Cool has attached itself at various times to a bewildering variety of causes and creeds …’ He defines the ‘C word’ – and Cool is not another way of saying ‘good.’ But what is ‘drolly Cool’?

 

Pountain looks at the ligther side of Cool, and the darker side of Cool. He discusses the mutability of Cool, from older Cool to contemporary Cool, Cool countries, Cool cities, across locations, generations, idols, icons, inventions, gadgets, advertising, fashion, Hollywood, and time periods. 

There’s post-war Cool, café Cool, rebel Cool, high culture Cool, street Cool, and countervailing Cool. And disgruntled Cool and sea change Cool and bed protest Cool and opt-out Cool and five-o’clock shadow Cool. Is authenticity Cool? Can American Cool be transported to other countries and continents? Cool is not a fad. Who are the arbiters of Cool? 

Cool is more than drinking, smoking, and taking drugs. Cool is more than sharp clothes and haircuts: ‘Polka dots may come and go, but shades [sunglasses] will always be Cool.’  Cool is more than what happens at night, or when one lives on the edge.

Pountain tries to cover everything, really everything. There is some cool stuff in this book. For example, the Langston Hughes couplets: ‘I play it cool/And dig all jive/That’s the reason I stay alive/My motto as I live and learn is: Dig and be dug in return.’

This is an ambitious examination of Cool. It is a totally, comprehensively, Cool book. But in trying to cover everything Cool, Pountainsweeps across the surface of the Cool globe, rather than covering anything in depth. Nevertheless, readers will resonate with references to Cool that they remember, and agree with or not. It’s worth a read. But, for me, the cover is not Cool.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).