7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a manic & fearless writer who isn't afraid to expose it all!, September 24, 2009
This review is from: How to Be Inappropriate (Paperback)
Ondi Timoner's documentary, "DiG!" follows two bands: the blandly successful Dandy Warhols, and the raucous, combustible, insanely talented and brilliantly inexplicable Brian Jonestown Massacre. The Brian Jonestown Massacre spends the entire documentary alternating between creating stunningly original, genre-mashing music and systematically trying to destroy their opportunities through booze-soaked infighting and bizarrely normalized instability.
And I mention this all to say this: Daniel Nester's "How To Be Inappropriate" is the Brian Jonestown Massacre of autobiographical / non-fiction essay books.
"How to Be Inappropriate" is fresh, and manic, and exhilaratingly weird. Nester fearlessly allows all the strange incarnations of his id to run rampant, from his misguidedly perverse MFA lit major side ("Pulling the Muse's Finger: A Fartspotter's Guide to Poetic Passing of Wind"), to his mulleted Jersey yahoo side ("Mooning: A Short Cultural History" ), to the surprising vanity of his upstate professor side ("Yes I Tan: The Indoor Tanning Diaries").
Mixed in with these straightforwardly funny musings are oddball non-fiction articles -- such as his interview with "classic video game king" Todd Rogers and his expose of ApologetiX, a Christian Rock Parody Band -- and compelling prose pieces, like "Queries," which is a collection of actual comments Nester has made on his students' creative writing papers and "A.I. Wanna Rock 'n' Roll All Night," where Nester replaces Gene Simmons' responses during his famous Fresh Air with Terry Gross interview with comments written by "ALICE, an artificial intelligence chatbot."
But what really makes the book for me are when Nester defies expectations again, and showcases some incredibly personal and humanizing writing, such as the heart-breaking "Garden Path Paragraphs," where he speaks with brutal honesty about his and his wife's troubles conceiving their first child. Or "Goodbye to All Them," an unapologetic reflection on being a New York City poet who commits the cardinal sin of leaving New York City.
Daniel Nester doesn't hide anything, nor does he try to fit into any prescribed molds about what a book of collected non-fiction / autobiographical essays should be. Rather with "How to Be Inappropriate," he smashes those expectations, sets 'em on fire, and then stand over the smoldering ashes to play an extended solo on talk box guitar.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny, Smart, Painful, Honest, April 30, 2010
This review is from: How to Be Inappropriate (Paperback)
Nester's like a boy in the basement who's so quiet you start to get worried. What the hell's he doing down there? We find out exactly what dirty, obsessive business he's been up to when he comes upstairs and hands us this book, in which he writes about love gone wrong, bands gone wrong, and the history of mooning. Mooning! He writes about a video-game king, a Christian-rock parody band, and the literary history of farting! Farting! Thankfully, he's not the kind of boy who gets all sweaty and overheated hoping you'll love what he loves. He's humble and understated and as surprised as you are about what funny, filthy creatures little boys are, with their lonely cravings and wayward penises. For the sake of submersion journalism, Nester fake-tans, takes penis pills, and teaches creative writing to students in NY. I bought a copy of the book to see what an alternative life I might have led, and one for my younger brother, as a cautionary tale.
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Not anything like expected, November 11, 2011
This review is from: How to Be Inappropriate (Paperback)
If you expect this to be a funny book with a fake tutorial about how to be inappropriete and more laid back in life, skip this book, because it is nothing like that.
It is a collection of random stories from the author's boring life that are not funny at all; not even in an inappropriete sort of way. I read the first few, expecting it to get to the good part, and it would just end off the story leaving you wondering "why was that worth my time to read?".
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