Vol. 1 Brooklyn | Daniel Nester

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Morning Bites: Poetry in Motion, Ian MacKaye, Dave Eggers Says no Thanks, Broder’s Mix, and More

On April 16, 2012 By Vol.1 Brooklyn

Today is Ian MacKaye’s birthday. His name was mentioned twelve times at our greatest 3-Minute Punk Stories event, which Impose took photos of.

Ron Swanson + Rorschach from Alan Moore’s Watchmen =s Ron Sworscach. Dave Eggers isn’t going to Germany to accept an award from the Günter Grass Foundation. Melissa Broder gives a mix to Electric Literature. “I was in this shop in Edinburgh one time,” he chuckles, “and this wee guy comes up to me like: ‘You’re Irvine Welsh, aren’t you?’ And I goes: ‘Aye, I am.’ And he said: ‘I’ve read every one of your books.’ And I said: ‘Oh that’s great.’ And he goes: ‘I fucking stole them all, I never paid for one.’ Well that’s brilliant!” – Irvine Welsh talks to The Guardian. Daniel Nester talks with Ron Mann about his 1982 film Poetry in Motion, which starred folks from Tom Waits to Jim Carroll.

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Weekend Bites: Less Than Zero Sequel has Less Than Awesome Cover, Tom Waits Does Shakespeare, Daniel Nester Giving Advice, and More

On May 8, 2010 By Jason Diamond

All the Dust Biting You can Handle

On February 25, 2010 By Jason Diamond

Bites: New Granta, Blake Butler Talks to Andrew Zornoza, Stephen King Rocks With The Cougar, Speaking Teabag, and More

On January 4, 2010 By Jason Diamond

Reviewed: How to Be Inappropriate By Daniel Nester

On November 5, 2009 By Jason Diamond

Soft Skull Press, 2009, 272 pp.

Reviewed by Claire Shefchik

Straight off, Daniel Nester points out that “inappropriate” is standard boilerplate these days, in the media and in politics, for anything that could potentially make someone uncomfortable. It’s annoying, yes, but if you’re Nester, you respond by taking a dump on it, or at least by writing articulately about people who do. How to Be Inappropriate is handmade for frat-boys-turned-English majors, taking a bodily-fluid-covered hatchet to literary convention, as in his in-depth research on the history and vocabulary of mooning, e.g.: “Full Moon with Red Eye, two-cheeked with gapping,” and straight-facedly details incidents of flatulence in the work of poets from Chaucer to Jorie Graham. Nester fluffs up nearly everything with po-mo gimmicks like lists, preambles and (sigh) footnotes, which do nothing to flatter entries like that of the ex-girlfriend who accepted money from an elderly security guard in exchange for having her feet licked. This, while technically inappropriate in the eyes of those who avoid books like this as a rule anyway, comes off as the type of thing that could easily happen to any young, marginally-employed Brooklyn writer, one who hopefully would know better than to try to craft his book around one of them. You wonder if the entire conceit is a gimmick, if maybe Nester had another book in mind, one that was neither hip enough nor gross enough, but decided he’d be more successful stretching this one as far as it would go.

Actually, How to Be Inappropriate contains more than a few entries that not only aren’t inappropriate, but aren’t even interesting. A conversation from NPR’s Terri Gross and KISS’s Gene Simmons, reimagined by Nester as a robot, had me this close, upon seeing it went on for eight more pages, to chucking the entire book underneath an oncoming F train. What’s more, Nester is not a journalist by any means, nor does he pretend to be. Consequently, lengthy essays on aging videogame champ Todd Rogers and Christian rock parody band ApologetiX are well-told, but only grope vaguely for a New Yorkerish tone. But Nester has no interest in being Susan Orlean. He’d rather be mooning.

This highbrow-lowbrow dualism keeps popping up to puzzle you, until eventually you realize that what you’ve actually been reading is not a dryly humorous batch of pop-culture McSweeneyisms (which no doubt is [...]

Bites: Poe and Balloon Boy, Roth Interviewed, Fitzgerald’s taxes, Kim Gordon’s art, and more

On October 22, 2009 By Jason Diamond

Did you ever think there was a Balloon Boy and Edgar Allan Poe link? Did you care?

Philip Roth gives an interview over on The Daily Beast. Holy shite.

Apparently hipsters hate trivia night, but we proved that nerds don’t, and the good folks as L Magazine filmed it.

Lit.

The Mexican government kept an eye on Gabriel García Márquez, thinking he was a Colombian spy. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s taxes. I’m interested. How to survive as a writer in the 21st-century. Stephen Elliott and Rachel Shukert like Daniel Nester, and his new book How to be Inappropriate (Soft Skull). He will win more hearts via a sweet playlist on Largehearted Boy. Pippi Longstocking and John Milton, both together on the same top 10 list. Just started reading this Six Sentences site.

Music

I’ve been waiting patiently for news on a new Yeasayer album, and now the wait is over. If you have some spare cash, you should buy Kim Gordon’s art. Lady Gaga won’t stop until everybody thinks she is the queen bee of weird. The best Pitchfork jokes.

Food

Eat some cookies, fight the fat.

Morning Bites: Poetry in Motion, Ian MacKaye, Dave Eggers Says no Thanks, Broder’s Mix, and More

Weekend Bites: Less Than Zero Sequel has Less Than Awesome Cover, Tom Waits Does Shakespeare, Daniel Nester Giving Advice, and More

All the Dust Biting You can Handle

Bites: New Granta, Blake Butler Talks to Andrew Zornoza, Stephen King Rocks With The Cougar, Speaking Teabag, and More

Reviewed: How to Be Inappropriate By Daniel Nester

Bites: Poe and Balloon Boy, Roth Interviewed, Fitzgerald’s taxes, Kim Gordon’s art, and more

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