How to Be Inappropriate by Nester, Daniel (2009) Paperback

by Daniel Nester

Dry, offbeat, and mostly profane, this debut collection of humorous nonfiction glorifies all things inappropriate and TMI. A compendia of probing essays, lists, profiles, barstool rants, queries, pedantic footnotes, play scripts, commonplace miscellany, and overly revealing memoir, How to Be Inappropriate adds up to the portrait of an artist who bumbles through life obsessed with one extreme impropriety.In How to Be Inappropriate , Daniel Nester determines the boundary of acceptable behavior by completely disregarding it. As a twenty-something hipster, he looks for love with a Williamsburg abstract painter who has had her feet licked for money. As a teacher, he tries out curse words with Chinese students in ESL classes. Along the way, Nester provides a short cultural history on mooning and attempts to cast a spell on a neighbor who fails to curb his dog. He befriends exiled video game king Todd Rogers, re-imagines a conversation with NPR’s Terry Gross, and invents a robot version of Kiss bassist Gene Simmons.No matter which misadventure catches their eye in this eclectic series of essays, How to Be Inappropriate makes readers appreciate that someone else has experienced these embarrassing sides of life, so that they won’t have to.

Genres: Humor, Memoir, Nonfiction, Essays

Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Daniel Nester is the author most recently of Shader: 99 Notes on Car Washes, Making Out in Church, Grief, and Other Unlearnable Subjects (99: The Press 2015). Previous books include How to Be Inappropriate (Soft Skull, 2010), God Save My Queen I and II (Soft Skull, 2003 and 2004), and The Incredible Sestina Anthology (Write Bloody, 2014), which he edited. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Morning News, The Rumpus, Best American Poetry, Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll, and Now Write! Nonfiction. He is an associate professor of English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kept waiting for this book to get funny and inappropriate, but then it just ended.

My favorite essay from the book was Mooning: A Short Cultural Essay. It only had a few funny moments and really wasn't that inappropriate. Trust me, I have seen and experienced worse.

For a book that has such an awesome cover, the material inside just didn't cut it and left me disappointed. It seemed like the pieces were thoughts more than essays and a lot of them left me wanting more. Maybe if Daniel Nester had flushed out more of them, then I probably would of liked this book better. Or maybe it's just that I am so over the kind of books that try to be funny in an ironic way, but just reads like:

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah [insert what might be considered an ironic and funny statement that really isn't that funny or ironic and see if anyone laughs] blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Which just doesn't translate very well to the page, at least for me.

[Kaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ridiculous and affecting, corny and moving, and, yes, offensive -- but sensitively offensive. There are many essays to recommend here, but my favorite was "Goodbye to All Them", an essay which every MFA poet should be forced to read.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing.

Great title. Great cover. Not such great content. Hardly inappropriate. Mostly misleading and inadequate.

One story is comprised entirely of comments written for student's papers aggregated over years as a teacher. Amusing.

Another story is about competitive video gaming. Mildly interesting.

But how to be inappropriate? Maybe I missed something.

[Manintheboat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really all over the idea of a parody christian rock band, until he went on to discuss that the rock band was christian and they were parodying popular songs, "I like big bibles and I cannot lie."
Christian rock is a parody of rock to begin with.
I wanted it to be a rock band mocking christian rock bands.

I liked the first chapter, so it gets two stars instead of one.

[Dennis]

If I was ever going to be a writer, I would have written this book, but I suppose my idea's taken now.

[Geof Huth · Rating 4 out of 5]

See full review here: http://dbqp.blogspot.com/2009/12/inap...

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not funny enough to finish.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read and enjoyed while sitting shirtless on my front porch, drinking and smoking all day long.

[Erika Dreifus]

I'm placing this book on my "memoir" and "writing-related" shelves because the work is clearly if somewhat atypically memoiristic, and because several of the essays deal specifically, if not all that happily, with writing (work and culture).

Judging from both his Twitter feed and his posts on the "We Who Are About to Die" site, Nester is very funny and can be, yes, "inappropriate." Both qualities are present in this book, so consider yourself forewarned.

My favorite pieces in this collection are probably "Queries," subtitled in the table of contents as "being a collection of actual Queries, Reservations, and Comments written by the author, working in his capacity as College Professor, in his attempts to absterge and clarify elements of student creative and academic written work, 1995 until the present time...."; "Goodbye to All Them," described as "concerning a largely sincere and bitchy account of the author's exit from New York City, the low-stakes world of the New York poetry scene, and the practice of writing poetry in the Big Apple in general"; and "Garden Path Paragraphs: Variations on Eggs, Faith, Doubt, and Fathering," or "an account of the author and wife's pursuit of a child, subjoined with discourses on teaching, pornography, and 'irritable reaching after fact & reason.'"

[Jennifer Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd. Sarcastic. Strange. Funny. Sad. Stupid. Crazy. Manic. It's all in this book of short - long - and inappropriate musings from a regular guy. My review is not all that important - because I will just re-hash what everyone else has already stated. But I do need to say this - - his writing, musings and humour are straight-forward and thought provoking in the chapter titled "Garden Path Paragraphs". He really comes into his own with this chapter and defies the expectations of the reader. And for this I am glad to have had this insight and would love to read more of the same. I am glad that Daniel Nester chose to be funny, candid and divulge some of the funnier points of his personal life.

[Ben Bush]

My favorite essay was the almost sinister one about the highest continuous play winner of the video game themed around the rock band Journey. The one on Evangelical satire bands that replace a rock songs original lyrics with Christian ones, sort of Weird Al-style also took the ideas in more directions than I had expected. I suspect that almost everyone who bought this book got something different than they were anticipating and that certainly includes myself. Etymology and history of mooning was also pretty great. Always good to be surprised. Nice work, Daniel. Read Nester's essay about the music on his friend Eric's hard drive here. http://bit.ly/ah1zMC

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A couple of longer, more journalistic pieces saved this book for me and earned it an extra star. Basically, I thought it needed a more aggressive editor: there are some pieces that read like sketches rather than fully-fleshed-out ideas, and some that have a good idea but go on for too long-- and these are not mutually exclusive categories.

[Martha Fendt Santana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've never heard of the author before, but read the back & figured I'd check it out. Plus I'm a big memoir/humor fan. Unfortunately, I didn't find this book funny at all, I didn't find the author interesting, the stories were all mixed up, and for someone who is a self-proclaimed "inappropriate" person, he seemed pretty tame to me..nothing raunchy or even funny. Do not reccomend.

[Pattie Anderson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another one I couldn't finish. Not really bad, it just didn't interest me. I think it would probably appeal to someone much younger and more hipster-ish than I.

[Wayne]

This book was a horribly lousy one. It wasn't all that funny and it barely held my interest while I suffered through reading it.

[Randi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not that great. A few funny parts, a few witty parts, but I felt like just had to force myself to finish it.