American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent
Dec. 30th, 2009 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkelf105I read American Nerd: The Story of My People last night in one sitting.
It's a sly, wink and nod to ethnography, but has some surprisely insightful thoughts about the condition of being a "nerd" in America. There is also quite a bit of social thought and social commentary. Some of it is wonderful and some of it is skeevy as hell.
I think I liked Nugent's point about nerds. (We)They are the people who don't fit in, sometimes this is because of personality and sometimes this is social, as kids try to find some one to exclude. I am not a nerd by Nugent's first definition, which is complicated but is essentially that being a nerd has to do with an inability to function socially and emotionally at the prescribed socially normative level (he seems dubious that this is a good defintion and points out that this definition is all about social context and therefore in another context, being a nerd wouldn't be a disadvantage or socially unacceptable). I am not of this type of nerd, I am nerd because I was born chubby, then got fat and had to use fantasy and books as a defense. I made myself booksmart, because fat people usually get the short end of the stick, but if I was funny and smart, people would at least tolerate me....and that has been my experience. I am well aware that had I not inherited by parents' hypothyroidism, I would most likely not be a nerd. I am not ashamed of this and I am quite proud of all the activities that I participate in that raise non-nerd eyebrows. Yeah, I pretend to play a ginormouse, socially awkward elven priest of the book god, Biblioteca on the weekends. Wanna fight about it?
All in all, a decent read and pretty cathartic. At least for me.
The short story at the end features a frat house haunted by a demon created when an asshole frat boy desecrates the wooden owl mascot of the house by strapping a huge dildo to its head. I have no idea what to make of this story, but it was quirky and weird and pretty funny...and a little petty. But I dunno, the symbology of the blind pecker running around trying to penetrate things and getting nowhere seems to describe American life pretty well. We're all sorta these blind things, created quite often in asshole circumstances, swarmimg about trying to thrust our way into bliss, but really, what's we're doing is penetrating crap blindly and this is no way to achieve any sort of satisfaction. There is a definite sexual connotation to this as well, but I don't go with the school of that that life is about sex. I go with the school of thought that sex is a PART of life and therefore, in the end, everything, even sex, is about living.
It's a sly, wink and nod to ethnography, but has some surprisely insightful thoughts about the condition of being a "nerd" in America. There is also quite a bit of social thought and social commentary. Some of it is wonderful and some of it is skeevy as hell.
I think I liked Nugent's point about nerds. (We)They are the people who don't fit in, sometimes this is because of personality and sometimes this is social, as kids try to find some one to exclude. I am not a nerd by Nugent's first definition, which is complicated but is essentially that being a nerd has to do with an inability to function socially and emotionally at the prescribed socially normative level (he seems dubious that this is a good defintion and points out that this definition is all about social context and therefore in another context, being a nerd wouldn't be a disadvantage or socially unacceptable). I am not of this type of nerd, I am nerd because I was born chubby, then got fat and had to use fantasy and books as a defense. I made myself booksmart, because fat people usually get the short end of the stick, but if I was funny and smart, people would at least tolerate me....and that has been my experience. I am well aware that had I not inherited by parents' hypothyroidism, I would most likely not be a nerd. I am not ashamed of this and I am quite proud of all the activities that I participate in that raise non-nerd eyebrows. Yeah, I pretend to play a ginormouse, socially awkward elven priest of the book god, Biblioteca on the weekends. Wanna fight about it?
All in all, a decent read and pretty cathartic. At least for me.
The short story at the end features a frat house haunted by a demon created when an asshole frat boy desecrates the wooden owl mascot of the house by strapping a huge dildo to its head. I have no idea what to make of this story, but it was quirky and weird and pretty funny...and a little petty. But I dunno, the symbology of the blind pecker running around trying to penetrate things and getting nowhere seems to describe American life pretty well. We're all sorta these blind things, created quite often in asshole circumstances, swarmimg about trying to thrust our way into bliss, but really, what's we're doing is penetrating crap blindly and this is no way to achieve any sort of satisfaction. There is a definite sexual connotation to this as well, but I don't go with the school of that that life is about sex. I go with the school of thought that sex is a PART of life and therefore, in the end, everything, even sex, is about living.