"His stories are, as the title suggests, inappropriate, and they often engender squeamishness, discomfort, and laughter. But they are fresh and, at times, touching, qualities that make this an enjoyable read."--Library Journal
"One of the year's funniest books."--Largehearted Boy
Whoopee
cushion coupon. When you buy a copy of the book and send this
coupon, along with the book, to Daniel Nester's home, he will send you
an official How to Be Inappropriate whoopee cushion. That's
right: inflate one of these puppies and let the faux farts fly!
While supplies last. [PDF]
Shelf talker. You know those pieces of paper that stick out
of bookstore shelves that touts a title of note? They're called shelf-talkers,
and here at Inappropriate Headquarters, we have made some for your own
shelf-talking pleasure. print it out, and place it under copies of How
to Be Inappropriate at your local bookstore. Or print one out and
place one on your own bookshelf! Alternatively, you can use this as
a bookmark or to flag down authorities at a roadside accident. [PDF]
Jessa at Bookslut shouts out "Goodbye to All Them." And yes, I do a great imitation of Jessa-as-Andy Rooney.
I never noticed Judith Taylor's mention of How to Be Inappropriateon The Globe and Mail's In Other Words books blog. I think she builds up to my mention to tell us I am a lyrical flatulist.
MobyLives' Dennis Johnson excerpts "Goodbye to All Them."
UPDATE: I rounded up too soon.
The December 2009 Penthouse is out, with a short review of HTBI (pictured, right). Here's the blurb extracted from that: "[T]he real fun lies in his take on such things as ApologetiX, a Christian rock parody band, and a fascinating profile of a professional videogamer. We'll take Nester's pop culture meanderings over his attempts at frat-boy humor any day."
Speaking of frat-boy humor, Flavorwire excerpts "Mooning: A Short Cultural History" with a list of 90 Different Moons. It's a fairly comprehensive list, including the "Inverted Fruit Cup" mentioned in the Penthouse review. Sure, I "try very hard," as Penthouse mentions. But I am trying for you.
If you walk into an Urban Outfitters store, chances are you will see a copy of How to Be Inappropriate. You can even buy it on their site. Either way, expect an attractive hipster staff person to walk up to you and say you look good with it on your body.
Tamara at The Writer's Rainbow sent some questions to me, and those questions, along with my so-intelligent-they-will-bite-your-face-off answers are up on the site now.
On goodreads, people I do not know have put the book on their lists "to be read." One user, "Michael Minneapolis," who seems like a discerning reader, writes that he was "was surprised and delighted by the intellect and emotion in these brief essays. A great read." Michael, wherever you are, I appreciate your kind words.
I am not sure if I linked to my shout-out in the Times-Union's Campus Notes column. But I will here.
HTMLGiant put out a call for guest posts for entries for its Mean Week feature. You're supposed to be mean. As a regular reader, I thought this would be my chance to A. be mean and B. post something there.
So that's what I did.
I have long thought the term Lyric Essay was a bullshit term for craptastic writing, a catchall cop-out for folks who wrote a crappy poem or a crappy prose piece to call it something else. I had been taking notes and stuff for an essay called "Against the Lyric Essay (As a Term)" but I did not draw on those notes for my splenetic screed; here, in all its 194-word glory, is my Mean Week post:
Lyric Essays. Let's say your poems make discursive sense but lack human emotion. You're in a graduate workshops in Iowa. What do you do?
Get rid of those linebreaks, honey, and join the growing ranks of lyric essayists!
Or let's say your shitbad poems with, like, math equations in them aren't cutting the mustard. Denver Quarterly won't touch them. Who you a gonna call? Lyric Essaybusters!
First Iowa's 80s and 90s products ruined whole wings of poetry. Readers fled accordingly. Then, just when personal essays and literary memoirs re-entered the public sphere and earns actual book buyers in the 1990s, Iowans take up another cause: to ruin nonfiction. Their weapon of choice: The Lyric Essay.
Lifted from Camus book cover and bowdlerized by Iowans, who now have a freaking MFA for the thing, the lyric essay, which is basically an excuse to pee on a couple of fire hydrants to mark off academic territory, has produced prose that is at once unreadable and untethered to any human feeling. As George Carlin once said about farts, it's like shit without the mess.
I say: Make it stop. Leave writing non-feeling non-person-aware wankathons to the poets.
I guess I got a rise out of some people, but what surprised me is that some people took on that now-signature arch comment box personae. Adam Robinson of Publishing Genius Press chimed in; he quotes one of my sentences by way of a question:
"Leave writing non-feeling non-person-aware wankathons to the poets."
Just who are you trying to piss off here?
Whether people would get 'pissed off' by what I wrote remains to be seen. I saw that sentence as more of a statement of fact. There are poets who would say "non-feeling" is their calling card; same goes for "non-person-aware" and even "wanking." I would even say there are non-feeling, non-person-aware wankathon poetry and poems that I love. Take Flarf, for example--more about that later. And much of the conceptual writing poetry on Ubuweb.com would qualify. If some are surprised at my salty language ("wankathon"), oh well. That's sorta my bailiwick, people.
Me, I thought I made it clear who I was talking about: poets who write subpar poetry, usually sequences with a tacked-on overarching subject, and then turning around and call them lyric essays. They know who they are--all you have to do is look around you--but it seems that Robinson and others want me to name specific names.
After that, the discussion gets interesting. Side-stepping the issue of whether the term "lyric essay" sucks or not, I guess, is a good thing. So we comment box peops start talking about what exactly is an essay and even what qualifies as "essayistic." There, it feels as we are more confident in the theory/academic sphere. Critic John Maderatook some time to point out the elasticity of genre definitions. Which is, of course, interesting, if you're into talking or being reminded about what an essay does. Also interesting: that he quotes Annie Dillard, who quite famously switched from poetry to essays so that what she writes could be better accommodated.
"The essay can everything a poem can do, and everything a short story can do," she wrote famously. "[E]verything but fake it." An essay to Dillard is both "coherent" and "meaninful" and "thinks about actual things."
Here's my point: I think a lot of what is published specifically as lyric essays are not meaningful, are not coherent, and do not think about meaningful things. It is a catch-all term for a wide range of hybrids, and I prefer there be another term for this. I don't mind "lyric," as long as it adheres to that word's spirit and definition and traditions, at least by 20th century standards. Most lyric essays aren't lyrical at all, but that cause is for someone else to take up.
Just call it an essay and see what people think.
Where I have a problem starts is when "lyric" is combined with "essay" and how and when it is combined. First: There is this idea that lyric essay is a genre. It is not. It is a form. It is also a form defined, by and large, I would argue, by its formlessness, not so much its content. When one talks about a particular lyric essay, in my experience, one usually talks about not what is written, but how. In that sense, the lyric essay term is set up by writers for other writers. It is not set up for readers, especially readers who do not write. And hasn't that been one of many inside-baseball reasons poetry has lost chunks of its audience in the past century?
And here's where I get to talk about Flarf again for a bit. Lots of people have tried to define Flarf, and I will probably get some of this stuff wrong, but it would be fair to say that Flarf is a kind of conceptual poetry that draws from and then crafts found texts. I love a lot of Flarf. I think it's smart; it has concepts behind it; it has a writer around it and in each piece. In a lot of ways, Flarf is a reaction to non-Flarf poetry: it sets out to make some thing or experience quote-unquote "poetic" that is not.
But do you see the rigor I had to use there, even in my ham-handed definition of Flarf? And this is my try at defining, in my opinion at least, the most out there, free-jazz experimental kind of writing there is.
I doubt anyone would get their gander up or muster the desire to define, defend, or even denounce a lyric essay. It's another made-up term, sure. But it is not a form defined by its content, as you could say Flarf or a sonnet or a Roman a Clef is. Nor is it a form set up to help readers.
If it is not a genre, not a form, then what is it, then? Is it set up as a publishing niche? Maybe. For, like, 5 presses and 20 literary journals. Is it a movement? Maybe again, if you count multipleissuesofSeneca Review congratulating itself on coming up with its own term and publicizing it.
What I do know is that the term was invented and its promoters set up shop as for the most unhelpful and insidious of reasons: writing workshops and academia.
And even then it's not that helpful pedagogically. It does not, in my opinion and experience as a teacher, help a writer figure out what he or she is writing. There are descriptors for essays, sure--Mosaic, Collage, Episodic, List, Segmented, Vignette, Jump-cut--all used by teachers and writers, all with varying degrees of success. Does it help readers? Not so much.
Maybe "Lyric" helps other writers, sure, but perhaps only ones who are want to find a home for their writing. One comment box writer to my HTMLGiant post did present a story of being 'inspired' by the idea of writing a lyric essay, at least insofar as figuring out what she had already written. And here's what I wrote back.
Amy--I think your story cuts to the heart of my grumpiness about the lyric essay. I mean, here you are, trying to figure out what you're writing--which is one of the joys of writing, if you ask me--and this term helps you get excited about writing. How could I take that away from you? I wouldn't.
For me, it was a reverse process. I started writing short prose pieces about my favorite rock band, and all the while, it was: is it a poem? prose? memoir? essay? I loved the indefinable nature of enterprise. I wrote poems for years, with a few successes here and there, but all the while feeling something wasn't quite right, that my writing could do something else.
And then when I did, when I feel I'd finally broke out on my own as a "creative nonfiction" writer or "essayist" or whatever, along comes this term, lyrical essay, promoted by other ex-poets with far more cultural zeitgeist mojo than I, staking a claim on a whole wing of what I thought to be my new genre. What the freak? was my reply. And so it seemed that a good chunk of the preciousness, the we-are-prophets poetryland bunk that I'd grown so tired of, had implanted this new term, lyric essays.
So for me, my experience with the term comes at a different point in my writing life. Which is all I meant to say.
Still, as I think of it, for that writer and others out there who feel limited by the essay form, or the idea of an essay, the term "lyric" tacked onto it doesn't solve anything. Genre is a gesture, an amorphous thing; form is anything but amorphous. The idea of an essay provides plenty of leeway to allow much of the good of what passes off as lyric essays.
But why not just call it an essay and see what people think?
For myself and many others, the term lyric essay doesn't really help us think about how the essay is written, what is written about, what an essay does, or why it was written that way in the first place. And yet it's invaded the publishing sphere in its small way, as well as MFA land, almost to the last person by ex-poets who want to stake out not only their own form or movement, like Flarf, but their own freaking genre. Think of hubris involved in such a move, how it falls outside the parameters of what I am talking about here. I urge you to think about that, if you are invested in the writing world at all: setting up one's own genre! And a school for it, too! Conferences! Empaneling speakers!
I think that when we have a genre such as the essay--one that, through its 400-plus years of history and incarnations, has proven sufficient enough to include, in the 20th Century alone, Joe Brainard, Amy Fusselman, Albert Camus, Lester Bangs, Jenny Holzer, Larry King, John Hejduk, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Jenny Boully, Joan Didion, Albert Goldbarth, and David Lee Roth, all under the same essay tent--it begs the question: why get all record store clerk-y and come up with a sub-genre, other than to exclude readers and make those in the know feel more special? Or is it to make a conscious careerist grab for a chunk of the creative writing pie?
I keep my Twitter account private (i.e., "protected") because I don't want everyone to see everything I post; I would like at least one online space where I feel like I can be an idiot. Believe you me: I am protecting me from you.
But there's a couple of Tweets I've posted I think could be posted to the world and benefit society in some way.*
Some conclusions I can draw from looking at these again: I shamelessly navel-gaze; I have a fixation on Mia Michaels, the loopy choreography from So You Think You Can Dance? (abbreviated as #SYTYCD here); I re-tweet, or RT, my @Adagia_Project a lot, and I think poets who went to Iowa and become self-proclaimed memoir-essay experts are Tartuffian idiots.
OK. Here's some tweetage from the month of June. If you like this, tell me: I'll do it next month, too.
Think post Jay Bennett Wilco has been overrated, by the way. And "America's Radiohead" is faint praise. [Gets off soapbox]
New Wilco sounds like Traveling Wilburys, complete with faux George Harrison guitar and Jeff Lyne vocal 25 minutes ago from web
File under WTF: Zachary Quinto falls walking dog w/ guy dressed as steak. Throws hissyfit: http://tinyurl.com/mxa8ak
Spin's "Purple Rain: The Oral History" will be used in my oral history class this semester! Super. 5:47 AM Jun 24th from web
Soooo looking forward to reading the Roger Troutman article here: http://waxpoetics.com/issue...5:45 AM Jun 24th from web
RT @arthurmagazine Attention technology-will-save-us-in-the-end people! Where's my biodegradable cel phone? Compostable computer? Etc 4:38 AM Jun 24th from web
RT @Brendacopeland Margaritas make you feel the way you ought to feel without margaritas. 2:37 AM Jun 24th from web
RT @Adagia_Project 17. The horrible inside. Also included with this offer. 5:06 PM Jun 23rd from web
@timesunionlive Am DVRing so am a bit behind everyone. All we can do is hope. But Richard Marx? Richard Marx. 5:10 AM Jun 18th from web in reply to timesunionlive
@pankmagazine I will come to wherever you are in Michigan and take you off the Hot Tamale Train.
Mia Michaels must DIE! #SYTYCD5:06 AM Jun 18th from web in reply to pankmagazine
Richard Marx? Richard. Marx. #SYTYCD 4:55 AM Jun 18th from web
No Mia Michaels. Not yet. Life is good. #SYTYCD 4:54 AM Jun 18th from web
RT @specksnyder Reading: "Literary Magazines: The Big List", http://bit.ly/MYNFF. 6:29 PM Jun 17th from web
Playing reissue CD by Hammond organist great Jackie Davis, aka Porterhouse from Caddyshack. Who knew? http://tinyurl.com/kwub94 11:47 PM Jun 16th from web
Clive Thompson in Wired: "Books have been held hostage offline for far too long." http://tinyurl.com/qlm892 5:45 PM Jun 15th from web
RT @largeheartedboy Authors signing Kindles http://bit.ly/14LHA3 4:30 PM Jun 15th from web
Katy Perry doing Queen's Don't Stop Me Now: http://bit.ly/AVmMh 4:22 AM Jun 15th from web
And Brian May with Katy Perry and band, also from BrianMay.com: http://bit.ly/Z0EL2 4:19 AM Jun 15th from web
Brian May and Katy Perry meet backstage--a wonderbra picture from http://bit.ly/DGtY8 4:18 AM Jun 15th from web
my mom just told me she was once "kissed by a Righteous Brother." Which one? "The tall one, of course!" 4:49 AM Jun 14th from web
Sea Isle City is beautiful this morning. Nephews and I won several whoopie cushions playing skee ball, official sport of boardwalks. 4:12 PM Jun 13th from web
Shappy Seasholtz's Zombie Stand-Up and Whale Song for My Bastard Son on Pank: http://www.pankmagazine.com... 12:31 AM Jun 13th from web
RT @Adagia_Project 8. As the dodo hums, asswipe.6:10 PM Jun 12th from web
RT @chrispetterson it'll take you a minute to realize this isn't from @TheOnion: http://bit.ly/z6tTo 6:54 AM Jun 12th from web
RT @chaiteaisgood Thou shalt not use a public restroom stall with no lock. I am speaking from experience here...#11thcommandment5:55 AM Jun 12th from web
The wait is over. Per Gessle announces Roxette Reunion on SIRIUS XM Radio http://bit.ly/mJUJz 4:16 AM Jun 12th from web
Collaborative poem written by nephews and I, read by my mother, for Linebreak's Unstressed blog: http://tinyurl.com/nkvsuu 2:50 AM Jun 12th from web
RT pankmagazine FYI: When u say you'll only let us put yr work online if we publish you in the print issue, yr work will be declined, unread 9:29 PM Jun 11th from web
RT @timesunion Passerby yells at billionaire Tom Golisano as he fielded questions about funding NY Senate takeover http://bit.ly/18YL2C 7:33 AM Jun 11th from web
If you wish, you may follow my 12-year-old nephew Charlie's tweetage, even though he's a douchebag: @chaiteaisgood 6:17 AM Jun 11th from web
My nephews just told me about the environmentally friendly Google, called Blackle; heard of it? http://blackle.com/
But first, an old poem of mine I posted up on Linebreak's Unstressed blog: http://tinyurl.com/lc882f 5:34 AM Jun 11th from web
poem by yours truly on Linebreak's Unstressed blog: “Found Poem: Gene Simmons Impersonator": http://tinyurl.com/lq8wlm
Two books, vastly different, by my friends that I think deserve your kind attention: http://tinyurl.com/ldrn59 7:35 PM Jun 9th from web
Tony Sciuto's debut LP 1980's Island Nights, features Toto members Steve Lukather and Jeff Porcaro; here's a cut:http://tinyurl.com/lx5qlp 7:32 PM Jun 9th from web
Co-writer of "Last Sound Love Makes" is Tony Sciuto, formerly of Little River Band: http://www.tonysciuto.net/
This Don Johnson song, IMHO, is one guitar pedal away from a cut off of Replacement's Pleased to Meet Me: http://tinyurl.com/l9998a 7:03 PM Jun 9th from web
Old poem of mine up on Linebreak's Unstressed blog: “Mick Jagger Is Not Afraid And Neither Should You Be": http://tinyurl.com/lwblwd 5:04 PM Jun 9th from web
RT @htmlgiant Bennett Cerf asks, Do you have a restless urge to write? - http://tinyurl.com/lhcmntless 3:12 AM Jun 9th from web
@tarabetts I am playing Carl Carlton's "She's a Bad Mama Jama" on an 8-track boombox as we speak. 12:35 AM Jun 9th from web in reply to tarabetts
@lnorthrup I bought a Oh Hell No from you! I love them. Is there a link to other samples for me to peruse, browse, review? 12:34 AM Jun 9th from web in reply to lnorthrup
Guest blogging this week at Linebreak's Unstressed blog: http://linebreak.org/blog/ 12:14 AM Jun 9th from web
RT @Lefsetz Gizmodo and other tech blogs update automatically, NYTimes does not. Mainstream media is inept, destroying itself. 10:29 PM Jun 8th from web
#musicmonday Little Boots' covers Freddie Mercury's Love Kills from Giorgio Moroder's oft-reviled Metropolis: http://tinyurl.com/mlvatb 8:15 PM Jun 8th from web
@RandyHernandez Character? WhachootalkinboutWillis? 7:35 PM Jun 8th from web in reply to RandyHernandez
@jedediahberry Small Beer's $1 warehouse clearance sale ends Wednesday. Grab 'em while you can: http://is.gd/TcMA 7:19 PM Jun 8th from web
RT @Adagia_Project 4. Not important now? Not important to your parents. 6:29 PM Jun 8th from web
RT @R_Nash Wordnik beta now open. @FakeErinMcKean wearing alphabetical-print clothing to celebrate. http://www.wordnik.com 6:28 PM Jun 8th from web
Trustafarians begin to work for living, says Times: http://bit.ly/6Dnyz 4:35 PM Jun 8th from web
Why the FREAK won't Journey get back together? Unbelievable. They're our musical lingua franca #Tonys 5:38 AM Jun 8th from web
Went to Albany Flea today. It's there every Sunday. There's cool stuff there, cool vibe. You should check it out! http://albanyflea.com/ 3:06 AM Jun 8th from web
Bound for Hell, Or Glory? David Carradine and the Feistiest Film Panel Ever http://bit.ly/12qDxB 6:54 AM Jun 7th from mobile web
RT @timesunion New owner for Bob & Ron's: Bob & Ron's Fish Fry on Central Avenue has been sold. http://bit.ly/12s1t2
RT @Adagia_Project 3. Every important word should end with the suffix “Turner Overdrive.” 11:34 PM Jun 5th from web
Honor Moore's "Remembering [translator] Paul Schmidt," He was married to Stockard Channing? Who knew? http://tinyurl.com/l5egfl [PDF] 6:52 PM Jun 5th from web
@gatewaygroupie Have a cassette player in my 2003 Volvo, oddly. Got Street Talk cassette for shits & giggles. Make no mistake: I have the CD. 6:16 PM Jun 5th from web in reply to gatewaygroupie
@thebookslut So, what if I were to say to you that I was listening to--and enjoying--Steve Perry's solo album Street Talk? On cassette? 6:10 PM Jun 5th from web in reply to thebookslut
Jimmy Fallon's Dave Matthews GPS: http://bit.ly/tajXk 5:39 PM Jun 5th from web
Put last-minute manuscript additions in; book sent to design people; release date November, with copies in stores in October. 5:32 PM Jun 5th from web
Mia Michaels must die. As well as Lil' C. #sytycd 6:30 AM Jun 5th from web
@pankmagazine Many of those same writers are Pushcart Prize nominees. 4:53 AM Jun 5th from web in reply to pankmagazine
I still get Rip Torn and Rip Taylor mixed up. 4:43 AM Jun 5th from web
Q: How many Iowa poets who switch to essays does it take the fun out of writing? A: Not many. But they're multiplying. 9:06 PM Jun 4th from web
Onion: Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Crap That Doesn’t Even Work (NSFW): http://tinyurl.com/bap7bk 8:26 PM Jun 4th from web
Another reason Upstate NY rocks: flea markets! One Sat: Another Sun: http://www.albanyflea.com/ 8:19 PM Jun 4th from web
RT @timesunionarts Latest arts news: Saint Rose alumni art exhibit honors educator Karene Faul http://tinyurl.com/q3k79b 5:07 PM Jun 4th from web
The lean, mean Newsweek takes on Oprah's junk medicine. Maybe I should subscribe. @Lefsetz letters about it, too. http://tinyurl.com/p2jocq 6:45 AM Jun 4th from web
Mia Michaels is back! In all her I-choreographed-Celine Dion glory! sytycd 5:35 AM Jun 4th from web
RT @kingsthings this just in from the water cooler... we need more water! 5:30 AM Jun 4th from web
Did BEA ever make it onto Twitter's Trending Topics? Is that, too, a sign of the Armageddon? 5:25 AM Jun 4th from web
Got Hotel Amerika's Trans Genre issue. Haven't updated website in forever. Trust me, this one looks good. http://hotelamerika.net 12:44 AM Jun 4th from web
RT @Adagia_Project 1. All friends become your enemies. 5:31 PM Jun 3rd from web
@RandyHernandez If I were Salinger I'd be suing people's vital organs off. But there's gotta be some leeway as far as parody's concerned. 3:44 AM Jun 3rd from web in reply to RandyHernandez
follow the @Adagia_Project to get a bit of perverted wisdom every morning. 10:51 PM Jun 2nd from web
My Google alerts alighted with success of Daniel Nestor, my Canadian tennis pro alter-ego, who has advanced to the French Open semifinals 7:35 PM Jun 2nd from web
Sherman Alexie sees Kindle-reading woman, and wants to punch her. Noice. http://www.nytimes.com/2009... 10:22 PM Jun 1st from web
@The_Rumpus Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the User Generated Submission License Agreement: http://twitpic.com/6eluj 10:03 PM Jun 1st from web
Forgot to tell publishers I write reviews when I visited booths. Hard to shift self-promotion modes from writer to reviewer. #BEA09 8:11 PM Jun 1st from web
RT @Michael_Schiavo Big. Star. Box. Set. Why I love Rhino. http://bit.ly/VZRSl
dinner in chelsea with miriam and maisie before we drive back up to albany. i get to see my honey and my munchkin. yay!1:56 AM Jun 1st from web
at housing works for clmp's fab magathon fair #bea09 10:36 PM May 31st from web
met new editor and counterpoint berkeley peops, gave out whhopie cushions to librarians and booksellers. success. #bea09 8:25 AM May 31st from web
mcsweeney's/rumpus/smith event jessica anthony superb, then pgw party 7:28 AM May 31st from web
i miss oren's coffee! bea096:39 PM May 30th from txt
Stop by Counterpoint/Soft Skull booth #4437 and hear How to Be Inappropriate spiel I wrote my pitch on back of an envelope. I'm ready #BEA09 5:35 PM May 30th from web
gave out four whoopee cushions last night. good practice for today 5:29 PM May 30th from web
at cow girl hall of fame...after beatweetup i guess 7:00 AM May 30th from txt
[This user's updates are protected.]
*It's better than writing about how experimental/disruptive/flarf/post avant poetry can save the world.
Whoopee
cushion coupon. When you buy a copy of the book and send this
coupon, along with the book, to Daniel Nester's home, he will send you
an official How to Be Inappropriate whoopee cushion. That's
right: inflate one of these puppies and let the faux farts fly!
While supplies last. [
