home | Psychology of Video Games | contact | about | RSS 
« Week 242: Grandma |Main| Week 319 »
Book Review: American Nerd September 19, 2008
Note: This is #41 in my 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge for 2008.
In American Nerd: The Story of My People author Benjamin Nugent starts off with a great premise. He aims to trace the origin of the nerd stereotype, see how it developed, examine how it's depicted in popular culture, and see how it's entangled with our thinking about masculinity, technology, and outsiders. It is a great premise, one in which I no doubt have somewhat of a vested interest. But unfortunately after some early successes Nugent seems to run out of material and just kind of starts to wander. And I'll let you in on a little secret: he's not really a nerd.
As I said, American Nerd starts off strong. Nugent traces the history of the nerd stereotype back all the way to the days of Jane Austin novels and little geeky guys who like to play with lizards. And the author even approaches some real insights when discussing the phenomenon of "Christian masculinity" that swept through America during the early part of the 20th century, which provided a flipside to contrast the nascent nerdegalian. We're given examples of what kinds of people nerds were through the decades and how the distinction rode the rising crest of national emphasis on technology, science, and math during the early days of the Cold War. We even get into the etymology of the word "nerd" itself, seeing how it grew out of terms like "greaser" or "nurd" until it settled into the national vernacular. This is fascinating stuff!
Unfortunately, about halfway through the book, Nugent seems to just run out of things like this to talk about, and he starts ticking off chapters dedicated to traditionally nerdy topics: Dungeons & Dragons, video games, Renaissance fairs, high school debate teams, science fiction conventions, computers, and the like. Some desultory attempts are made at linking these various topics by examining what they have in common and searching for a deeper understanding of their appeal to nerds, but it never really coalesces. They're sometimes interesting as little vignettes, but not much beyond that.
It's about this point that one begins to realize that Benjamin Nugent's credentials are suspect and he isn't a nerd. At best he's a former nerd, someone who played a little D&D and maybe a little Nintendo as a latch key kid. Plus he has a perplexing habit of conflating nerdiness with having a lousy home life while growing up. His perspective on all the aforementioned nerdy topics seems very much to be as an outside researcher looking in, having to interview people and try really hard to understand why they're so into science fiction or video games. A real nerd would, so to speak, grok such things inherantly and sharpen the narrative through his own experiences. But there's very little of that. It's more like listening to your friend try to explain the local customs of a place they passed through on vacation once rather than someone who lived there for years.
As a result of all this, the early parts of the book that rely on pure research are the best, but the later parts and the overriding intent of understanding the nerd pathos and subculture falls short by quite a ways.
Do you like these reviews? Check out my profile on Goodreads.com.
Others doing the 52-in-52 thing this week:
- Jeremy reviews Great Life Photographers
- Heliologue reviews Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut
- Nick reviews the Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz.
Comments (1) |
Permalink | 
File under:
Books
Tags: American Nerd, Benjamin Nugent, Book Review, Nonfiction
Comments
Posted by Nicholas Tam on September 19, 2008 10:26 AM:
And once again, the synergy between our reviews is something to see. I haven't looked into American Nerd, in part because anybody who uses the phrase "my people" raises my immediate suspicion, but you may be interested in how Oscar Wao tackles, in fiction, the same investigation into the place of the stereotypical "nerd" as it defies the values of a more traditional masculinity (among other things). I wholeheartedly recommend it, and would be interested to see if you find the fictitious account to be the more believable one - which is the whole gambit of fiction in the first place, isn't it.