Book

[gardeniabee]

I just finished "American Nerd: The story of my people" by Benjamin Nugent. Parts of the book I found compelling, primarily those parts describing the history of the nerd "persona" and how nerds have been perceived. I liked how the author tied nerds into literary history, citing Mary Bennett in Pride and Prejudice as a prototypical nerd-girl.

Other aspects of the book I found less compelling. The author comes at the angle of nerdiness as being both a rejection of Muscular Christianity (jock masculinity) as well as a form of "hyper-masculinity," due to the nerd-typical fascination with order, numbers, ratings, hierarchies, etc. Now, I'm not the type to be immediately offended by the use of gender-identity with personality characteristics, but when it persists chapter after chapter I got a little tired of it. It was a little too "rationality is a MALE quality, and emotionality is a FEMALE quality" for me, and seemed unnecessary to the book.

Comments

[artificialpuppy.livejournal.com]

Sounds very Aristotelean, an oldie but goody and ever offensive to the modern University climate, but perhaps repetition is not the best remedy for a lack of content?

[artificialpuppy.livejournal.com]

In other news, I met your evil republican twin in the Navy.

[gardeniabee]

Very bizarre.