Why Do Men Have Nipples? and Other Low-Life Answers to Real-Life Questions by Katherine Dunn

Why Do Men Have Nipples? and Other Low-Life Answers to Real-Life Questions Reviews

• 
  Lauren

  ecstatic to have been able to peel back yet another layer of the katherine dunn literary onion. my copy of this book is just called "the slice-information with an attitude!" i'm going to assume that these books are the same, given that the answer to the titular question of the goodreads-loggable version can be found in my hard copy. if anyone has any more information regarding this discrepancy please lmk!
  
  the slice is a compilation of articles written by dunn for the willamette week, portland's alternative newspaper. she wrote under the pseudonym "The Slicer" and answered write-in "real life" questions in a weekly column. in addition to showcasing dunn's sense of humor and wit, the book is a fun time capsule given that the premise of the column is so aggressively pre-internet.
  
  i wouldn't say that the slice is a must-read--it's extremely silly and not all of it has aged well. what struck me as i read it though (as well as one-ring circus, a compilation of her boxing journalism) is dunn's versatility as a writer. like most of us i became a fan of her through her fiction, the genius of which seems to reflect a tenuous-at-best tether to reality. after reading her earlier novels in particular, i would have assumed the author was an unrelatable freak. however in her journalism she is remarkably funny and approachable. of course it makes sense that one would change their writing style if they were covering a boxing match vs. writing a humorous newspaper column vs. penning one of the best american novels of the last 50 years, but i wouldn't expect anyone else to be able to do it all so perfectly. it's just bonkers to see what she did for a living in the twenty-something years between attic/truck and fucking GEEK LOVE.
  
  side note: fay got me this book for my birthday and when i opened it up we discovered it was SIGNED?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??! omg.
• 
  Bookeater504

  I wish I could sit in a Cafe eat pastry, smoke cigarettes and listen to her yammer on about anything....
• 
  Arnstein

  A collection of questions and their replies, containing well researched facts and the witty anecdotes and comments that accompany them.
  
  There is not enough people out there who can give you straightforward answers to profound or obscure questions with both great insight and comedic wit. Yet such a person is who Portland (OR) was blessed with between 1984 and 1992, she was known as The Slicer and ran an answer column (The Slice) in a weekly newspaper called the Willamette Week. This book is a compilation/best-of from the column's first eight years, where we find all kinds of questions – including the full range of whatever inquiries the public has mailed to her – with their simple yet intriguing answers.
  
  'The Slicer' is of course a pseudonym and the one who hides behind it is an eccentric lady named Katherine Dunn, known as both the author of Geek Love and as an eager commentator on professional boxing. She herself took up boxing in her 40's, and in her mid-60's she ended up giving a mugger a thorough beating, stating later that she only regrets using only one fist on him (her other hand was engaged in the tug-of-war they had over her purse). Her qualities were indeed of a kind that even now isn't considered very ladylike. Among other things she swore like a sailor and wore a button stating "the meek shall inherit shit!" In other words, there is quite a character behind the replies found in this book and, while they are more moderate than she herself seems to have been, the replies themselves are equally out of the ordinary.
  
  Let me include an example that occurs early in the book. It is not just an example of The Slicer's idiomatic writing, but also of the lengths to which she sometimes went to find the sought after answers. First, a brief quote from the inquirer::
  
  "Without exception, in absolutely every heterosexual scene, the female goes into the bathroom for a few minutes before sex commences. My question: What goes on in there?"
  
  To which The Slicer makes a lengthy reply, much of which is the repeating of an informal poll she made amongst 109 local women, concluding with:
  
  "The results were as follows: washing, 90 percent; peeing, 60 percent; inserting diaphragm, 70 percent. More than 60 percent said 'all of the above.' A cantankerous 4 percent replied 'praying.' When queried, a statesque 76-year-old looked down her aristocratic snoot and said, 'If you dont know, my dear, you shouldn't be in that position.'"
  
  Indeed, the entertainment value was given almost as much attention by her as the correctness of the information, both of which hold a high quality. It is a brief book that will take only two to three hours to read – plus approximately half an hour assigned to chuckling; plus whatever time is required to read the best bits to your friends – but you'll be left with much, in regard to newfound knowledge (some of which is quite appliable to the practicalities of our own lives) as well as a good mood. Recommended in particular to avid viewers of QI.
• 
  Lesley

  eh. i thought the author of geek love answering reader's questions for a column she does in the portland newspaper would be a lot more exciting than this was.
  i think i would like her job of researching these random ass questions, but other than that it was kind of a snooze and a half.
  
  
• 
  Meg Leistekow

  excellent book for those must know questions... loved the concept behind the collaboration of this book.
• 
  Rev. Buck Paradise

  Decent enough bathroom read. Humor is fair to middlin' and the information, while it won't set you free, will give you a few aha moments.
• 
  Eric

  This book had a lot of charm, but it's also topically outdated by about 20 years. I do think it's pretty cool that Dunn ran this column under the moniker, "The Slicer," though.
• 
  Sarah Goode

  not amazingly bad but not great either. Left on the shelf in the hotel we stayed in in bulgaria and it had already let by the time we came home.