Nate Waggoner will be reading at Difficult to Name on Saturday June 9 // photo by Amanda Simpson
You're doing this cool project where you help people get through books like "Gravity's Rainbow" and "Moby Dick" and help them understand it. Can you offer a slight teaser of a bomb insight you have into either book?
This isn't super-original I'm sure but: You know when someone says like, "You're a writer, right? You know what would make a really good novel? Some of the bullshit that goes on in MY job." Melville is like that guy, except he wrote it himself and managed to make it one of the greatest things ever. The stuff that people complain about, all the endless nautical descriptions, those are all like individual page-long prose poems that each culminate into some insight into the universe, morality and stuff like that. If you take it piece by piece and don't look for much of a plot, it's so much better, which is also true of G's R and Infinite Jest. So I wanted to offer sort of like freelance literature courses where we could just meet up and talk like a book club, but I'm like your coach, and it would be a tiny fraction of the price you'd pay for a college course. People can hit me in the DMs if they're interested.
Any big summer plans?
No trips or anything, but I'm gonna try to make it to Coney as much as I can, maybe Bronx zoo, Asbury Park. And I'll be working with an organization that, with the DYCD, helps local young people get work at independent businesses and also learn life lessons.
What can people expect from your reading?
I think I might read fiction? People don't read a lot of fiction at DTN so I feel like maybe it's a power move. I'll only do it if it's a power move.