'The War Nerd'
 'The War Nerd'    (journalist) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | July 1955 |
| Nationality | American |
John Dolan, writing under the pseudonym 'Gary Brecher' aka 'The War Nerd', is an American author and journalist. Known for his outré and dark sense of humour, which often is misinterpreted, the War Nerd gives a deeply informed analysis, discussing current wars and other military conflicts from the perspective of a "war fan".
'The War Nerd'
Dolan started writing the War Nerd columns when he was co-editor of the eXile, an avant-garde English speaking alternative media newspaper in Moscow. After the newspaper's license was revoked and he had to leave Russia, he was a regular contributor to NSFWCorp and then from 2013 to 2015 to PandoDaily, again both as Dolan and Brecher.
He appears on a regular podcast "Radio War Nerd"[1], which he co-hosts with Mark Ames.
Biography
Dolan was born in Denver, Colorado in 1955.[2] Dolan taught and studied at UC Berkeley, where he completed a PhD thesis on the literary works of the Marquis de Sade.[3] He has published poems in many U.S. and New Zealand literary journals and his first collection won the Berkeley Poetry Prize in 1988.
In 1993, he moved to Dunedin, New Zealand, where he lectured at the University of Otago.[4] During his time in Dunedin, Dolan contributed to the Otago literary journal Deep South. He is married to his former student, the author, reviewer, poet and essayist Katherine Liddy,[5] a New Zealander 24 years his junior.
In 2001, Dolan resigned his academic post, and moved to Moscow to become co-editor of the eXile, a bi-weekly English-language publication based in the Russian city.[6] He relocated to Canada to teach at the University of Victoria in Canada in 2006. He claims to have been fired for encouraging students to criticize British environmentalist George Monbiot in 2008.[7]
Until spring 2010, Dolan was an associate professor of English composition and literature at the American University of Iraq - Sulaimani.
He subsequently taught English as a Second Language in Najran, Saudi Arabia, until he was fired for one of the War Nerd Articles, and shortly after from East Timor, where he was fired for writing an article on the Indonesian occupation of Timor.[8] Recently he has been living in Europe, where he was finishing work on his now-published retelling of The Iliad.[9]
A Quote by 'The War Nerd'
| Page | Quote |
|---|---|
| Frederick Lugard | “Read the Wikipedia page on Frederick Lugard and you'd hardly know you were reading about one of the great monsters of history. There isn't even the inevitable Wiki "Notice of Quibbles" or whatever they call'em. The same Anglo academics who comb every Central European writer's works for suspect nouns completely fail to notice their own genocidal horrors. So far, only a few writers from the Subcontinent (Sen,Tharoor) and Africa (Achebe) have sliced through the Empire's post-mortem PR armor. The damn thing's been dead for decades and it still intimidates or bamboozles these American academics (with a few honorable exceptions like Caroline Elkins).” |
References
- ↑ https://www.patreon.com/radiowarnerd
- ↑ name="NZBC:Dolan"
- ↑ name="Dolan dissertation">Dolan, John Carroll (May 1985). Sadean sympathy: genre, pathos and intention in the fiction of the Marquis de Sade, University of California Berkeley. 346 leaves (University library listing only; abstract not available); retrieved April 9, 2017.
- ↑ name="NZBC:Dolan"
- ↑ https://archive.today/20190902094932/https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11711066
- ↑ name="NZBC:Dolan"
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20110610014646/http://exiledonline.com/living-with-cons-and-paupers-in-canadas-arctic-waters/all/1
- ↑ name=PandoTimor1,
- ↑ The War Nerd Iliad (Paperback) – by John Dolan (Adapter)|isbn = 1627310509|date = October 2, 2017
