I suppose it’s wrong to post a “review” of sorts when you’re still 10 to 15 pages from the end of the book, but I want to write while it’s still fresh from reading on the train.
The Game plays out like a two-parter. The first half of the book is Neil Strauss as his psuedonym Style moving into the “secret society of Pickup artists (PUAs)”, and finding mastery, a timeline of roughly one and a half years. The second half of the book charts the next six months, presumably until just before he sat down to write the book (like I said, I haven’t finished reading). It is never a dating guide – no “Ok to pick up women you should do this and this and that.” It does describe some of the seminars and ‘training nights’ that he did to start learning and moving into this ‘secret society’, so I suppose you could pick up some tips by osmosis, as I guess I have, but there’s no way you could expect to pick up this book and turn into a pick up artist. It is first and foremost a memoir. It’s not a novel, but that’s not to say it comes across as non-fiction. It is a tightly written peice of work; it will keep you intrigued pretty much throughout – that is what makes either Strauss an excellent writer, and yet keeps me from completely believing it.
Spoilers ahead – they’re not so bad because it really is the process more so than the events that drive this book, but if you like to read spoiler free then avoid the rest.
Strauss, writer for Rolling Stone, describes his rise in the pickup artist community as Style, learning from acknowledged masters. One, known as Mystery, is an eccentric from Toronto who teaches his own “Mystery Method”. Another goes by Ross Jefferies, who teaches a technique based on hypnosis techniques known as “Speed Seduction”. David DeAngelo uses a style he calls “cocky funny”. All are supposedly former nerds and shy boys who have turned into masters, out-gunning the “naturals” and the “Alpha Males”. Style adapts techniques from these masters and adds his own element to it, rising to the top and practically “closing”, or getting to your target, with every girl he chooses to target (eventually, that is). That’s the first half of the book, and it is impressive for its pacing and packed-in action. There’s a variety of writing styles in the book, which keeps it from being a boring step from one rung to another.
Then the action shifts in the second half of the book. The pickup artists of LA gather together in a mansion, calling it Project Hollywood. The book charts the slow demise of Project Hollywood & the pickup artist community within because of their fundamental problems that picking up doesn’t solve. Essentially, they are all pickup-aholists, trying to find solutions in sex with strangers, marking each more difficult one as another conquest under their belt. The “society” collapses because of internal argument and straightforward jealousy, and not just in romance terms. The pickup artists are shown to be fundamentally hollow, abusing the primal human nature for their own greedy ends. They’re unable to connect with the women beyond the few hours of the night, and that once they run out of “material” they return to being the same old nerds and socially inept boys they were before they went through the seminars and the like which taught them a stock-standard 11 step program. Strauss, as Style, manages to get out fairly unscathed, as he watches others collapse around him and picks up the lesson, as it were, that saves him from eventually following others down the same path, and finds redemption in a woman who likes him inspite of – indeed totally against – the pickup techniques. This is probably the part of the book that stands out as a bit of a glaring fudge to me, but it makes for a nice story at the very least.
It is, in effect, a cautionary tale – all the successful pickup artists whose lives did not collapse did so because they found women who loved them for who they were.
That’s not to say this book is useless as a guide to picking up. It has a fair number of pointers, of how to loose inhibitions and the fear of failure that practically all guys who aren’t naturals or alpha-males have (admit it, you’re no different). If you still want to walk down the path of pickup artist after finishing this book, I think you’ve missed the point. But if you both start and finish this book as an average frustrated chump (AFC), I think you’ve also missed part of the point.
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick-up Artists by Neil Strauss is now available at all good bookstores, or online at your favourite online retailer.