Neil Strauss is a journalist, and The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists is probably his most famous work. It’s autobiographical.

The plot:
The book follows Neil Strauss from his initiation into the Seduction Community to his drop-out as a master Pick-Up Artist two years later, mostly thanks to Mystery (and yes that’s the guy from the MTV show). It’s not only a memoir, but also explains the techniques of these guys. 

This book is a complete mind-fuck, to be honest. You sit there and your chin’s right about where your knees are and you’re afraid to shake your head lest you break your jaw but you still can’t stop reading. No matter what you think about the whole Pick-Up Artist-shtick (and I don’t think too much about it), it’s a fascinating read, even if only because it’s so fucking insane.

Neil Strauss certainly is a good journalist. He has a comfortable, flowing writing style, which makes you swallow the book pretty much whole and there are some really funny scenes. Like this one:

There are few moments in life as shot through with potential as that of having a car, a full tank of gas, a map of an entire continent spread out in front of you, and the best pickup artist in the world in your back seat. You feel like you can go anywhere you want. What are borders, after all, but check-points letting you know that you’ve reached a new stage in your adventure?
Well, all this may be true most of the time, but let’s say you’re working at Rand McNally, finishing the latest edition of your map of Eastern Europe. And let’s say there’s a tiny country bordering Moldova-perhaps a renegade Communist state-but no other government recognizes this country diplomatically, or in pretty much any other way. What do you do? Do you include the country on your map or not?
A magician, a faux aristocrat, and I were driving across Eastern Europe when we quite accidentally discovered the answer to this question.
(…)
The first sign that something unusual was afoot came when we reached a bridge over the Dniester River and found a military checkpoint complete with several army and police vehicles, camouflaged bunkers on either side of the road, and an immense tank with its barrel pointing in the direction of oncoming traffic. We stopped in a line of ten cars, but a military officer directed us around the queue and waved us through the checkpoint. Why? We will never know.
Mystery wrapped himself tighter in his blanket in the back seat. “I have a version of the knife-through-body illusion I want to do. Style, do you think you can dress up as a clown and heckle me from the audience? Then I’m going to bring you onstage and push you into a chair. I’ll play ‘Stuck In the Middle With You’ from Reservoir Dogs while I put my fist straight through your stomach. I’ll wiggle my fingers when they reach the other side. Then I’m going to lift you straight up, out of the chair, impaled on my arm. I need you to do that with me.”
The second sign that something was not quite right came when we stopped by a gas station to stock up on snack food. When we offered them Moldovan lei, they told us they didn’t accept that currency. We paid in American dollars, and they gave us change in what they said were rubles. When we examined the coins, we noticed that each had a large hammer-and-sickle on the back. Even stranger, they had been minted in 2000: nine years after the Soviet Union had supposedly collapsed.
(…)
As we drove on, Marko and I began to see Lenin statues and communist posters through the car window. One billboard depicted a tiny sliver of land with a Russian flag on its left and, on its right, a red and green flag with a slogan beneath. Marko, who spoke some Russian, translated it as a call for a Soviet Re-union. Where were we?
“Imagine this: Mystery the superhero.” Mystery wiped his nose with a shredded tissue. “There could be a Saturday morning cartoon, a comic book, an action figure, and a feature film.”
Suddenly, a police officer (or at least someone dressed as one) stepped into the road in front of the car with a radar detector in his hand. We’d been driving ninety kilometers an hour, he told us-ten over the speed limit. After twenty minutes and a two-dollar bribe, he let us go. We slowed down to seventy-five, but a few minutes later we were pulled over again. This officer also told us we were speeding. Though there were no signs, he claimed thatthe speed limit had changed half a kilometer back.
Ten minutes and two dollars later, we were on our way again, crawling at fifty-five just to be safe. In short order, we were pulled over and told we were driving below the minimum speed. Wherever we were, it was the most corrupt country on earth.
(…)
When we finally reached the border, two armed soldiers asked for our papers. We showed our Moldovan visas, and that was when we were told that we were no longer in Moldova. They showed us the local passport-an old Soviet document-and yelled something in Russian. Marko translated: They wanted us to drive back to the military checkpoint on the bridge we had crossed three police bribes ago and obtain the proper documents.
(…)
When Marko told a border guard there was no way we were going back to the bridge, he pulled out his gun and pointed it at Marko. Then he asked for cigarettes.
“Where are we?” Marko asked.
With pride, the guard answered back, “Pridnestrovskaia.”
If you’ve never have heard of Pridnestrovskaia (or Trans-Dniester, in English), don’t worry: neither had we. Trans-Dniester is neither recognized diplomatically nor mentioned in any of the guide books or maps we carried. But when there’s a border guard pressing a pistol into your waist, well, suddenly Pridnestrovskaia seems very real.
“I’ll do a science experiment where I transport a lab technician over the Internet. Then the finale will be a bank heist and cage vanish. So I need a male kid, a raven, you, someone to play the lab technician, and a couple people to be bank guards.”
Marko gave the guard his entire pack of Marlboros and started arguing with him. The guard didn’t lower his gun once. After a long exchange, Marko yelled something and thrust out his hands as if asking to be handcuffed. Instead, the guard turned and disappeared into an office. When Marko returned to the car, I asked him what he had said.
“I said, ‘Listen, just arrest me. I’m not going back.'”
This was getting ugly.
Mystery thrust his head over the seat partition. “Imagine this. A poster of just my hands, with black nails, and the word Mystery at the bottom. How amazing would that be?”
(…)
The border guard emerged from an office and motioned for Marko to step out of the car. They spoke for several minutes; then Marko handed him several bills.
(…)
When we finally reached Odessa, we asked our hotel clerk about Trans-Dniester. She explained that the country was the result of a civil war in Moldova, triggered largely by former communist apparatchiks, military elite, and black berets who wanted to return to the glory days of the Soviet Union. It was a place with no rules-the Wild West of the Eastern bloc and a country few foreigners dared to visit.
When Marko told her about our experience at the border, she said, “You shouldn’t have asked them to arrest you.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because they don’t have jails there.”
“Then what would they have done with us?”
She shaped her fingers into a gun, pointed them at Marko, and said, “Pow.”

Which is just beautifully absurd.

I don’t know how much of the book is true. I doubted some parts, especially Neil Strauss’ picture of himself as the innocent, accidentaly-stumbled-into-the-whole-thing only lover of women in a misogynistic society. But even if only half of it is true, that’s still a lot.

Anyhoo, the book is written with a lot of understanding for the society (no surprise there since Strauss lived that way himself), an understanding I don’t think it entirely deserves.

It’s fascinating stuff, definitely. You just have to be careful to not get brainwashed while reading the book.