The Game (2005) | Neil Strauss

I have been resistant to this book after all the talk surrounding it. I like to think the values and beliefs I grew up with ran counter to the extremes of what this book portrays. Because really there's something grimy about the Pickup Culture, even the term spouts out negative connotations. 

 I am probably the exact age whose target market this book was built for. And with the rise of the information age, it is very easy for word to go around. Neil Strauss' name would get mentioned in blogs and random forums every once in a while. Plus during that period he was promoting his more recent book: "The Truth" through podcasts, I decided to get a copy of "The Game" from a local bookstore.

It was an interesting read. The same way one says when you're not quite sure what to say but the polite way is you say "that's interesting". Strauss is a terrific writer. It is easy to empathize with him in the story. The frame must have been that we all feel lacking at some point. He found a way. He took that route. The road had its dark places and its issues. And it had its consequences.

 One positive thing about reading is you get to have a view, and if the writing is done well enough, experience something that wasn't there before. Then you make a judgment. 

 Very intriguing story. But no, not that way.

 One part where Neil Strauss interviewed an earlier creator of a similar book: 
"I think the existential dilemma is: we're social animals, we all wrestle with a sense of inadequacy. But when we realize that were not as inadequate as we thought we were, and we realize that everybody else also thinks they're inadequate, then that aches goes away and the idea that we're not a person of value disappears to some extent."

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