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Monday, March 26, 2012

Author Turns Sex, Interviews, Sudy into Pickup Artist Book


Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser
Subtitle: Long Interviews with Hideous Men 
By Clarisse Thorn
Available on Amazon and Smashwords
Nonfiction: Feminist Theory/Se
ISBN: 9781476129211 


Reviewed by Katy Huff originally for Amazon

 
I picked up this book for the David Foster Wallace reference in the title and the sexy reputation of the author. I only put it down so that I could eat something without endangering my Kindle. It's a fast-paced, chatty, cerebral, and ultimately sex-positive and feminist dissection of the pick up artist subculture, which turns out to be a seedy amalgamation of internet fora, night clubs, nerds, hedonists, misogynists, misandrists, sociopaths, and ordinary men (and women).

Clarisse is unflinchingly honest (radically honest, even) about the occasionally hot, often tormented, and chronically analytic headspace she experienced as a sex-positive feminist investigating the bizarre subculture of pick up artistry. She risks endangerment of her sanity, her feminist paradigm, and her person to stalk, interview, and, yes, flirt her way through the underworld of geeks and sleazebags of pick up artistry.

I was morbidly fascinated as she fluidly reviewed the myriad vocabularies, philosophies, and 'techniques' that have evolved within this strange community. I was then relieved when, after outlining and explaining this disturbing world, she tore it to shreds in a dissection that is too honest to completely please anyone involved: pick up artists, feminists, and innocent bystanders will all leave with a lesson or two.

I can only hope she's already conducting her next undercover investigation of the next fascinating subculture she'll write about.

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