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Over de Auteur

Neil Strauss is the author of The Game and Rules of the Game. He is also the coauthor of several celebrity memoirs including The Long Hard Road Out of Hell with Marilyn Manson, The Dirt with Mötley Crüe, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale with Jenna Jameson, and Don't Try This toon meer at Home with Dave Navarro. He also writes for Rolling Stone and The New York Times. He won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for his coverage of Kurt Cobain's suicide for Rolling Stone and his profile of Eric Clapton in The New York Times Arts and Leisure section. (Bowker Author Biography) toon minder

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Gerelateerde werken

The Long Hard Road Out of Hell (1998) — Auteur — 1,318 exemplaren
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The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed (2006) — Voorwoord — 232 exemplaren
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Tagged

Algemene kennis

Officiële naam
Strauss, Neil Darrow
Pseudoniemen en naamsvarianten
Style
Powles, Chris
Geboortedatum
1969-03-09
Geslacht
male
Nationaliteit
USA
Geboorteplaats
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Opleiding
Columbia University
Beroepen
journalist
actor
Organisaties
The Village Voice
The New York Times
Rolling Stone

Leden

Besprekingen

The Truth – An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships by Neil Strauss
Note: The reviewer makes certain conclusions inspired but not voiced as such by the author.

“A time comes when you are all alone, when you come to the end of everything that can happen to you. It is the end of the world. Even grief - your own grief doesn’t answer you any more and you have to retrace your steps to go among people.“ Luis Ferdinand Selena in Journey to the end of the night.

If the above is the bleak current state of your affairs, Neil Strauss’s reading of “The uncomfortable truth about relationships” could be a hope-inducing event.

If you haven’t yet quite reached “... the end of the[your] world” but would tick the following questions and statements in the affirmative, you may yet benefit from some of “the uncomfortable truths ” propounded by Mr. Strauss.
-Does happiness in a relationship keep eluding you?
-Are you starting to wonder why?
-Do you believe a man’s fidelity only goes as far as his options?
-Do you want to know whether serial monogamy is a natural kind of relationship between men and women?
-Looking into alternative relationship options?
-Starting to wonder whether relationships - any kind - are the key to bliss?

And, well if you are of the inquisitive type that likes to see traditional values questioned yet don’t like foregone conclusions – it could be right up your alley. For this is about a convention as old as it is venerable and as deeply ensconced in tradition as perhaps not other.

To live is to relate and for most that means to relate to other people. Few can dwell in a lofty domain entirely constructed of abstractions relating solely to and by the crystalline sober world of rational thought. If you belong to these rarified individuals you might perhaps find it “fascination”, raise an eyebrow – in Vulcan manner so to speak - but otherwise Strauss’s revelations would not unduly discomfit you. Nevertheless, at the central core of most people’s lives is how they relate to other people. Especially, the formal relationship mode(s) - formal an oxymoron to describe the fuzziest of human domains - between sexes we engage and consequently ensconce our selves in and allow to occupy and direct our lives.

Which leads us to the introductory part of the book. Overwhelming circumstantial evidence makes our hero/villain admit to his crime. The crime - cheating on his girlfriend. Consequently, if not entirely voluntarily, as a show of good faith he commits himself to a clinic for sex addicts. The sinner repents. Or does he? This certainly grabbed my attention.
Accordingly the premise is set, namely that cheating in a (romantic) relationship constitutes deviant behavior. Over the course of book not only is this very premise analyzed but also in the progress a great many psychological truisms manifest.
Born from experiences during his self-incarceration and later relationship experimentation, our “hero’s” dissective no-holds-barred analysis of his childhood and relationships woes provide the cases in point for not only the many of the psychological insights of the great pioneering masters of hardcore in-your-face psychology of Abraham Maslov and Sigmund Freud, but also the softer more humane psychology of a Leonardo Buscaglia and an Erich Fromm.
If you are familiar with their concepts and outlooks and their theories, you find them become reality in Strauss’s journey.
E.g: Strauss’s terminology usage of love addict and love denier. (Freud being the first to describe the symptoms in – The Wolf Man). Sandor Rado popularized the terms in 1928.
There are no ground-breaking new psychological theories but the writer has obviously read up on psychology 101.

Why does Neil Strauss’s book matter so much, then?
His work is a rare instance of bringing the abstractions of psychological study to life within the context of his own life experiences - all within a narrative that is convincing and witty.
What is most compelling here is that Strauss’s is not a quest fueled by scientific curiosity but human despair. It just feels real.
However, there is a caveat. This is the emotional journey of a man who has the means and the time to experiment with different kinds of relationships as described in the book. For some this may curtail the ability to identify with the author for Neil Strauss status as a Rolling Stones writer enables him to enact situations in social circles that the average man has no access to.

That said, of additional interest is how over the course of the book the author’s collected evidence, experience and personal anticipation seems, at first, to lead to a rather predictable denouement; when in fact, to the surprise of author and reader alike, this transforms into an interpretation and final perception quite different and arguably more meaningful than one was let to expect.
Namely, that whatever kind of redemption one seeks may not derive from insights into whether serial monogamy and its premise and highest dictate of sexual loyalty holds true but a realisation that unsatisfactory relationships, polygamous and monogamous alike etc., originate from one’s and/or a partner’s Sisyphean insistence of acting out a long past but never forgotten.
Like a historical re-enactor gone insane, wearing costume and paraphernalia at the most inappropriate moments possible, we are driven to wearing our childhood defense mechanisms - sadly out of place on on supposedly mature psyche needing to deal with grown-up matter.

It is the cold realization that only complete renewal will do.
That such renewals of our psyche become necessary for some of us stems from our social system which produces relational states incompatible to a satisfactory state of living. Our egocentric notion and unspoken expectations are reinforced in this communication bereft environment constitute the premeditated resentment in our relationship with people.
Over the last generations we have produced the wounded children that go on to become adults just to reiterate the cycle. And from a bottom up perspective that permeates to how nations deal with each other - badly.

To actually deal with this problem at the roots, an uplift of rationality over instinct needs to drive a massive social revolution. Admittedly, at this stage of humanity - a mere fantasy.
What we are left with is theorizing. But then again this has often proven to pave the way for the shape of (better) things to come.

When all is said and done, Strauss’s ominously titled book turns out, quite unexpectedly, to be quite a love story - complete with happy ending.
So, if Luis Ferdinand Selena’s words from “Journey to the End of the Night” hit uncomfortably close to home, take comfort in this. The journey to the end of night may very well be one of discomfiture, yet we shall undertake such for yonder night is light.


… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
nitrolpost | 4 andere besprekingen | Mar 19, 2024 |
Definitely the best non-fiction book I have read so far. It did not however teach me anything about meeting women and is certainly not meant it. The book had a very solid structure and never felt directionless. Though the book ended properly, I still fear that most of the books in this genre cannot have reasonable endings (because "life goes on"), so I will still steer clear of non-fiction.
 
Gemarkeerd
MXMLLN | 33 andere besprekingen | Jan 12, 2024 |
Los hombres lo negarán. Las mujeres no lo creerán. Pero la eficacia del método es del 100%. ¿Objetivo del método?: hacer del arte de llevarse mujeres a la cama una ciencia exacta. El autor, Neil Strauss, es un periodista de mucho prestigio que fue durante un tiempo crítico de música del New York Times y es autor de varios no-ficción de gran éxito. Strauss se infiltró en un grupo creciente en USA que se podría definir como "maestros de la seducción", un grupo de hombres que contactan por internet, siguen a un maestro o gurú que imparte cursos presenciales (al parecer hay varios, con distintas técnicas y enfoques, y uno de los que aparece –Mystery– es el personaje que inspiró a Tom Cruise en Magnolia) y dedican su vida a perfeccionar la técnica de llevarse mujeres a la cama. Tienen su código de honor, un lenguaje propio, trucos y técnicas supuestamente infalibles.… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
Natt90 | 33 andere besprekingen | Mar 8, 2023 |
I read seven years ago apparently, and I remember really enjoying it. While I was rereading it, I kept wondering why I had liked it so much. Not because it was bad (it isn't, it's well-written and interesting), but just why had I such a positive memory of a book that seems to be all about how to survive in the wilderness with nothing but a knife, staying alive at all costs and slicing the throat of innocent goats? I'm not really into the idea that people only care about themselves.

And then the last thirty pages happened and I was like "OH, that's why!". Because it's not cynical. It actually touches on something that I myself have realized in the past year, which is that spending your time helping others and seeing the lengths people are willing to go to help out? It makes you not feel, but see that the world is a better place than we often are allowed to believe. And that's probably more important than being able to live off roots for a few days.

(That said I am alreday in prepper mode and I plan on getting an emergency kit so I can survive a week without electricity and water in my apartment. That's what the government expect you to do these days. But I will obviously share that shit with people who might need my help, 'cause I'm not a dick.)
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
upontheforemostship | 12 andere besprekingen | Feb 22, 2023 |

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Statistieken

Werken
15
Ook door
10
Leden
3,451
Populariteit
#7,366
Waardering
½ 3.7
Besprekingen
62
ISBNs
128
Talen
18
Favoriet
7

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