This is a continuation of my posts on exploring The Game, both the book and the whole secret society of guys trying to get girls (because it’s a big secret guys try to do this..? Why not a secret society of breathing?). It has it’s own category above if you’d like to catch up on the posts and read them in order.

Here are my impressions of chapter one:

Here I expect we’ll get right into the women and picking up, but instead the book opens with the supposed master of all PUA wanting to commit suicide. It’s apparently on behalf of a girl. How’s that for confusing?

It’s a good hook and it reads like a very intentional hook. You expect the book to start in one general place, and next thing you know, you’re in a mental hospital. Wow, how did that happen? I guess I have to read the whole thing now. Yay literary devices!

I wasn’t disappointed completely. Before the end of the chapter, the very hot psychiatrist is told that in a different time, different place, she too would be swept off her feet by Mystery: PUA extraordinaire. The narrator who calls himself Style, the author himself I assume, lays it on thick that this is the absolute truth: Mystery is the man. Style says he’s the man too, but Mystery’s a man’s man (man). They are both the man, and yet Mystery is trying to kill himself.

And meanwhile you wonder what killing yourself has to do with pickup.

Also, I’m left to empathize with the woman behind the desk who gives the, “Uh,-huh, suuuuuuure.” politeness. I roll my eyes with her.

I hope there is meaning to this chapter by the end of the book, and this isn’t just a hook. I enjoy meaning. If suicidal tendencies can be turned into a good meaning, I’m all for it. I’m just hoping that meaning isn’t going in the direction of, “See what happens when you fall for a girl? They ruin you and you want to commit suicide, so stay in the game and don’t fall for the stupid bitches.” I automatically plot out possibilities as I read books. Maybe it’s just my previous prejudices and preconceptions showing, but it’s possible at this point things may be headed in that direction.