Via Susan Walsh, I found this ongoing series at the Village Voice where freshly-dumped NYU senior Jesse VanDusen tests out the game advice of a PUA instructor versus the advice laid out in Baldassare Castiglione’s Renaissance-era tome on being the perfect courtier, The Book of the Courtier. It’s quite interesting, especially this part:
Richard Horwich, a current professor of Shakespeare at NYU and author of a number of critical texts including Shakespeare’s Dilemmas, says the book’s main strengths are its morality and its emphasis on sprezzatura, an Italian term for ‘nonchalance’ coined by Castiglione. Unlike everyone’s favorite amoral Italian conduct book, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Courtier, in the form of conversations between real-life royalty, always insists upon moral purity. These do-gooding crusaders needed to play it cool or risk losing their sprezzatura and looking like rehearsed hacks. In other words, this was a strategy that seemed the exact opposite of what Mystery and Luna were selling.
I looked up sprezzatura in Wikipedia, and here’s what I got:
Sprezzatura is an Italian word originating from Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined by the author as “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.†It is the ability of the courtier to display “an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them.†Sprezzatura has also been described “as a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance.â€
Wow, that’s EXACTLY what I was trying to express when I named “indifference” as one of the fundamentals of game months ago. Curse my Anglo-French literary snobbishness.
Although I’m liking the series so far, VanDusen’s methodology for determining whether his game is working is flawed. At the end of Part Two, he pulls a number by applying Castiglione’s methods, and at the end of Part Three, he spends a night dancing with girl after girl. The problem is that the sole metric by which you can determine the effectiveness of your game is whether you can seal the deal (or for you chaste religious folk, whether you could seal the deal if you wanted to). The phone numbers don’t mean shit, the bar-side makeouts don’t mean shit, the dance floor grinding doesn’t mean shit. If you can’t get your you-know-what in a girl’s you-know-where, your game sucks. If VanDusen wanted to do a better experiment, he’d only count girls he’d actually slept with.
Still, you should go check out the articles. I’ve also found a downloadable PDF copy of The Book of the Courtier at Google Books, for those of you interested. I’ll definitely have to write that one up later.
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Spoiler Alert: in today’s conclusion he asks a girl out using ” a mixture of awkward jumbled sentences and genuine interest.” Miraculously, she accepts.
That’s pretty interesting stuff. I’ve never heard of the Book of Courtier but will definitely check it out, as I’ve been reading a lot the classic literature and what not.
The indifference that you describe or “sprezzatura” does seem like it is one of the fundamental qualities that most PUAs espouse, usually in the sense of not giving a shit. For example, the quote from Neil Struass’ The Game:
“To get a woman, you have to be willing to risk losing her.”
Which to me seems like a similar concept, as in one’s indifference or “sprezzatura” to the outcome of getting a girl is what will attract her in the first place.
Word. If you’re not closing you’re a clown.
Sprezzatura is important in game, because when you appear to be trying hard, you are putting too high a priority on the girl, making her look high status and you low.
One of the best *Game* books out there is the Red and the Black by Stendhal.
He goes into great psychological detail describing with incredible insight the seduction of a beautiful married woman in provincial France by a talented upstart.
Amusingly, Stendhal described one of this aims in writing the book as to show that in France, a woman will only be attracted to you if you occasionally show cold indifference and refrain from constant enthusiastic pursuit – his point was that this was only true in *decadent* France! He thought matters were different with *passionate* Italian women who were free the *French* sin of vanity.
I encounter this a lot when a guy realizes the truth about female attraction for the first time – I mean without being exposed to the theory of Game, but just notices for himself the supposedly counterintuitive reactions of women and beings to reflect on it, as happened to me. The immediate first response is to assume this is a peculiarity of women in YOUR country only, and women are different elsewhere.
@greg
Women are decadent by nature. It is culture that lets that decadence out or teaches them how to control it. Take a girl from Latin America, the Middle East, or any area where woman are generally of greater quality than they are in the US (pretty much everywhere outside of the Anglosphere) and raise her in the US, and she will be as spoiled and unmarriable as any American jizz bucket.
Interesting reads mentioned here. I’ll be tackling them. The Stendhal reference is really interesting…I have that book sitting in my unread stacks somewhere…I buy way too many books that I don’t read.
Something like sprezzatura cannot be faked. Or faked well, I should say. By its nature, it does not take well to play acting. The crispness and spontaneity of such behavior is very apparent to those watching and listening.
I’m very fatalistic about the art of PU.
You can learn to adopt some of it, integrate a little into your personality, but a great deal of it must be inborn.
“….she will be as spoiled and unmarriable as any American jizz bucket.”
Is there a chance in hell that you all can tone down the shredding of American women? Regardless of your own experiences with them, it hurts, actually HURTS us to read over and over the attacks. I have been hurt by American men and they most certainly are not at the top of my dating list, but I refuse to talk shit about them as a whole. As an American woman who would help you in any way that I could if I saw you in need as a fellow American, it breaks my heart to read such hateful statements. I will stay loyal to the men of my country as much as I can. Please you guys, at least consider this request.
““….she will be as spoiled and unmarriable as any American jizz bucket.â€
Is there a chance in hell that you all can tone down the shredding of American women? Regardless of your own experiences with them, it hurts, actually HURTS us to read over and over the attacks. I have been hurt by American men and they most certainly are not at the top of my dating list, but I refuse to talk shit about them as a whole. As an American woman who would help you in any way that I could if I saw you in need as a fellow American, it breaks my heart to read such hateful statements. I will stay loyal to the men of my country as much as I can. Please you guys, at least consider this request.”
- Interesting…I think that pretty much shows the truth of Spengler’s Universal Law of Gender Parity.
anoukange, I understand your pain.
But as an European men who has lived in the United States and Latin America (so I can compare), I can say that all what said here about American women is true.
Of course, there are exceptions and you may well be one of them. But you cannot shoot the messenger because you don’t like the message.
I suggest that you go to blogs targeted to women and convince them to change their attitude.
But the way is not trying to suppress the truth only for a misguided patriotism (“My country, right or wrong!”) or because you feel hurt.
People are free to speak their minds. And you are free not to read them. This is why I don’t read feminist forums.
But you won’t pretend all the men in this forum suppress their thoughts only because you get hurt. This kind of chivalry is dead and women are not anymore delicate snowflakes whose feelings have to be protected as the greater good. You can leave whenever you want.
Although, after consulting the dictionary, I see that the expression “jizz bucket” is really rude
@anoukange
It’s hyperbole, don’t take it personally.
Freedom of speech, yes, but it gets excessive. You all have to understand that a lot of men just jump on the bandwagon and add to the fire without their own personal experiences. I’ve been reading blogs off and on for years and this is the only part of the sphere that repeatedly attacks American women with sheer hate. If one has failed at a relation with a woman, whether she be American or not, it is your failure, not an entire group of women. If just some of you participate in not writing things like the above, it would help. I have and will go after any woman who is talking shit about American men as a whole, that I can give you. This country has great women, probably more so than non-great ones. Please don’t negate their efforts and what it takes for them to be good and kind to their fellow American men by letting the soured ones (that have not learned how to be a good woman properly) be the only source of reference.
What about those of us who aren’t failing, but still saying the exact same things? That blows your theory right out of the water.
Pro-Male–
Then why the hate? Why spread hate about any one particular group? If you hate then you have failed at remaining neutral or undamaged. And if you’re dating them then why slander them? I don’t get it. Only bitter hearts hate. Bitterness is failure in my opinion.
I’m not spreading “hate”.
I never claimed to be “neutral”. I can’t be neutral about something that directly affects my life.
How am I “slandering” the women I date? My blog is public and you can read it. How have I slandered the women I have dated? What have I said about those three women that is “slander”?
Pro male-I wasn’t talking of you specifically, it was more generalized. You claimed to carry the same beliefs and generalizations about/towards American women. I have not read your blog, I was addressing what you’ve written here, as in, agreeing with the above view. I met and was treated horribly by an American boy but I have also known some great American men so I continue to asses with an individualistic approach. And by failure, I wasn’t referencing being able to “score” with them or not, it was about having any exchange go sour and get nasty. To me that is a failure, of which I have only one. And of course that was due to the guy’s horrible reputation and inability to break “character” and be a decent human being. Yet I still don’t hate. I speak of the larger issue….massive, generalized attacks on women of one country. For everything that is said of American women, American men are notoriously known around the word as some of the worst, if the THE worst among guys. I still find myself defending you all when attacked. It’s called loyalty. I don’t give blind loyalty but I give loyalty. It would be great if you guys didn’t support the hate and didn’t participate in it as well.
Anouk:
…uh, okay.
As fervent a believer as I am in gender parity, I have yet to hear ONE percent of the complaining about American men that I do about American women. No, nobody praises them as prizes, but nobody seems to hate them much either. When it comes to Yankee girls, you can’t spit in the blogosphere without hitting someone who has it in for them.
Ferd–
firstly, you’re a dude, so I’m sure you’re not siting around the campfire with womenfolk much as they gossip openly and honestly about their romances and dating. Secondly, I have mostly international friends and have done a bunch of international travel myself, and I blush at the foul remarks made about American men. Trust me, it isn’t pretty. If you don’t believe me, ask around any international crowd. (Of course this would require going outside of Albany, NY) Also: I take this part of the sphere with a grain of salt because many, many guys who have harsh things to say bout American women have yet to prove themselves capable of healthy relationships in general. Many come from broken homes or upbringings, divorce within their own lives, or severe, twisted mentalities in regards to relationships. Every time I read some outrageous comment left behind by someone, I visit their blog, and sure enough, there is some long list of damaged happenings in their life and they continue the pattern of hate, blame and projection. hmmmm…
Anouk:
Fair enough.
I’m just saying, if American men were universally regarded as that bad in other lands, there’d probably be more anecdotal evidence abounding on the Internet and in the public square. It wouldn’t be all hush-hush. I’m in agreement with you anyway, but you’re not making a very good case.
Yes, and I’m sure that the women who complain about American men are all perfectly wonderful people who have no problems forming healthy relationships. None at all.
Look, I agree with you that American men are collectively fucked up (probably for different reasons), as are American women. As Spengler would say, they deserve each other. I have my own problems with American women, but I don’t complain about them because I’m annoyed by people who whine about things that are within their control to change and because getting laid isn’t and never will be the primary goal of my life. My biggest priority right now is keeping my head above water, which is why I live where I do – not many places where you can earn a five figure salary for minimal effort.
It’s not “hate” so stop it with that crap.
The problem is geography. Outside of extensive travel, most American men will meet American women. You have no way of knowing whether these men are capable of “healthy relationships” (whatever you mean by that) or not because what these men are given to work with when it comes to women.
“I take this part of the sphere with a grain of salt because many, many guys who have harsh things to say bout American women have yet to prove themselves capable of healthy relationships in general.”
Are you sure it isn’t the women in the same group complaining about the same men who they are dating, men who have been in multiple relationships with others in their circle of friends, and then are called catches? In other words, aren’t the women choosing without regard to personal character? Because from what I’ve seen, women choose to be in relationships, men wait to be chosen.
Ferd–
Then you and I are in agreement. Which I’ve suspected for some time now. I tend to agree with you, Novaseeker, Thursday, and some others often. I just assumed you hated me by your cool “demeanor” towards me after the “episode”. Those same women talking shit abut American men are just as messed up. I neither support nor condone their remarks and general attitudes towards men. I could smack them silly if I could, honestly.
Pro-Male–
There is hate spread….the guy above called us “jizz buckets” and that is on the milder side of what I read almost daily. You have not written such things from what I can see, I was just addressing that you said you carried the same views of American women. By healthy relationships, I mean treating the entire exchange with kindness and maintaining a sense of respect and dignity for the other. It is the harder thing to leave people and things in tact. Most lack this skill.
Look guys, I only ask that you yourselves don’t write such things about American women and if you could, in some way, while still maintaining your “alpha” image, call out on those that do. I comment under a different name on feminist/man hating sites and I stick it to them. They are a bunch of loonies too. This is the only time I change my screen name so I don’t have to deal with them coming over to my site and dumping their garbage. I am a comrade of men. The number one issue that I can see re-occurring regarding the sexes is that people don’t know how to give love. I want to form a love movement not just full of hot air, but possibly teaching people how to actually love. Whether it be for a casual tryst, a semi-long term, or a marriage…let there be love. We are human and humans have enormous potential that we are not maxing out as a race.
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