Once again, more reviews. Check out the rest here, email me here if you want me to review your book.
This week, I’m reviewing the updated edition of Roosh’s A Dead Bat in Paraguay, which includes a redesigned cover and a new epilogue. I’m also reviewing the bibliography of English Teacher X for two reasons:
- His books are cheap, super cheap. The Kindle versions will only run you $2.99 each. Unfortunately for dead tree readers, only Guide to Teaching English Abroad is available in paperback, for the much higher but still cheap price of $9.99.
- They’re short. I knocked them out over the course of four days. In particular, I finished Speaking Activities in one night sitting on the can reeling from a series of diarrhea attacks, each one more violent and painful than the last, God’s punishment for straying from the Paleo path.
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A Dead Bat in Paraguay by Roosh Vörek
As I did with my Bang review, I’m keeping this post short by focusing on the new content in the book. Check out my review of the first edition of Paraguay here.
Picking A Dead Bat in Paraguay up two years after I first read it, it’s remained remarkably fresh and funny. While two of the biggest criticisms I made two years ago still stand — the phony-sounding sentimental diversions and the frank-to-a-fault prose — Paraguay is still a great little story, a true classic in the travel writing genre. Re-reading the book, there are a few things that annoyed me that didn’t before, such as Roosh packing some sentences full of more description than necessary (e.g. “…we were excited about the prospect of meeting easy college chicks, one year after we graduated with bachelor degrees from the University of Maryland”), but these mistakes are few and far between and probably won’t matter to anyone who doesn’t have a humanities degree.
The mere presence of an epilogue solves one of my bigger problems with Paraguay — the fact that it doesn’t really end. Roosh’s narrative follows the traditional story arc, slowly building up to a climax, but rather than ending properly, the story just slowly grinds to a halt, like a car running out a gas. After abandoning his mundane life in America and suffering the trials of Job throughout his journey, contending with frigid women, weird bunkmates and constant anal explosions brought on by questionable local cuisine, Roosh arrives in the Promised Land (Brazil) and decides to leave because…well…um…he can’t take the pain anymore. It may be the truth, but it makes for an unsatisfying way to end a book.
The epilogue itself focuses on Roosh’s return to Rio de Janeiro a couple years later, reuniting with an old flame of his. While it does a good job of closing out Paraguay, it doesn’t seem wholly thematically appropriate. When I first reviewed the book, I interpreted its central theme as a tale of quarter-life ennui and aimlessness, and Roosh himself brings this to the forefront multiple times, with his fellow backpackers giving advice like this:
“I have a friend who traveled for years. He returned home and on the second night he confessed his depression to me. He said, ‘I’ve been away for three years but nothing has changed. The same people go to the same pubs.’”
I took a sip of my coca leaf tea, which was supposed to settle my stomach. “True but I may be missing out on good times with those friends in those pubs.”
Keane tilted his head and looked at me. I knew he was about to say something important. “Roosh, you know exactly what is happening there. You’re not missing a thing.”
I can’t help but feel that a better epilogue, following Chekhov’s Gun, would have focused on Roosh’s life after returning to Washington, D.C. and him seeing that his friends, family, and the women hadn’t changed, that he had aged beyond everyone, that life in America was just as pointlessness and soul-killing as before. But this is just how I feel, so take it for what you will.
Like with my re-review of Bang, I don’t know if the new cover and epilogue make A Dead Bat in Paraguay worth buying if you already own the first edition, but if you haven’t read this poignant, comic tale of modern American manhood, you need to get it ASAP.
Click here to buy A Dead Bat in Paraguay.
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Guide to Teaching English Abroad by English Teacher X
I found out about this guy via Roosh. According to the bio on his blog, English Teacher X has been teaching English to foreigners for the past decade and a half, which is more than enough to make him an expert on this field. And according to X, being an English teacher abroad isn’t all partying and having sex with hotter women then you could ever get back home:
A typical English teacher in Russia or China is very lucky to make $1,000 a month, plus a crappy apartment somewhere. Schools will very begrudgingly often throw in a plane ticket home, at the end of the contract, and might even promise you some “health insurance,” which often just means they’ll take you to whatever is locally available in the way of free clinics.
Japan, the Middle East, and practically every country in the world are seeing salaries and benefits go down, down, down, and the number of available teachers go way up.
If you’re thinking about taking the plunge into teaching English abroad, you need to read X’s Guide before you make any big decisions. While not against the profession, he hammers home the point that it’s not a job for everyone, and not a quarter as glamorous as you might think it is. Even if you’re not interested in becoming an English teacher, I highly recommend the Guide for X’s writing, which had me chortling throughout due to its frankness and cynicism:
Okay, now at this point you’re probably saying to yourself: If English schools suck so much, why can’t I just give private lessons on my own, or organize my own classes?
Well, I’ll offer you this metaphor: okay, yeah, you’ll probably make more money selling your ass on the street without a pimp, but at the same time, you’re probably more likely to get tied to the bed and soaked in lighter fluid and set on fire.
The Guide covers most every topic related to TEFL, from the best countries to work in to actually getting a job to dealing with your students. X’s methods of teaching English basically amount to doing as little as possible since wages are usually shit and there’s absolutely no reward for doing a good job. To that end, he includes such chapters and advice as “Make the Fuckers Talk,” “Going to Work with a Hangover,” and “How to Do a Runner,” peppered with little quips like these:
…The difference between an amateur and a professional is in most cases simply an ability to bullshit effectively.
I’m gonna print that quote up and hang it on my wall.
Again, you’ll get the most use out of this book if you’re already thinking about becoming an English teacher, but I still highly recommend it for the writing alone.
Click here to buy Guide to Teaching English Abroad.
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To Travel Hopelessly by English Teacher X
Of X’s books, this is the most interesting by far as it’s a collection of stories about his adventures abroad. Beginning in Thailand in 1995, English Teacher X’s journey takes him across the globe, to South Korea, New York City, back to Thailand and then to the Czech Republic and Russia. Along the way, he deals with corrupt employers, incompetent bosses, deranged groupies, and a truly fucked up array of colleagues:
English Teacher D apparently got a hold of a good amount of codeine and settled down to sleep in whatever miserable nest he’d built for himself under the bridge. After he fell into a stupor, he was robbed or each and every possession that he’d managed to retain, including his clothing. When he came to, naked, still incoherent but knowing he needed help, he wrapped a cardboard box around himself and staggered up to the school, during working hours, to get help.
A few emergency calls home got some money wired to English Teacher D to get a plane ticket home – fortunately his passport had been at the school.
He apparently blew most of the money on codeine, and managed to convince the transvestite to let him stay with her.
X narrates such tales as “Going to Work on Acid” and “About a Whore” with his typical wry voice and dark humor, going through the piles of drugs he abused and the women he slept with. It’s nothing particularly groundbreaking, but To Travel Hopelessly is a hilarious and enthralling memoir and an amazing deal at only $2.99. According to his blog, X is planning to release a second memoir about his adventures in Russia, where he spent close to a decade, and I’m definitely looking forward to it.
Click here to buy To Travel Hopelessly.
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Speaking Activities That Don’t Suck by English Teacher X
This book is the least interesting to a general audience as its content is geared exclusively towards those already teaching English abroad. Still, I bought it because what the hell — it’s only three bucks!
As the name says, Speaking Activities is all about getting your English students to speak — a laborious and taxing task for pretty much all English teachers everywhere in the world. Keeping in line with his philosophy of doing the bare minimum possible, X’s activities are designed to get your students talking (a lot) with little to no work on your part. Despite the dry subject matter, Speaking Activities had me literally laughing my ass off (remember, I was on the can) with X’s sardonic, cynical wit, from his titles (“Let’s Talk About Your Avarice”) to the lessons themselves:
You: “Do you like cocktails?”
Chick: “Of course.”
You: “I bet you could tell me a few cock tales, baby. How often do you eat that…I mean, how often you drink cocktails?”
X also intersperses “personal growth” and “self-development” questions throughout the various sections, which serve the singular purpose of berating and insulting the reader:
1) My students, like dead hookers, should be seen and not heard.
2) I believe that my students need to spend the whole class reading, listening, and writing, because I am usually too hungover to want to speak.
3) My students are too fucking stupid to talk.
Like I said, the content isn’t helpful at all if you aren’t already stuck pounding ingles into the skulls of overfed Korean kids at ten in the morning every day, but it’s still a fast and funny read.
Click here to buy Speaking Activities That Don’t Suck.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I knew a number of people who went to teach English abroad — no thanks. Any material gains you make are wasted on travel and cost of adaptation. The one guy who made it carried his life (including laptop) in a single suitcase and had literally no pleasures except internet use.
On the other hand, it’s not as much of a scam as the “Teach for America” trip that leads you into sunless ghettos to teach subjects to kids who cannot understand them and find it insulting that you try.
Thanks for the reviews. I’m working hard to get paper copies of the books up; hopefully by the end of the week, although once I formatted them properly I find I have to charge a bit more ($12.00) .
And expect my Russia book to be my magnum opus. . .
I actually completed an English degree thinking I would go overseas to teach, but after getting the BA I changed my mind. However, my close friend went to Korea to teach and he is still there after ten years. I don’t blame him. He never had success with ball-cutting western feminists, so when I visited him I wasn’t surprised to see that his Korean gf is demure and submissive.
Pay isn’t much, about $2000/month, but rent is paid for by the employer, and all taxes combined are almost nothing at roughly 5%. He vacations every year in the Philippines.
Teaching in any of the poorer nations sounds like shit. Russia, China…no thanks. Count me out.
Yeah, a nerdy kid who I went to HS with taught in Korea. Hasn’t returned and apparently is marrying a cute Korean girl. I doubt he could have gotten a girl half as pretty in the US, so it definitely has its upsides.
I teach in Japan and make about $3000 a month after deductions for taxes, my car, etc. I’m in public middle schools and teach an average of less than two classes a day, leaving me free to do the computer at my desk or pretty much whatever else I want. Living expenses are dirt cheap, I love hanging out with my students, life is good, only downside is that it’s a small town but there are three cities between 30 and 100 minutes away so it’s not bad. I’m not surprised English teaching outside Asia is crap, though.
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