Synopsis

      A Dead Bat In Paraguay is the true story of when I decided that the best way to deal with my existential crisis was to sell my possessions, quit my professional career as a scientist, and hop on a one-way flight to Quito, Ecuador in order to visit every country in South America. I sincerely believed the trip would put me on a track towards a more fulfilling life of excitement, intrigue, and exotic women, away from my soulless corporate job in a Washington D.C. suburb.

      Instead, I humorously fall from one country to the next, striking out repeatedly with the local women, getting robbed, having dreams that became reality, self-diagnosing myself with a host of diseases, and suffering repeated bouts of stomach illness that made marathon bus rides superhuman feats of bodily strength.

      Along the journey I chronicle the friendships, the women, and the struggles, including one fateful night in Paraguay that I thought would lead to my end.

      Here's a review I received via e-mail a couple days after publishing the book...

"Honest... Humorous... Inspiring..."       I bought it when it was released and finished it yesterday.       First and foremost: The honesty of the book shines through very brightly. The book is fearless. Embarassment, shame, humiliation, rejection, self-doubt (and not the cool, hip kind you'd see on TV, but the kind that's like a thorn in your confidence): It's all there, not gussied up in the slightest. I don't think I'd have the courage to write this book.       Because of that, the book is actually inspiring. Not stare-up-at-the-stars inspiring, or dramatic-comeback inspiring—those are just masturbation. Your acceptance of the kind of pains that can erode a person's moxy until he is tiny and petty, and your persistence through that pain with an eh-fuck-it attitude, comes off as more genuinely masculine than anything I've seen or read in a very long time. It reminded me of Luke in "Cool Hand Luke." I actually wanted to go get rejected all night at a bar after reading this, just to think afterwards, "I'm as tough as Roosh."       That's mixed in with a lot of humorous and insightful commentary.       If I had to complain, I would say the prose comes off as too simple sometimes, and the frankness of the book occasionally undercuts the storytelling. I know that contradicts what I said earlier, but I guess what I mean is this: In reality, sometimes the hero slips and falls in the shower and so the villlain wins, or vice versa. When you find out that's what happens, you think, "Well, shit, that was anti-climactic," but afterwards it will stay with you longer because it's more relevant to your life than a shoot-out in an abandoned factory in bullet-time. That's like your book.       Also, the price was right.       Thanks Roosh.

      Check out some sample pages and when you're ready to order A Dead Bat In Paraguay click the image below. Or continue reading...

The Details

“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.” Leo Tolstoy

      I was probably programmed for unhappiness. Regardless of my current situation or environment, a nagging void in my mind fills with romantic notions of escape into the exotic unknown, trying to answer the question... what more is there?

      My career as a scientist was interesting but never excited me, and I was always on the hunt for something more fulfilling. I tried things like snowboarding, DJ'ing, bartending, motorcycling, and sailing—but the void remained.

      I decided that if there is more, it can only be found is some faraway land, not the city I spent the bulk of my childhood in, that I know frontwards and backwards with the predictable comfort that comes from living in the same place for decades. I started small first, taking little trips here and there, until I was ready for something longer and riskier.

      I know I'm not the only one who has this “sickness.” The traveler ghettos of the world are filled with people like me, who at some point became convinced that the farther the land, the more answers and solutions it contains. It's true that each person seeks a different answer, but the means they wish to achieve them is the same—by living anywhere but “home.”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Hendry David Thoreau in Walden

      I picked South America, a continent with thirteen countries. I originally intended to only visit a few, but the guidebooks were of no help in helping me decide which country fit me best. I would have to visit every country to find out myself, a feat that I thought would take less than a year and be relatively easy. By then the longest I had traveled outside of the United States was two weeks, in very Western and modern Spain.


      Naïve, short-sighted, hasty. I'd use those words to describe my plan now. I ignored the precarious undertaking I was about to entail, and only saw the ends: life meaning and glorious conquest (of both lands and women).

      For men I believe it's impossible to separate travel from women. Though the target is often different, conquest is conquest, something that is hard-wired into the man's brain. It's during this conquest that man is able to gain some deeper meaning of his place in the world, along with a better understanding of his limitations and strengths. Conquest is how man finds out what he is made off.

      But there is a danger: if his objectives are not achieved, if he fails, it is him who is the target of conquest. His own destruction may follow.

      Hopefully with time he'll be able to come to the conclusion that no, this is not it—that there is more to life than the tight walls of his office, the corporate coffee shop, and the familiar watering hole with the hyper-ambitious career women who ask for his job title before anything else, even his name.

“One may conquer millions in battle, but he who conquers himself, only one, is the greatest of conquerors.” Buddhist saying

      As I was tired of the American woman's cold, difficult attitude, I prepared myself for dozens of sexual adventures with South American girls (I packed a huge freezer bag of my favorite condoms and a large tube of Astroglide). Once the women found out that I was a gringo, I imagined, they would throw themselves on me and sex would be nothing. There would be no use for the “game” that I had learned over several years. Combined with the grand adventure of visiting thirteen new countries, it was impossible for this to be an unsuccessful journey.

      There would be no A Dead Bat In Paraguay if that was the case. Not only did I struggle with the women, but my health faded, both physically and mentally, until I was a mere scrap of the man I thought I was.

      But I'm persistent, and I talk to you, the reader, about the shock of the unexpected events that I was facing, about pulling myself out of the hardship. The result is a story of a man who left a comfortable middle-class lifestyle at the top of his game to experience what would turn out to be the roughest time of his life. I'll leave it up to you to judge if it made me a better man or not.

“Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.” Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

      In the book I detail episodes of humiliation, loneliness, friendship, brutal rejection, thrilling success, crippling fear, and draining illness that put me in hospitals which required me to bring my own soap. An implausible encounter in Paraguay convinced me I was going to die. To create the most honest book I could, I left no detail omitted, no matter how embarrassing or awkward. I included things that I wouldn't have otherwise told my best friends, and however you think of me right now, it will definitely change.


      The book is not all dark and gloomy. I put a humorous spin on many of the events that happened to me. I share the meaningful observations I learned. I introduce many fascinating characters who showed me a different way of seeing the world. I break down my often amusing encounters with the local women, and discuss the cultural barriers that made it nothing like it was in Washington D.C. I share the stories with my wingmen, like how in Cordoba, Argentina we brainstormed our way into the pants of “hysterical” Argentine girls, like businessmen in a meeting brainstorm ways to improve sales.

      Without giving it all away, here is a very brief sampling of other scenes you'll read in A Dead Bat In Paraguay...

• How a man named Dr. Wang made it easy for me to quit my job and “throw it all away,” as my mom put it.
• The vacations in Italy, Venezuela, and Spain that hooked me onto travel as an answer to my life's doubts and emptiness.
• The appearance of those same doubts in Quito, Ecuador, the first city of my trip. Early on something was telling me that I may have made a mistake.
• My reaction to the girl in Baños, Ecuador who told me things would never be the same once I returned home.
• The first stomach illness that made its appearance on an excruciating bus ride in Peru. A second, more serious disease would show up soon after.
• My friendship to Keane, a lanky Irishman who was creating love triangles with Peruvian women while I was making love to something else.
• The repeated nightmares I had and what they told me about my deteriorating mental condition.
• The inevitable visit to Machu Picchu and why it was exactly like how I expected it to be, followed by Lake Titicaca and the Uros people who live on islands of reeds.
• My four day experience through the desert canyon towns and lakes of the Bolivian Southwest, along with the dirt children I met along the way.
• A revealing encounter in Salta, Argentina with an Irish girl, an episode where I wasn't sure whether to feel pride or shame.
• My time in the enchanting port town of Valparaiso, Chile with Max, the aggressive German who showed me the strategy of a thousand cheek kisses.
• The intense pussy chasing and camaraderie in Cordoba with other men. While lodging in a dirty hostel we attempted to crack the code of the incredibly tough Argentine girl. I conjured everything in my being in the hopes of getting laid.
• The short-term inspiration and motivation I found in the glaciers of Patagonia.
• My friendship with Beppe the Italian in Uruguay, the most skilled natural I have ever met whose essence I tried to absorb.
• The ill-fated decision to visit Paraguay that I have come to regret.
• A whirlwind month in Rio de Janeiro to reunite with many of the people I've met in South America, and to meet yet one more.

      A Dead Bat In Paraguay is a little over 100,000 words, a similar length to George Orwell's 1984 (one of my favorite books), so the 16-point bulleted list above doesn't even scratch the surface of all the stories and characters you will read about.

“A more miserable life is better, believe me, than an existence protected by an organized society where everything is calculated, everything is perfect.” La Dolce Vita

      The book has two recurring themes. The first is purpose.

      One reason for my abrupt escape to South America was because I believe I was going through what is often called a “quarter-life crisis.” I believed travel would solve the problem of a seemingly shallow existence. I was more than surprised when certain aspects of the trip made the problem many times worse. For people in the same boat as me, I think A Dead Bat In Paraguay will help answer the question on if the grass is greener.

      The second theme is women.

      My experience with the game has given me a unique lens through which to write about travel. Perhaps I can't describe a beautiful land like D.H. Lawrence or Richard Haliburton, but I can make accurate and amusing conclusions about women from Chile, Argentine, Peru, and Brazil, among others.

      Because simply importing pick-up techniques learned on American women didn't work, I had to start from scratch and re-learn the game. It's the surprising difficulties I faced with the women in South America that will interest those not used to reading straight-forward travel memoirs. I share all the things I learned that has made a subsequent trip to the continent fraught with much less drama and disappointment.

      A Dead Bat In Paraguay will especially strike a chord with men of my generation who were trained from birth on how to be an educated, obedient worker, averse to taking risks with women and life. They'll get the perspective from someone who took the leap and ignored the gap in his resume for a journey in search of more. In spite of discussion of pick-up, I think my book offers a revelatory conclusion about the pursuit of a more meaningful life.

      A Dead Bat In Paraguay is available for sale in paperback, Kindle, and PDF e-book...

READ A DEAD BAT IN PARAGUAY RISK-FREE       The paperback edition costs $15.97 and comes with a 30-day money back guarantee from Amazon. The Kindle edition comes with a 7-day money back guarantee. To purchase either the paperback or Kindle edition, click the image below to order from Amazon…       The ebook PDF costs $10.97 and is processed by Google Checkout. After submitting your credit card payment you will be instantly forwarded to the book's download page. If for whatever reason you don't enjoy my book, contact me within 30 days and I will refund your money no questions asked…

      But wait, there's more! Order within the next 10 minutes and I'll throw in a travel-size George Foreman grill at no extra charge.

      Just kidding!

      I hope you enjoy my book. Thanks for reading,

  ROOSH V

      P.S. Take a look at three excerpts from the book to get a feel for it. They take place in Bolivia, Argentina, and Paraguay.

      P.P.S. Got an iPhone or eReader device? Click here to order the RTF (Rich Text Format) edition for a better reading experience. Same price as the PDF edition ($10.97).

Here are three more reviews...

Tyler says,       If you read Roosh's blog, you might have a certain expectation of what his book might entail. You may have a certain expectation of his level of game and of his admiration for South America. "A Dead Bat in Paraguay" might surprise you. If you're not familiar, click on the link and he gives a short video overview of the book.       If you do any traveling what so ever you will be able to relate to his experiences. I was reminded of my travels through Europe and of the short friendships I had. People I really enjoyed talking to and people I admired. I was also reminded of the military and the first time I moved away from home. The way each experience was articulated, you could really remember feeling those same emotions....good and bad.       There was no sugar coating or diluting any of the experiences he went through. Stories that some people would take to their grave, Roosh wrote in black and white for the world to read. That's what made this book so funny but also so intriguing. After some of his stories, you realize he is giving you the full experience and holding nothing back. "I sat in the front seat and the chubby girl got on my lap. I positioned her body in a way that much of her weight was against the door instead of crushing my body"       While I was reading this book, I was doing a little bit of traveling of my own. I was up in Maine at one point, staying in this vacation cabin with a girl. One night while she was getting ready for bed I was reading through a few chapters and I began laughing. Imagining how some of this stuff went down, I was reading it out loud. She kept wanting me to read more of it.       I mostly enjoyed reading about the different people he met as he traveled. Each had different personalities. Different ways of surviving, different ways of interacting and different ways of picking up girls. Some with a shot gun style, "I don't give a fuck" method and others with much more charisma.       Being an advocate of picking up women, I enjoyed that aspect of the book. You read about his relentless effort to pick up girls, and how he and his new found friends analyze this new territory of women. How he would go out alone at times or go out in less than desirable physical conditions. I imagine it in my own head how some of my own approaches would go or how I'd handle situations. "In the past I preferred being alone fantasizing about a happy relationship than actually having that relationship, because one takes commitment and sacrafice and the other doesn't"       This book has a wide range of ups and downs along with recurring themes that keep your interest. It was well written. He makes a lot of clever observations. I had kept a small notebook and wrote down the ones I thought were funny or insightful.       If you have an interest in traveling to South America, this book is broken down city by city. If you have traveled at all, you can relate to these stories easily. If you have an interest in pick up or are in the mood to read a funny tragedy with a lot of self deprecating humor...this book will for sure keep you entertained. Most of all, it is a no holds bar, insightful look into a section of someone's life through a life changing decision and experience.

Ferdinand says,       If I had a loonie for every cubicle jockey I’ve known who’s huffed and puffed about quitting their office slave job and going on an trip abroad, I’d have enough money to do it myself. Roosh Vörek is one of the few men who had the brains and balls to follow through. After ditching his career as an industrial microbiologist and finishing his first book, Bang, Roosh took a trip through South America that lasted six months and took him to eight countries. Now, he has transcribed the events of his trip into a travel memoir. Don’t be dissuaded by his cliché-laden description of A Dead Bat in Paraguay as being about “suffering and pain and hardship and darkness” – Roosh’s book is a glorious triumph of low comedy and high adventure, a breezy and worthwhile read.       Unfortunately, as this is Roosh’s first foray into literary writing, his inexperience shines through at regular intervals. While he narrates his misadventures with a wry tone that readers of his blog ought to be familiar with, every so often he breaks voice to go on a sentimental missive. Take for instance, this snippet in which Roosh tries really, really hard to convince us that he gives a shit about poor miners in Bolivia: "Until the output of the Potosí mines cease to be profitable—and it is a matter of when, not if—these men and future generations who follow will die miners, much younger than is fair…I felt small for complaining about my relatively easy job at home that paid me a salary the miners could only dream of. How did I come to the conclusion that a professional job with fair pay in a modern building was actually torture?"       My god, someone has it worse off than you! What an original observation! Please, shut the fuck up and spare me the bathos.       But aside from these trite diversions, A Dead Bat in Paraguay maintains a breakneck pace from beginning to end. The story begins in Washington, DC, where Roosh relates the story of his life and the factors that led to him giving the bird to the 9-to-5 life and heading to South America. The sequence of events will be familiar to longtime Roosh readers, both of his current blog and his previous incarnation as DC Bachelor, but Roosh fills in details about his career and family life that are new and interesting. In particular, his description of his close relationship with his sister is moving, showing a side of Roosh that we don’t see in his other writings.       An important part of any book is its diction, and on this front, A Dead Bat in Paraguay is as smooth and pleasing to read as a good wine is to drink. An acolyte of the Hemingway school of literary writing, Roosh shies away from flowery descriptions and overblown metaphors, relaying his story with an understatement that conveys imagery and emotion in its own way. His bone-dry sense of humor pervades his prose at almost all times, with lines like “I made love with the toilet.” Roosh is awfully fond of toilet humor in the literal sense – a lot of the laughs come from his loving descriptions of the painful, explosive bowel movements he had while on the road.       No mere clown, though, he also retells the struggles of his journey with a bluntness that gets the reader invested emotionally. A large part of the narrative is Roosh’s attempts to hook up with the local women in the various places he visits, only to be met with repeated failure. His constant battle to adapt his game to the cultural idiosyncrasies of the women who he tries to bed is so compelling that when he finally meets success, you’ll want to cheer.       The frankness and honesty of A Dead Bat in Paraguay is a refreshing change from the fake, phony, and fraudulent memoirs that have flooded the book world in recent years, but it also hurts the book in some ways. Any good storyteller has the ability to bullshit with aplomb, and Roosh isn’t quite there yet. His emphasis on relaying the details of his trip has too much of a “just the facts, ma’am” feel to it, as if he was writing a college paper and not a commercial book. The weakness of this approach culminates in the book’s ending, which just sucks. In fact, it isn’t really an “ending” – the book just sort of stops.       In pointing out these issues, I don’t want come off as being too critical. In a literary world full of flotsam, jetsam, and other varieties of garbage, Roosh Vörek has produced something remarkable and memorable. Beyond its other qualities, A Dead Bat in Paraguay speaks to something deeper – the dissatisfaction so many men these days have with their lives. Writers sublimating their existential angst into grand adventures which they later published is nothing new, as we can see from this stanza from Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:       Childe Harold bask’d him in the noontide sun,       Disporting there like any other fly;       Nor deem’d before his little day was done       One blast might chill him into misery.       But long ere scarce a third of his pass’d by,       Worse than adversity the Childe befell;       He felt the fulness of satiety:       Then loathed he in his native land to dwell,       Which seem’d to him more lone than Eremite’s sad cell.       What IS different is that ennui with one’s existence is no longer confined to misfits like Byron. Last year, former Lonely Planet guidebook writer Thomas Kohnstamm published his own travel memoir, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, in which he stated similar reasons as Roosh for abandoning his high-paying corporate job in Manhattan to roam northeastern Brazil. In fact, Kohnstamm is mentioned in passing in Roosh’s book, though not by name (Kohnstamm achieved some notoriety when he revealed that he had fabricated parts of his guidebooks, even claiming he wrote the Lonely Planet guidebook to Colombia without having visited there). This concept of men being unsatisfied with their lives has become clichéd to the point where we now have “mid-life crises” and “quarter-life crises.” What is it about the modern West that sucks the joy out of being a man? To quote John Derbyshire: The modern workplace has also been de-masculinized. I have spent many years working in the offices of big corporations, among the vast clerical middle class of the Information Age. It has often struck me how much more suitable this work is for women than for men — how, in fact, men seem rather out of place among the “tubes and cubes” of the modern office. No masculine values are visible here. The mildness of manners, the endless tiny courtesies, the yielding and compromising, the cheery assertions of labor-room stoicism (”Hangin’ in there!”) that are necessary to get this kind of work done, leave little outlet for masculine forcefulness. Such outlets as did once exist have been systematically sealed off by the feminists and “sexual harassment” warriors. Was it really only twelve years ago that my mixed-sex office in a big Wall Street trading house celebrated the boss’s birthday by bringing in a full-monty stripper to entertain us? Yes, it was. If we did that today, we should be the subject of a 60 Minutes segment.       The more boisterous manifestations of masculinity — physical courage, danger-seeking, the honor principle, belligerence, chivalry, endurance, small-group loyalty — which were once accessible to all men, in episodes of war or exploration if not in everyday life, have now been leached out to the extremes of our society — to small minorities of, at one extreme, super-rich sports and entertainment stars, and at the other, underclass desperadoes. There is no place now for a brilliant misfit like the Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, whose love of danger and of alien cultures led him to be the first, and quite probably the only, non-Moslem ever to penetrate the holiest sanctuary of Islam, the Ka’aba in Mecca — he even had the audacity to make a surreptitious sketch of the place while he was supposed to be praying. (Burton, by the way, was a holy terror as a boy — would be a sure candidate for heavy Ritalin treatment nowadays.)       With the government and society out to crush any expression of manliness beyond servile boot-licking, we are forced into feminized roles in order to survive. Any expression of true masculinity is suppressed. As men, we have allowed ourselves to be mentally and emotionally gelded by a culture that seeks to abuse us for its own immoral ends. But you don’t have to be a slave. Rebellion doesn’t necessarily entail ripping up stakes to settle in an alien nation on another continent. It begins when you become cognizant of the system and how to avoid being enmeshed in its grinder. The revolution begins with you.       In the meantime, feel free to give Roosh your greenbacks. He’s earned them.

BB says,       Admit it. You want to travel. See the world. See the sights. See everything you've never gotten the chance to. It will change you. That Eat, Pray, Lovebook has become a phenomenon ... or so you hear. It worked for her, it can work for you. That's how these things go.       Except it isn't. There are parasites and half-day bus rides and no part of your path that feels uninfluenced by Lonely Planet. The native girls challenge your once-bulletproof advances and the backpackers that don't seem every bit as vapid as the stateside ones who bored you. You will get robbed. And you will return to a hometown that seems locked in step with six-month old footprints.       Roosh Vörek's "A Dead Bat In Paraguay: One Man's Peculiar Journey Through South America" is an honest look at the adventure of travel. It starts the same way as many a modern American tale, with a protagonist feeling trapped by circumstance, suffering ennui born of a life that's only proving to be ordinary: "I wanted to travel for a long time, abuse my liver, and meet exotic women. Then after I tire of boozing I wanted to find some answers to what I should do for the rest of my life. Time off would help put me on a fulfilling path, because the answer obviously wasn't working as a microbiologist. Only a long trip could lead go my eventual happiness." (Page 17)       So Roosh locks himself on a budget, moves in with his old man, saves up 35 G's and sets off with the intention of hitting every country in South America. Allowing for a loose timeframe of 6-12 months, Roosh planned to begin in Ecuador, traveling southeast through Argentina and Brazil, back up north through the "three countries no one visits," then Venezuela and a final stop in Brazil.       By Peru -- country No. 2 -- Roosh has suffered multiple rejections of the type that would leave a less secure man dejected and wandering, from being stood up for an admittedly tenuous coffee date to being told to "wait outside" for a change of venue that would next be coming. And he has been stricken with debilitating parasites, which leave him suffering throughout a 10-hour bus ride as he enters Huaraz. With only a urinal on the bus and contractions threatening to flush his system every 20 minutes, the author's "shirt was soaked in sweat from the straining" and he "clenched (his) jaw every time (his) stomach announced its intentions to get rid of the poison it was swimming in." Roosh manages to hold off the squirts temporarily, but never fully shakes the bug, which tortures him throughout the remainder of his six months abroad.       As he continues along, Roosh deals with the transient nature of travel; sightseeing loses its luster, beginning to be replaced by a focus on the friendships he's making -- and remaking -- as he bounces in-and-out of the third-world lives existing on the fringes of a tourism industry fueled by privilege. Roosh easily links up with male travelers, sometimes dispensing girl advice: "You can say, 'You look like you're having the most fun here out of anyone.' It's generic enough that you can use it most places, but it doesn't come off across as a line." Other times he marvels at the game of the Canadian "Predator" or Beppe, the Italian who turns notoriously difficult Argentinian girls mad for him with an effervescence that "got girls by allowing them to get aggressive ... It was his personality that did all the heavy lifting. It was potent and could not be reproduced. All (Roosh) could hope for was to take one little piece of it."       But for all the good times bonding -- over alcohol, interesting experiences and chasing tail; same as single guys stateside -- there is the nagging reality of the lives that aren't free of the land. Roosh becomes a hardened traveler, passing advice on how to avoid being pickpocketed, scammed or robbed to those he meets. And yet even moments of empathy are grounded in a realism some might call cynical until they realize he's likely right. After seeing a destitute man in Paraguay languidly raising his arm in a ridiculously ineffective attempt to sell bingo cards to passersby, Roosh breaks down in his hotel room: "I cried like a baby. It's not fair they're dealt such hands. I wanted to help them and make a difference, but eventually the same petty bullshit that worries me will return, and I won't do a damn thing, and nothing will change." (Page 221)       By the book's end, things have changed for Roosh. Or they haven't. He lets the reader decide, not caring about the answer -- he's off on the next adventure, perhaps damned if he does, but damn well sure he didn't.