Book Review: The Art of Seduction

I consider Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction as the perfect book on mind games because, compared to Neil Strauss’ The Game which is said to be the bible of the seduction community, it is all-encompassing – gender- and personality-wise. Greene proves that seduction is not a game that can be played well only by the machos – Casanova, Don Juan, and Errol Flynn. As a matter of fact, he recalls that the history’s greatest seducers happened to be women – Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, Lou Andreas-Salomé, and Catherine the Great. On top of that, Greene factors in the individuality of each person – their character and uniqueness. He doesn’t simply box seducers as just a bunch of pick-up artists then gives the how-to of seduction as if there is only one way of doing it. In coming up with the nine types of seducers – the siren, the rake, the ideal lover, the dandy, the natural, the coquette, the charmer, the charismatic, and the star – Greene considers two things: knowing your greatest asset and understanding your victim’s weakest spot. With these two things in mind, you can map out the perfect tactic by using your strength against your victim’s fragility.

Greene sees seduction not only through the sexual lens but also in terms of political and social manipulation to gain power, some of which seducers are John F. Kennedy and Andy Warhol. Those who have read his first book, The 48 Laws of Power, might notice some overlapping ideas with those in The Art of Seduction but the latter focuses on casual interactions between the seducers and their victims; these are more applicable to everyday situations, focused on an individual’s day to day lived experience.

Since the book deals more with personal interactions, I am writing this review considering its existential and ethical implication rather than its political significance. I am not focusing on the verticality of relationships, on its power dynamics – who has power over whom as the deciding factor – because Greene’s well-researched and well-thought-out art of seduction has been tested time and again. What I am concerned with is the significance of authenticity both in the seducer’s and in the victim’s part.

While reading this book, I can’t help but feel uneasy about the idea of manipulating other people. There is nothing more cringe-worthy than knowing that there are those who seduce for the most pathetic reasons – for fun, for self-validation, for an ego boost. They look for the perfect victim. The more difficult to make the victim fall into the seducer’s trap, the better because it posts more challenge to the seducer – the greater the challenge, the more it boosts their ego. There is clearly a reduction of persons into mere objects. All these accounts of manipulation and seduction sound tempting because of how powerful and glamorous Greene portrays them. He projects the idea that everything revolves around and is all about power. These seductions all look theatrical that they transport us into a different realm, an extremely addicting realm, but this is a game involving other persons who are as valid, as alive, as worthy as we are. Lives have been damaged and have even been lost because of this bloody game. Lou Andreas-Salomé who is a masculine dandy, for instance, drove her lovers crazy, some of them even killed themselves out of madness.

You might get the impression that the only one who loses in this game is the one who is victimized, however, if you look close enough, the common denominator among the seducers is that they are existentially doomed. By this, I mean those who lack something vital so they use other people to fill in this void. This is one thing that Greene admits in his work and Marilyn Monroe is the perfect example. She’s a sex siren, the most celebrated sex symbol of all time. We are all familiar with her tragic story and with how she seduced not only Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio, James Dougherty, and all these men but most of all the public. She felt validated by the attention and spotlight. She found a sense of belonging to the world. But did it heal her? No. It even made things worse for her. In the strictest sense of the word, seduction doesn’t heal any existential wound; it only amplifies the crisis.

I am not claiming that this book is total nonsense, a junk. To tell the truth, this book makes so much sense. It is helpful in understanding the fascinating complexity of human behavior when greed meets discontentment, the predator, and its prey. The point that I am trying to come across here for using an existential point of view is that this book is powerful enough to make someone a seducer, consciously or unconsciously. This book has to be read with caution and consideration. This has to be read not with greed but with a heart.