B007Q6XJAO EBOK

by Prioleau, Betsy

  No online algorithms, no sensible considerations, no promises of rank, riches, compatibility, or safety can make a woman fall madly in love with a man. He can’t bribe, bully, or talk her into it. As French philosopher Georges Bataille makes clear, “The seductive, the marvelous, the ravishing wins every time.” And cracks Bette Midler, “If you know what women want, you can rule.”

  Acknowledgments

  No search for that mystery man, the great seducer, can be done alone. In my case, a corps of guides, good angels, and wise heads came to my aid and made this book possible. Thanks go first to the generosity of the men and women (disguised throughout) I interviewed. Their articulate voices, stories, and insights lit the path and brought the ladies’ man alive.

  I’m also indebted to New York University’s Liberal Studies Program where I was able to explore the seducer figure in history and literature with my students in a Cultural Foundations course. There I had the good luck to find Walter J. Miller, a ladies’ man himself, who read and critiqued an early précis of the book.

  Others who helped sharpen my ideas along the way were Professors Marlene Powell, Robert E. Harrist Jr., Michael Parker, John Clubbe, and Joan Blythe. Equally helpful were Professor István Deák, Gloria Deák, Drs. Sylvia Karasu, Peter Buckley, Maxine Antell, Scott Goldsmith, and Monica Peacocke. Instrumental, too, were Marc Daniels, Kate Hurney, Bob Braverman, Joni Evans, Barbara Stern, Sheila Kohler, Kathryn Staley, Catherine Hiller, John Pritchard, and Molly Peacock.

  I’m grateful, in addition, to the scholars in Prague who opened archives and shared extensive, little-known information about Casanova: Dr. Paolo Sabbatini, Miloš Čuřík, Maria Tarantova, and Marcela Gottliebová.

  Then there were friends and acquaintances who steered me to ladies’ men—past and present—and provided valuable input: Theodora Simons, Bette and Francis Mooney, Carol Curtis, Selva Ozelli, Hannah Solomon, Sylvia Chavkin, Finn MacEoin, Michael Rosker, Neide Hucks, Delores Cook, Jenni Kirby, Helen Rogers, Jean-Jacques Célérier, and many people who dropped hints in passing.

  Primarily I’m grateful for a wicked-smart, inspired editor, Amy Cherry, whose vision charted the course and whose sharp editorial eye kept me on the straight and narrow. Thanks, too, to Laura Romain for her countless services throughout; to crack copy editor Mary Babcock; to the Norton art department; and to my extraordinary agent, Lynn Nesbit. Special appreciation, as well, to IT maven Frank Vasquez and permissions assistant Kristen Lefevre.

  Above all, I’m speechlessly thankful to my family, who weathered the research and writing process and were my life support, first readers, and finest critics: my daughter Phoebe and husband Philip, the book’s exemplar and inspiration.

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  1 “A man without”: Anthony Bonner, A Handbook of the Troubadours, ed. F. R. P. Akehurst and Judith M. Davis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 77.

  1 “Almost all women”: Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 685.

  3 concept of an individual “love map”: See John Money, Love Maps (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986), xv, 19, passim.

  3 2004 cross-cultural DNA study: “A History of Sex,” Economist, September 23, 2004.

  3 seem to have similar: Ibid.

  3 recent critic: Peter Conrad, “The Libertine’s Progress,” in Jonathan Miller, ed., Don Giovanni: Myths of Seduction and Betrayal (New York: Schocken Books, 1990), 92.

  4 “Forbear, foul ravisher!”: Ben Jonson, Volpone; or, the Fox (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1857), act 3, scene 6, lines 267–268, 291.

  4 “unspeakable type”: Juliet Mitchell, “Preface,” in Sarah Wright, Tales of Seduction: The Figure of Don Juan in Spanish Culture (New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007), 10.

  4 Rougemont thinks: Denis de Rougemont, “Don Juan,” in Isidor Schneider, ed., The World of Love (New York: George Braziller, 1964), vol. 1, 480–481.

  5 “I’m into having sex”: 50 Cent, “In Da Club,” www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/50cent/indaclub.html (accessed May 9, 2012).

  5 “The professional seducer”: Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, trans. Willard R. Trask (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), vol. 12, chapt. 5, p. 111.

  6 “as if they were”: Judith Summers, Casanova’s Women: The Great Seducer and the Women He Loved (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006), 2.

  6 At twenty-four: Casanova, History of My Life, vol. 3, chap. 2, p. 33.

  6 without “a moment of”: Ibid., chap. 4, p. 59.

  6 When her relatives: Ibid., chap. 5, p. 76.

  7 “most honorable man”: Ibid., vol. 9, chap. 4, p. 86.

  7 “being born for”: Ibid., vol. 1, Preface, p. 32.

  7 “I don’t seduce”: Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1951–1959, trans. Ryan Bloom (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008), 11.

  8 “clinical picture”: Gail S. Reed, Review, “The Quadrille of Gender: Casanova’s Memoirs,” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 61 (1992), 101.

  8 Spanish doctor: The doctor was Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafore. See discussion in Sarah Wright, Tales of Seduction: The Figure of Don Juan in Spanish Culture (New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007), 56–57.

  8 “mother complex”: Otto Rank, The Don Juan Legend, trans. David G. Winter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 22, 18.

  8 targeted his narcissism: For a brief summary, see “A Field Guide to narcissism,” Psychology Today, December 9, 2005.

  8 Feiffer’s antihero: Jules Feiffer, Harry, the Rat with Women (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2007), 119, 93.

  8 problem with ladies’ men: See Gregory Pacana, “The Casanova Disorder,” Philadelphia Mental Health Examiner, October 14, 2010.

  8 “eroticism deformed”: Dr. Gregorio Marañon quoted in Lawrence Osborne, The Poisoned Embrace: A Brief History of Sexual Pessimism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 161.

  8 by the name of sexual addiction: See Donald G. McNeil Jr., “An Apology with Echoes of Twelve Steps,” New York Times, February 23, 2010. See Peter Trachtenberg’s seminal Casanova Complex: Compulsive Lovers and Their Women (New York: Poseidon Press, 1988).

  9 romantic con men: See Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door (New York: Broadway Books, 2005).

  9 “I couldn’t say no”: “Locked Up Lothario,” Smoking Gun, March 15, 2010, www.thesmokinggun.com.

  9 they belong to another category: See Christopher Peterson, A Primer in Positive Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 236–244.

  9 Most share some: See, especially, Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1968), 157; and “Normality,” in Burness E. More and Bernard D. Fine, eds., Psychiatric Terms and Concepts (New Haven, CT: American Psychoanalytic Association and Yale University Press, 1990), 127–129.

  10 “complete harmony”: Lydia Flem, Casanova: The Man Who Really Loved Women, trans. Catherine Temerson (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 74.

  10 homme du monde: Rodney Bolt, The Librettist of Venice: The Remarkable Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006), 108.

  10 Woman after woman: Ibid., 69.

  11 “serial romantic”: Ibid., 82.

  11 “ ‘I love you’ ”: Quoted in ibid., 82.

  11 “sweetheart”: Quoted in ibid., 221.

  11 “coffee, cakes”: Ibid., 165.

  11 A veritable “Phoenix”: See ibid., chap. 9, “That True Phoenix,” 158.

  11 “sighed for him”: Quoted in ibid., 285.

  12 “Displays of power”: Ruben Bolling, “Tom the Dancing Bug,” Salon, March 25, 2004, salon.com.

  12 “Surely”: Quoted in Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and Evolution of Human Nature (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 267.

  12 Buss sums them up: David M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 19–48.

  13 “A high-status male”: Donald Symons, The Evolution of Human Sexuality (New York: Oxford Universi
ty Press, 1979), 193.

  13 Women, say neo-Darwinians: Buss, Evolution of Desire, 32, 33.

  13 “good, loyal domestic type”: Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 154.

  13 “For women the world over”: Quoted in Mary Batten, Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Their Mates (New York: Putnam, 1992), 62.

  14 “from a biological standpoint”: Joann Ellison Rogers, Sex: A Natural History (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), 391.

  14 “The woman who had not slept”: Quoted in Philippe Jullian, D’Annunzio, trans. Stephen Hardman (New York: Viking, 1971), 245.

  14 “ugly,” with “unhealthy teeth”: Quoted in Anthony Rhodes, The Poet as Superman: D’Annunzio (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1957), 20, 133.

  15 “Look, look, since”: Quoted in Jullian, D’Annunzio, 122.

  15 Russian marchesa: Gerald Griffin, Gabriele D’Annunzio: The Warrior Bard (New York: Kennikat Press, 1970), 47.

  15 “in vain to forget”: Ibid., 47.

  15 “I have a need”: Quoted in John Woodhouse, Gabriele D’Annunzio: Defiant Archangel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 61.

  15 “green mouths of the sirens”: Quoted in Jullian, D’Annunzio, 121.

  15 “sorcerer”: Quoted in Tom Antongini, D’Annunzio (Boston: Little, Brown, 1936), 71.

  15 “the most remarkable lover”: Quoted in Rhodes, Poet as Superman, 20.

  15 “a ladies’ man”: Antongini, D’Annunzio, 59.

  16 “Women aren’t attracted”: David de Angelo, email, “Why a Wussy Can’t Attract Women,” Double Your Dating, ddeangelo@doubleyourdating.com, February 28, 2007, 2:34:13 EST.

  16 “Makeover Team”: Seduce & Conquer, www.seduceandconquer.com/guys/ (accessed March 2, 2007).

  17 Unless you’re a “tribal leader”: Mystery, The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women into Bed (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007), 8.

  17 Swagger into a bar: Ibid., 21.

  17 This entails a broadside: Neil Strauss, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (New York: Regan Books, 2005), 137.

  17 Often with the help: Ibid., 42; and “Player Guide: Rolling Stone Article about Speed Seduction,” by Eric Hedegaad in 3/5/98 Rolling Stone, www.pickupguide.com/layguide/r.article.htm (accessed May 14, 2012).

  17 It’s as effective: Paraphrased from Mystery, who writes that it’s “a quick, sharp correction, like a dog in training.” Mystery Method, 172.

  17 “Venusian Artist” isolates: Ibid., 25.

  17 Later, he calls: Ibid., 205.

  17 “slammed her hard”: Quoted in Strauss, Game, 71.

  17 PUA learns: Mystery, Mystery Method, 25; and “The Tao of Steve,” www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/t/tao-of-steve-transcript.html (accessed April 24, 2010).

  17 Seducers stay cool: Tony Clink, The Layguide: How to Seduce Women More Beautiful Than You Ever Dreamed Possible (New York: Citadel Press/Kensington, 2004), 17.

  17 Gamer convert: Strauss, Game, 12.

  18 Real-world enchanters: Ibid., 211.

  18 “Golden Prince”: See book title, Gordon Young, Golden Prince: The Remarkable Life of Prince Aly Khan (London: Robert Hale, 1955).

  18 “You weren’t in the swim”: Leonard Slater, Aly: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1964), 7.

  18 “threw away the rule book”: Ibid., 7.

  18 Unspectacular in dress: Ibid., 59.

  19 “Darling”: Quoted in ibid., 91.

  19 “charming, very special way”: Quoted in ibid., 240.

  19 “queen”: Quoted in ibid., 239.

  19 “madly, deeply”: Quoted in ibid., 6.

  19 As soon as he saw Rita Hayworth: Ibid., 152.

  19 “C3 locations”: Mystery, Mystery Method, 205.

  19 “He made women feel”: Quoted in Slater, Aly, 138.

  19 “sentimental guy”: Quoted in Edward Douglas, Jack: The Great Seducer (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 314.

  20 “Just What the Love”: Veronica Harley, “Just What the Love Dr. Ordered: Best Relationship Books,” April 15, 2010, http://shopping.aol.com.

  20 Gottman’s “love laboratory”: John Gottman, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail (New York: Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster, 1994), 185.

  20 Through careful self-monitoring: Ibid. 176.

  20 Rephrase her complaints: Ibid. 207.

  20 “like you would”: Quoted in Philip C. McGraw, “Dr. Phil: So Much Intimacy Based on Imagination,” O, The Oprah Magazine, October 1, 2006.

  21 Foreplay looms large: Eve Salinger, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pleasing Your Woman (New York: Alpha Books, 2005), 186.

  21 “quite simply, irresistible”: Quoted in Benita Eisler, Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 266.

  21 “Once seen”: Quoted in Fiona MacCarthy, Byron: Life and Legend (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 271, 144.

  22 “What on earth”: Quoted in Andrew Maurois, Byron, trans. Hamish Miles (New York: P. Appleton, 1930), 296.

  22 “His laugh is”: Marguerite Blessington, A Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron, With a Sketch of the Life of the Author (Boston: G. W. Cotterel, 1839), 23.

  23 “loveable man”: Quoted in Maurois, Byron, 374.

  23 “agony of regret”: Quoted in MacCarthy, Byron, 268.

  23 “How beautiful he was”: Quoted in Maurois, Byron, 557–558.

  23 Modernist painter Willem de Kooning: Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, de Kooning: An American Master (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 75.

  23 “let women come to him”: Ibid., 116.

  23 “I wanted to punch him”: Quoted in Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, Sinatra: The Life (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), 161.

  23 “amazing lover”: Quoted in Douglas, Jack, 246.

  24 “Sexiest Man Alive” issue: People, November 18, 2008.

  25 He not only had: David Bret, Satan’s Angel (London: Robson Books, 2000), 253.

  25 boorish seventeenth-century Lord Rochester: Modigliani quoted in Nigel Cawthorne, Sex Lives of the Great Artists (London: Prion, 1998), 154.

  CHAPTER 1: CHARISMA: LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE

  31 “He had like a halo”: Quoted in Jurgen Hesse, “From Champion Majorette to Frank Sinatra Date,” Vancouver Sun, August 31, 1970.

  32 Within seconds, we feel it: See “The X-Factors of Success,” Psychology Today, May 1, 2005. Scientists note that you can “spot it [charisma] within seconds.” Also see Mark Greer, “The Science of Savoir Faire,” American Psychological Association 36, no. 1 (January 2005).

  32 Normally associated with: For a summary of the research in this field, see Jessica Winter, “How to Light Up a Room,” O, The Oprah Magazine, October 2010; and http:/cbea.nmsu.edu/~dboje/teaching/338/charisma.htm (accessed February 18, 2011).

  32 Many experts, however, caution: Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press Paperbacks/Simon & Schuster, 1973), 136.

  32 Schiffer observes: See Irvine Schiffer, Charisma: A Psychoanalytic Look at Mass Society (New York: Free Press/Macmillan, 1973), 43–48.

  32 Roach thinks: Joseph Roach, It (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 8–12.

  32 Mythologists stress the impact: Charles Lindholm, Charisma (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 158.

  32 “one of the more contentious”: “Charisma,” in Adam Kuper and Jessica Kuper, eds., The Social Science Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 1996), www.bookrags.com/charisma (accessed May 14, 2012).

  33 Paul: Marisa Belger, “For Richer or For Poorer,” in Hilary Black, ed., The Secret Currency of Love (New York: Harper, 2010), 31.

  33 When he asked her: Ibid., 34.

  33 Joie de vivre packs: See Psychology Today, May 1, 2005; this is one of the five components of charisma.

  33 “It’s not the men”: Quoted in Peter Haining, ed., The Essential Seducer (London: Robert Hale, 1994), 49.

  33 “the thrust of the sap”: Quoted in Len Oakes, Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Re
volutionary Religious Personalities (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 29.

  33 When we’re passionately in love: Michael R. Liebowitz, The Chemistry of Love (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983), 96.

  33 “splendid triggering”: José Ortega y Gasset, On Love: Aspects of a Single Theme, trans. Toby Talbot (New York: New American Library, 1957), 108.

  33 “Exuberance is seductive”: Quoted in Kay Redfield Jamison, Exuberance: The Passion for Life (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), 210.

  34 Greek Dionysus: Carl Kerényi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life (Bollingen Series, vol. 65), trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), xxxvi.

  34 “the exultant god”: Walter F. Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult, trans. Robert B. Palmer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), 78, 103.

  34 “In no love story”: Quoted in Helen Handley, ed., The Lover’s Quotation Book (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2000), 22.

  34 “he was so much alive”: Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” in The Canterbury Tales, trans. Nevill Coghill (New York: Penguin, 2003), 259.

  34 “exuberant joy”: Bernard Williams, “Don Juan as an Idea, in Lydia Goehr and Daniel Herwitz, eds., The Don Giovanni Moment (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 111.

  34 “animated and high-spirited”: Theodor Fontane, Effi Briest, trans. Hugh Rorrison and Helen Chambers (1895; New York: Penguin, 2000), 77.

  34 Heroes of women’s popular romances: See, for example, Lisa Kleypas’s “big, sexy tomcat,” Jack Travis of Smooth Talking Stranger, whose erotic cocktail is a combination of “vitality, confidence, and masculinity” (New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 2009), 46.

  34 Nineteenth-century French Romantic poet: Charlotte Haldane, Alfred: The Passionate Life of Alfred de Musset (New York: Roy, 1960), 45.

  34 Deploying an élan assault: Ibid. 47.

  34 Lord Palmerston: Margaret Nicholas, ed., The World’s Greatest Lovers (London: Octopus Books, 1985), 39.

  35 “exactly like his work”: Quoted in William G. Hyland, George Gershwin: A New Biography (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 215.

  35 “a joyous delight”: Quoted in Howard Pollack, George Gershwin: His Life and Work (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 205.