American Pilgrim by Roosh V.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Even in his pick-up artist phase, Roosh Valizadeh’s writing displayed a level of introspection and observation which made his books worth reading.
In ‘American Pilgrim,’ Roosh is on the road—giving us his take on worldly issues for possibly the last time. His aim isn’t to pick up women or teach others how to, but to share his experience of finding God. Travelling across the USA to preach about Jesus is hardly breaking new ground—but this travelogue is engaging because of Roosh’s critical analysis of himself, the USA, and the absurdity of the human condition.
In his 40s, Roosh has ended up somewhere between Saint Augustine and the Unabomber. Like Augustine, he reviles his own sexual-adventure-seeking past and yearns for the spiritual. Like the Unabomber, he hates the degeneracy of modern society and sees possible salvation in becoming a practical man in touch with nature. This draw is strong because Roosh is an intellectual wanting to be more self-sufficient and not trapped in his head. However, the louder voice turns out to be Augustine’s as Roosh realises buying a cabin in the woods and going off the grid is just another worldly illusion taking him away from God. It’s hard to find a harmless hobby in other words—maybe birdwatching is the answer.
“Exhilaration! I’m a bird-watcher now! Maybe it was simply a matter of asking God to change the channel from women to landscapes, from Twitter to birds, from urban living, entertainment, pleasure, impulsiveness, and dependence to farming, nature, beauty, patience, and independence.”
Roosh gives talks and hosts dinners and happy hours with people prepared to pay to hear his message. As an introvert, he struggles to keep his energy up for his performances. At one stage, he has a panic attack sitting in his car and can’t even move. I could relate to this and have always liked Roosh’s descriptions of how an introvert experiences the world.
He visits national parks, churches, and public libraries. He finds the great national parks of the USA have become commodified and Disney-fied, full of happy selfie snappers. An example of this is when he comes across a crowd of tourists videoing and photographing an oblivious bison:
“I would share a video of the bison and include links to my tour web page. I monetized the bison! And he wouldn’t even get a cut of my ticket sales.”
Experiencing nature takes effort—you need to hike well away from the road—but Roosh—his energy prematurely drained in early middle-age, needs to focus on getting his long tour done.
His feeling of being an outsider comes to the fore when visiting Princeton Public Library. According to Roosh, an American town can be judged by the state of the public library. If the library is quiet and clean, the town will be full of hard-working, God-fearing Americans flying the Stars and Stripes. If the library is full of homeless people doing their ablutions, the town will be full of rough-sleeping public defecators and tattooed degenerates drinking in bars decorated with gay pride flags. The library in Princeton is so well-to-do that Roosh, who these days looks like a wandering Rasputin, finds himself raising the suspicions of the security guard as a scruffy individual of Middle Eastern and Eastern European descent. He realises the irony of feeling discriminated against as a minority because he is vehemently against minority politics, which he feels have been sequestered by the radical left for demonic purposes.
Some of the details about Armenian Orthodox liturgies might not interest the general reader but Roosh does a decent job in rating liturgies and church services for how close they make him feel to God. At the bottom of the list is the rock n’ roll concert-like performance at Joel Osteen’s money-grubbing mega church, and at the top are the liturgies held in Old Slavonic without any technological aids.
On the negative side, while I found Roosh’s disapproving take on woke urban areas amusing and not without merit, I thought he let his hatred of certain groups get the best of him at times. He can see straight through the propaganda of the radical left, but he readily accepts outlandish alt-right conspiracies when they are fed to him. In the struggle between good and evil and he doesn’t want shades of grey. While his tirades against homosexuals and women are grating, he nails this description of Hollywood:
“Hollywood is where broken people go to trade their souls for a heightened material existence. They degrade and foul themselves under the influence of lust, power, and greed before a select group of gatekeepers who control the best roles and parts to produce sordid content that modifies the beliefs and behavior of those who watch it.”
Another sticking point for Roosh in modern America is people with silly tattoos. In a hilarious interaction with a hipster waitress, Roosh asks about her tattoo
““It’s a symbol that comes from ancient Egypt,” she replied. “It was usually hidden in those times, but I want to bring it to the surface so it’s more visible.” In other words, she hoped to promote a symbol of evil so that dark powers could assert more control over this world.”
Is he being serious? I hope not. On another occasion, a tattoo prevents him from considering a possible mate:
“Her tattoo was an absolute deal breaker. I couldn’t overcome it. It will take a miracle for me to ever get married.”
I don’t like tattoos either but I found it sad he couldn’t get past the fact this woman had a tattoo—because she was willing to lead a Christian life. People change, as Roosh has. He still has a deep mistrust of women. The description he gives of his handling of the breakup with his Polish girlfriend in the appendix is not flattering. But good writing is not about making the author look good, it’s about dragging up deep, uncomfortable emotions and putting them on the page. On his experience in Poland and overseas in general, Roosh is now saying this.
“Don’t do it, it’s a trap,” I said. “I wasted a decade abroad, and now I wish that I had stayed in the States all along. You can create a million reasons to go, thinking you’re making the right choice, but it’s a deception.”
While not ready to live in a monastery, Roosh has become very pious. From his description of the pain he went through when his younger sister died, we can be sure this spiritual transformation is genuine. Since early 2023, he’s stopped posting his writing online. I think withdrawal from the world to work on himself spiritually is a wise choice for Roosh. I’m one year older than he is and have followed his career for many years. Sifting through his articles, I always found something of interest beyond whatever message he was pushing at the time. It’s worth noting he has improved his writing a lot since ‘A Dead Bad in Paraguay,’ which came out some fifteen years ago.
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American Pilgrim
