Dork Whore: My Travels Through Asia as a Twenty-Year-Old Pseudo-Virgin (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Newly discharged from Israeli military duty and in search of "emotio-physical release after three years of puke-green uniforms," 20-year-old Bahr backpacked from Bangkok to Saigon to Delhi in order to experience life as well as (less successfully) find a proper lover. "My poonani has become my own personal Gaza Strip," she notes in this witty though uneven memoir, "unable to get past the partial penetration stage." However, when Bahr sets out with a fellow Israeli named Boaz, whom she met in a Tel-Aviv Backpacker Store, she's already been deflowered indifferently by a Moroccan paratrooper. In Bangkok, Boaz deserts her, and Bahr befriends another Israeli from her flight, Yoni, who is intent on visiting a brothel, where the narrator is hit by a banana catapulted from the dancer's vagina. Bowel problems plague our narrator, from Bangkok to Delhi, and from time to time she does let slip a few touching details of her life, such as the breakup of her parents' marriage and her brother's retardation. Bahr (an actress who has appeared in Curb Your Enthusiasm and Cable Guy) tries to ingratiate herself with the reader with her sarcastic digs at herself and others, but she offers little by way of description or history about the places she's actually visiting. (Mar.)
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Review

Praise for Dork Whore:

 

"Girl meets boy, girl meets another boy, and girl meets another boy…my kind of book! Dork Whore is hilarious. It’s like listening to a drunk friend tell you all the embarrassing stuff she’ll regret the next day."—Chelsea Handler, author of My Horizontal Life

 

“Much about Ms. Bahr can be learned in her gracefully titled memoir, Dork Whore: My Travels Through Asia as a Twenty-Year-Old Pseudo-Virgin (Bloomsbury). The subtitle cannot be fully explained here, nor can her unpleasant experience in the audience at a Bangkok sex show, nor her exquisitely detailed gastrointestinal troubles, nor her repeated attempts to bring to an end her pseudo-virginal status."—New York Times
 
“Bahr has a flair for the self-deprecating wisecrack, a trick that keeps this quick memoir moving.”—Kirkus Review
 
“Witty…touching details.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Like Bruch Chatwin with a vagina, Paul Theroux with a sense of humor, Iris Bahr takes an external and internal journey that is exotic, unique, singular, personal, intimate, honest, exciting, wildly funny, smart, and strangely arousing”—Larry Charles, director of Borat and producer of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596912340
• ISBN-13: 978-1596912342
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #572,571 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very clever. Very fun. Very real., March 14, 2007

By	Elizabeth Emerson (Santa Barbara, CA United States) - See all my reviews

When this book arrived, I opened it to the first page to just get a taste of the writing. I truly did not put it down until more than 80 pages later. The story is very engaging and fun. I couldn't help but think I'd love to travel with Iris -- even if I would have to fight her off for men. Ms. Bahr is so honest that you almost feel guilty reading such intimate thoughts. The writing is very smart, but entirely accessible. She's a self-aware narrator, but not in an annoying let-me-hit-you-over-the-head-with-my-self-discovery way.
It was the most enjoyment I've had between two covers in awhile. ;)
I hope she writes another book soon.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Dork Whore is a Desperate Whore., June 6, 2009

By	MomoiroMegane (Oceanside, Ca.) - See all my reviews

Wow. I rather differ from the praises.

Dork Whore is an engaging enough book making you wonder what would happen to this poor woman next, where had her self esteem gone and when was some discrimination going to kick in?

The book chronicles Iris Bahr's back-packing trip through Asia, but is not so much about the countries themselves, as Iris's interaction with them and the other people she meets trekking the area and her quest to get laid.
The book has a repetitive format. Iris joins group with hot guy. They see sights. She attempts sex. Iris exits the group due to parting ways or a falling out.

I find it amusing that Iris wants to go have sex in the most squalid, unclean areas of the world. I can't help but cringe during a number of the scenarios, especially since descriptions of sight and smell are very effective and vivid. Iris herself rides on distasteful, being snide, whiny, sulky, passive aggressive and slutty, but also sarcastically minded, self conscious, enduring and plucky. You alternate between wanting to slap her and feeling a sisterhood. However, the jerk from one to the other is so rapid you get tired of trying to decide if you like her or not, especially with the sad stories from her childhood which seem more like justification for some sort of stupid behavior than a real expression of a complex person.

The book is raunchy and graphic, and is worth a gasp, squeal or cringe, but I never found it funny, certainly not laugh-out-loud hilarious. There is no wit to the writing, and even the moments that should be funny are either tarnished by a veneer of gross or Iris herself ruins the comedic moment with an ill placed comment. Rather, this is the literary version of the gross-out "comedies' littering our screen, which find humor the progressively nastier punishment of the characters. Witness Iris's frequent humiliation in the hands of men, her scorn of all other female characters and repeated references and descriptions of her bowel movements.

All this in a book about a woman who wants to get laid. It's not sexy or titillating, it's trashy and oh so desperate. Perhaps that's the point, but it was a 216 page trek that made me feel as if I should get tested for a venereal disease and shower.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read her works, but just don't travel or go to a Thai bar with her, April 8, 2007

By	Larry Mark "editor of MyJewishBooks.com" (NYC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Take David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell and David Rackoff, stuff them together in a pita, give them divorced parents, an American and Israeli childhood, send them to the Israeli Army, and then ship them off to Asia with a journal. Now you almost have Iris Bahr. Iris (pronounced Eeeee-ris) was fresh out of the Israeli Army, age 21, and off to Asia like many other Israeli 20-somethings to trek and backpack. The stories that ensue are funny, slightly insightful, totally soul-baring, and sort of like "travels through Asia in a bad and horny mood."

There are many who say that men think with their crotch more than with their brain. Iris is the same. She is desperate to officially lose her virginity, and because Iris' crotch is in control, and because she is chock full of Jewish and other neuroses, she is not the most pleasant travel companion. But what is bad news for her fellow trekkers becomes hilarious stories for her readers. The chapters are very short, which is perfect for subway reading, and every so often she sprinkles in a scene from her childhood, which help to give a foundation for her recurring funny issues with abandonment and love, but overall, who really cares. What is most important are her hilarious episodes across Asia as she deals with prostitutes, men who love prostitutes, men who would break lifelong friendships with best friends for the chance for pleasure or prostitutes, intestinal worms, having the cool backpack, and finding the right balance between individual and group activities