The “gold standard” thing is, admittedly, my own subjective assessment; I don’t really know what it means.
But my gold-standard expat memoir is objectively back.
(To the extent Amazon rankings signify quality, it hit as high as #39 on the largest book market in the world for the “travel writing” category the other day.)
Check it out:
The reason there’s a second edition is the same reason that it was out of print for nearly a year: I learned the hard way that book publishers, by and large, are just as sleazy, and maybe sleazier, than pornographers. (If you are a decent book publisher, please don’t take offense; I’m sure there are lots of you out there, just none I ever did business with.)
After a bunch of legal melodrama, I went the self-publishing route, which I should’ve done from the start.
I did re-edit the whole thing, adding bits here and snipping bits there, but it’s essentially the same sordid story that the first edition was.
Some snippets PJ Media graciously allowed me to publish over the past couple of years:
The first edition garnered dozens of rave reviews, with an average 4.5/5-star rating.
My former editor and friend, Joe Jarvis, was kind enough to write an unsolicited review that he published via The Daily Bell, the place that got me my start writing about politics (emphasis added):
Ben Bartee, a regular contributor to The Daily Bell, asked if I was interested in reading a book he wrote which he described as his “memoir.”
I admit I was skeptical, because one, the word memoir sounded boring, and two, that a 30-something should have a memoir seemed premature to me.*
But as soon as I started reading, Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, I was hooked.
He drew me in with behind the scenes experiences, events, and people that I have never known personally, but I knew their type existed somewhere. It made me feel like I was being let in on a secret, or given expert observations from an anthropologist studying neo-Nazis, obese intrusive stepmothers, mooching ex-cons, and even a voyeuristic midget.
And that was just the beginning, before Ben left the US.
I think it’s easy to relate to the existential angst he describes. Yet he manages to make some of the darkest drug and alcohol fueled lows in his life darkly hilarious.
He has plenty to say about corporate America and the futility of life for the bottom rungs of society, but the commentary never gets preachy. Nihilism trumps activism, and he essentially imparts, “who am I to take advice from anyway?”
Despite his strong views on race and LGBTQ+++ in society, he never begs the reader to not consider him racist or homophobic or whatever. Because he’s not. He’s just reporting the facts, and anyone who interprets his commentary as bigotry doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together and/or is too autistic to understand irony.
And yet in all the joking, Ben does in fact impart some really interesting wisdom. Especially from Yai, the Thai stranger who, with nothing to gain for himself, narrowly helped Ben avoid homelessness in the Thai countryside.
You’ll also learn about the futility of asking “why?” in Thailand.
But this book is not an expat guide or travel blog. It certainly doesn’t romanticize traveling and living abroad. This is not the literary equivalent to a FOMO-inducing Instagram profile**…
Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile is seriously entertaining the whole time. If you want an adventure and a radically unfamiliar perspective, this is a snapshot in time, the likes of which I have found nowhere else.
*I appreciate and acknowledge that a 35-year-old (at the time) writing a “memoir” comes off as pretentious and perhaps even insufferable. The problem in categorizing this piece of literature is that it largely defies categorization. “Memoir” was the closest thing to a one-word descriptor that made sense.
**I always hated, passionately, the designation of this book as a “travel guide” or anything like that, because it most definitely was never intended to be a coffee-table “travel guide,” and the final product didn’t end up that way. Once again, the dilemma is that the publishing industry has an obsession with slapping labels on things so that it can tell Barnes & Noble which aisle to put it on.
Anyway, give it a whirl if you like; I’d appreciate the support, as I poured my heart and soul into it for the better part of a year.
/End hard sell
