Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure
by Dave Gorman

Grade: A
by Radley Little

 
Before this review gets under way, I'm sure there's a question or two running through your mind that I should probably clarify.

1. Dave Gorman is a comedian from London who has won a handful of awards for his work, including the HBO/US Comedy Arts Festival's award for best one man show, and is also a best-selling author thanks to this book. His previous work (including a book/show where he traveled around the world for 6 months meeting other people who shared his name, all in order to win a bet with his friend) have earned him a lot of success, including a stint as a correspondent on the The Daily Show in 2006.

2. Googlewhacking is a time wasting activity you perform with the search engine www.google.com. Try to type in any two words and see if they result in only one web page. That is a googlewhack. There are a couple billion pages indexed on google so finding only one page with those two words is considerably difficult.

This isn't simply a funny book, it's a multi-faceted true story that sees the author struggling with his own maturity, traveling thousands of miles and meeting complete strangers against the background of a ticking clock. 

The story begins when Dave is 31 years old. He's realized he's hit the age where he wants to be taken seriously, so he decides he wants to write a novel. His agents secure him a publishing deal with Random House and he's given all of the money up front before he's written a word of it. The problem is that his body won't let him write a novel; it doesn't want to. Days turn into weeks, he's procrastinated in every way possible, and not written a word. One day he gets a mysterious email letting him know that his website is a "googlewhack." Curious, he gets involved with the game and spends some (a lot of) time trying to find some of his own. A one in 3 billion chance leads Dave to a man who takes another one in 3 billion chance which results in what may be the biggest coincidence you'll ever hear about. Long story short, Dave has been bet that he can't meet 10 googlewhacks in a row before his 32nd birthday. Maturity will have to wait another 3 months.

Dave's journey is as captivating as it is hilarious. Traveling relentlessly through different countries, he meets people who are as diverse as the internet itself: A creationist, a dot com millionaire, and fan-fiction writing lesbians to name a few. The funniest parts of the book come from the bumps along the way. Dave has to constantly avoid pressure from his manager and the publishing company to meet his deadline. Throughout the journey he struggles with the possibility of not winning the bet and looking like even more of idiot, having wasted all the money and not written a novel either. Dave's biggest battles occur midway through and at the end of the book when he believes he's exhausted all his opportunities to continue on. The highlight is a night in Austin, TX where he receives a permanent relic of his life's lowest moment. This and one or two others are the points you will feel genuine sympathy for him due to all he's invested in the escapade. The climax on the eve of his birthday is both suspenseful and hilarious when everything important in Dave's life is riding on one final act of desperation.

Dave's writing does a good job keeping the reader interested throughout. He divides the book into four parts, each describing himself in a very peculiar situation. He then proceeds to backtrack and tell what strange events led him into that position. It's simple to read and the constant influx of new places and people keep it from ever becoming dull.

What sets this book apart from other comedy acts is that this is an actual story. It supersedes "anecdote." It combines the elements of story telling and comedy to make it both laughable and fascinating in way that it would be a good read even if it wasn't written by a comedian. Dave struggles with his abilities as a writer, his own identity, and his life in general -- all things you might find in any other good story -- it just happens to be through a comedic lens.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure is not the novel Dave set out to write initially. This is a story he tells in order to pay back all the money to the publisher. There are some who doubt that this story is true (it may seem too unbelievable) and claim that Dave made it up. But as Dave says in the live show: "IT'S A FUCKING TRUE STORY FOR FUCK'S SAKE! IF I HAD BEEN ANY GOOD AT MAKING THINGS UP, I'D HAVE WRITTEN A FUCKING NOVEL!"

You can buy this book used on Amazon.com for one cent. Don't look at the pictures until you read the Austin, TX chapter.
 There's also a DVD of the live performance of the story available.

If all this sounds right up your alley, I suggest reading Dave's first book Are You Dave Gorman? before you read this one.