If you had a machine that could com­bine the DNA of Lar­ry David, Woody Allen, and Hold­en Caulfield, remove a Y‑chromosome and add an extreme­ly hor­mon­al X, and then grow a human from the result­ing genome, you might just pos­si­bly come up with a woman with the angst equal to that of Iris Bahr.

Dork Whore is Bahr’s mem­oir of her jour­neys through some of the most fab­u­lous and inter­est­ing coun­tries in Asia fol­low­ing her release from the Israeli Army. But you would nev­er know that these coun­tries had any­thing worth­while to expe­ri­ence from read­ing Dork Whore. The only insight into the local cul­tures Bahr man­ages to express are snarky com­ments belit­tling the few native peo­ple with whom she deigns to inter­act. As if that weren’t enough to make Bahr an unsym­pa­thet­ic per­son­al­i­ty, she treats her fel­low back­pack­ers ter­ri­bly, act­ing disin­gen­u­ous­ly to even the kind­est, most thought­ful peo­ple she meets.

Bahr’s self-indul­gences aside, and they are very hard to put aside, her work does deserve some praise. Her writ­ing is assured, light, and occa­sion­al­ly fun­ny. In addi­tion, Bahr is coura­geous­ly hon­est in her depic­tion of her stat­ed goal through­out her trav­els: to have sex.