I’ve decided to write a small piece on each book that I read, for the dual purpose of both reflecting on the book itself and to encourage me to dig a little deeper after I finish. I’ll try to do one of these a month, but it really depends on my speed of reading in future.
The Call of the Weird is the most recent book I’ve read, and so I’ll start here.
I received this book as a Christmas gift, and I haven’t been exposed to a great deal of Louis’ work – I’ve seen his highly amusing comedic documentary on scientology, but this was the first book of his I’d picked up. I’m a fan of his style of humour; his fearless brand of satirical journalism is refreshing and deeply appreciated in the current global climate.
In the book, Theroux travels to the US to seek out subjects he’d found particularly interesting from earlier interviews, including white supremacists, porn stars, doomsday preppers and alien enthusiasts. These comprise what he terms the ‘weird’, but as he often states, his interest stems as much from friendship and affection as much as from a desire to document their quirks.
This results in an entertaining if somewhat confused set of stories. Theroux’s honest approach appears to be an attempt to refrain from excessive comment on or judgement of the characters, but his tone – not to mention the books title – often clash with this angle. Theroux claims to feel at times somewhat sheepish about his portrayal of these characters, but it doesn’t prevent him from publishing or altering his tone. This gave me pause at times, and often felt incongruous with the tone Theroux was trying to strike, though it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the stories themselves.
To illustrate this point, one of Theroux’s subjects is a ‘gangsta rapper’ by the name of ‘Mello T’. While searching for Mello – searching for the subject themselves being a common theme of the book – Theroux records his conversations with other people he meets on the way. At one point, Theroux is challenged by a member of the rap community about the way he portrays rap in his work, i.e. associating it with ‘the weird’, which causes Theroux to change tack. The conversation moves away from the issue, but the reader is left wondering about the title and tone of the book that ultimately resulted.
The book is not as insightful as I was hoping for – maybe by sheer virtue of the fact that these characters were shown to be more ordinary than I bargained for – and by the second half of the book I was growing tired of the tales. Yet I was charmed if not enamoured with Theroux’s honesty and forthrightness, both traits that endeared me to his documentary on scientology as well. His bravery in his work lets him bring a much smaller amount of subjectivity to his interviews, and as a result the reader is given access to a more realistic depiction of these sub-cultural oddities.
In sum, reading The Call of the Weird was an enjoyable and rewarding experience, if at times a little frustrating and lengthy. Theroux’s experiences are not as comedic as one familiar with his work might assume, which is a testament to his desire to show a more human side of these people, a task that given their personalities is often a tall order. Yet he manages it for the most part with a deftness that has helped make him an internationally recognised journalist. On ya Louis.
TJDempsey 