The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures
by Louis Theroux
I remember seeing some of the TV series a few years
back and found them interesting if not a little disturbing (though I am sure
that was what was expected due to the interviewing style of Louis). This book revisits
some of the stories and catches up with them a few years later to see what has
happened to them. It is a good read and shows a reasonable journalistic balance
without sensationalising events or people much at all, though this in turn does
mean the book somewhat lacks the tension or drama that makes you want to read
on avidly.
‘For over ten years Louis Theroux has been making programmes about
offbeat characters on the fringes of US society. Now he returns to America and
attempts to track down some of the people who have most fascinated him over the
years, trying to discover what motivates them, why they believe the things they
believe, and what has happened to the assorted dreamers, outlaws, and
eccentrics since he last saw them.
On a journey that takes him to the porn sets of Los Angeles, among the
UFO contactees of Arizona, and up to far Northern Idaho for a festival
get-together of leading neo-Nazis, he asks what ‘weird people’ have to tell us
about our own secret natures. Has he learned anything about himself by being
among them? Do we choose our beliefs or do our beliefs choose us?
Louis Theroux’s first book is a hilarious, thought-provoking and at
times surreal voyage into the heart of weirdness.’
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