Louis Theroux‘s debut in publishing has him retreading the ground he covered in the days of his BBC documentaries. In The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures he tracks down his old subjects and finds out what they’ve been doing since he last spoke with them. Theroux’s travels place him in paranoid anti-government communes, porn studios, UFO conventions, white supremacist parades, self-help seminars, and more humdrum locales like ghettos and brothels.
Part of the awkwardness of this book, and it seems clear that Theroux wrestled with this, is that he is sometimes unsure of his own role—whether he’s doing ethnography by immersion or straight, dispassionate journalism. The struggle comes from his work to maintain relationships that he obviously appreciates (despite their quirks and foibles, his subjects are just human), but maintaining a healthy skepticism. It’s a tough balance of challenging his interviewees and basically trying not to piss them off.
I was a bit surprised to find this book is at its best within its more subjective and personal moments. I expected to be more entertained by the sheer idiocy of white supremacist ideologues or what a headcase Ike Turner is, but what I really liked was Theroux’s reflection on his own precarious balance of friendship—giving comfort and company to these self-appointed outcasts—with the more professional interests of getting a good story and writing a good book. In the end, what really comes out is not a just a study of these subcultures, but what it is like to actually know them, insofar as an outsider can.
Mark Larson 