Louis Theroux's precious empathy allows us to see past his subjects' bigotry and into their troubled souls. ( )

An entertaining and easy read. Gives a bit more of an insight into Louis Theroux's personality, something which always seemed a bit difficult to judge in the TV show.

Quite interesting to hear what had happened to some of the interviewees as well. ( )

We Americans tend to pride ourselves on having — or at least perceiving ourselves to have — an independent or maverick streak. Regardless of whether it actually exists, it also seems to contribute to America seeming to have a perhaps disproportionate share of kooks. And whether you consider them part of a counterculture, a subculture or the margins of American society, they attract the attention of London-based documentary filmmakers.

Beginning in 1994, Louis Theroux, who holds dual U.S./British citizenship, started a series of documentaries in which he explored a variety of American subcultures, ranging from skinheads to UFO cults to the porn industry. Many ended up in a BBC television series called Weird Weekends. Theroux later decided to catch up with some of the people portrayed in that series, an effort that resulted in The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures. The book, originally published in the U.K. last year, has now been released in the U.S. While it allows us to look at some, shall we say, unique Americans, it is not a wholly satisfying examination.

Theroux is at least the second London filmmaker to examine the American fringe. Jon Ronson took a somewhat narrower look in Them: Adventures with Extremists, released in the U.S. five years ago. Ronson's book went beyond just the U.S. but, in fairness to Theroux, his BBC series was not limited to the U.S. Also, while Ronson tended to focus more on those on the extreme political fringe, Theroux goes beyond that. In The Call of the Weird, he takes readers with him on his journeys to and visits to neo-Nazis, prostitutes and even Ike Turner and a rap artists, devoting a chapter to each subculture he is exploring.

Balance of review at http://prairieprogressive.com/?p=980

A varied batch of writing in Louis Theroux's first book.At it's best,in chapters about Ike Turner,the Aryan Nation organisation and best of all the sympathetic treatment of the Heaven's Gate cult,it cannot be bettered.I was totally bewildered by the Mello T bit.What was it all about? However overall an interesting read. ( )

This is Louis's follow-up to his series of television documentaries exploring the American sub-cultural landscapes, "Weird Weekends." For a debut novellist, Theroux's writing zips and never drags; he has evidently inherited a lot of his father's panache and journalistic leanings. Theroux visits some of his more notorious interviewees, from the Aryan subversives to the man who claimed to have killed aliens ala Independence Day, yet there is a seam of humanity that runs through his adventure and his writing; wisely, it never seems that Theroux is taking liberties, or taking the piss. ( )