Former Spy magazine contributor Theroux (son of writer Paul
Theroux) offers ten surprisingly mild examples of American
eccentricity.With some trepidation, the author embarked on a
"Reunion Tour" to revisit many of the oddballs he'd encountered
several years back while filming the BBC documentary Louis
Theroux's Weird Weekends. He hoped that his subjects didn't think
too poorly of him after the mocking way they'd been presented. He
found some subjects had changed. Thor Templar, Lord Protector of
the Earth Protectorate, the man who once claimed to have
decapitated space aliens, had refocused his energies on debunking
the Bush administration. Erstwhile porn star JJ Michaels was living
in suburban Missouri with a Ukrainian mail-order bride. Former
prostitute Hayley, now calling herself Tammy, had a boyfriend and
was volunteering at an animal sanctuary, though she danced at a
strip club to make money. Some folks were still the same, including
radical Aryan Nations member Jerry Gruidl and hardcore, stone-cold
"gangsta" rapper Mello T. And 12-year-old white-supremacist twin
sisters Lamb and Lynx Gaede were still extolling the virtues of the
Nazi-sympathetic lifestyle with their folk band, Prussian Blue,
while mom April (source of the "pixie-faced" twins' racism) cooed
over new baby Dresden. Theroux's account of his hard-won,
unsolicited visit with the Gaede family is morbidly appealing and
thought-provoking. Less remarkable are his descriptions of
follow-ups with grizzled music-biz veteran Ike Turner, still
artfully dodging "Tina" questions; with the founder of a
now-disbanded "patriot" community called "Almost Heaven"; and with
the few remaining survivors of the Heaven's Gate cult (best known
for a mass suicide in 1997).A mixed bag of peculiar encounters with
bizarre citizens, alternately fascinating and sad. (Kirkus Reviews)
For ten years Louis Theroux has been making programmes about
off-beat characters on the fringes of US society. Now he revisits
America and the people who have most fascinated him to try to
discover what motivates them, why they believe the things they
believe, and to find out what has happened to them since he last
saw them. Along the way Louis thinks about what drives him to spend
so much time among weird people, and considers whether he's learned
anything about himself in the course of ten years working with
them. Has he manipulated the people he's interviewed, or have they
manipulated him? From his Las Vegas base, Louis revisits the
assorted dreamers and outlaws who have been his TV feeding ground.
Attempting to understand a little about himself and the workings of
his own mind, Louis considers questions such as: What is the
difference between pathology and 'normal' weirdness? Is there
something particularly weird about Americans? What does it mean to
be weird, or 'to be yourself'? And do we choose our beliefs or do
our beliefs choose us?
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