Lost At Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries by Jon Ronson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jon Ronson writes for the Guardian UK, and this is a collection of articles from his works. It’s his third collection of such articles, and while the first two are more about himself, this one picks up the thread in his earlier work Them: Adventures with Extremists. He also wrote The Men Who Stare at Goats, and The Psychopath Test.
I read The Psychopath Test based solely on Ronson’s interview on The Daily Show, and picked up Lost at Sea for the same reason. I saw the film version of The Men Who Stared at Goats, though it was awful, but the writing in Lost at Sea is so good, I might change my mind about reading Goats. Ronson’s style is engaging, but light, easy to read and easy to get lost in.
Ronson paints himself as a cowardly, neurotic type, but his subject matter tells another story, and he’s got more guts than I do. The people he talks to in Lost at Sea are strange, and rather than indulge them, Ronson asks the tough questions and gets to the root of things.
At the same time, he editorializes without being judgmental, and is willing to accept that the obsessions these people have are complicated, and not merely to be dismissed for their weirdness.