The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was part way through The Men Who Stare at Goats and I was thinking: “This is early Ronson. He gets better in his later books.” I just thought this early Ronson was a little bit silly. Not irreverent exactly, but… I don’t know. Just not taking things very seriously. Which is not to say that later Ronson is overly somber or serious or even academic.
But I was wrong. This early Ronson is every bit as good as later Ronson. I learned quite a bit from The Psychopath Test and Lost at Sea, and I learned maybe even more from Men. And even though the book is now 10 years old, it’s still very relevant, given new talk in the media about the CIA and torture.
Whoa, you say, torture? I saw the movie, what’s this about torture? Yeah, you see: like I said, I was wrong. Ronson’s not silly or something like irreverent—he was just setting me up. As I read more, and as I finished the book, it just got darker and darker. There’s the goofiness of conspiracy theories, there’s the smug satisfaction in rejecting them, and then there’s that terrible, dark place, the root of truth from which these theories are born. That’s where Ronson goes. Torture, ritual mass suicide, government-sanctioned murder.
What a like about Ronson, along with his engaging writing style and gung-ho approach (as opposed to ‘gonzo,’ if you’ll forgive me) is how he inverts cognitive dissonance. Human beings have a way to dismiss the terrible things that make up every day existence, and Ronson gets in there and lays it all out—accept it as terrible or call him a liar. There’s no dismissing the truth.
I can’t say that “fans of Ronson will enjoy The Men Who Stare at Goats” only because I’m pretty sure that fans of Ronson have already read it. I will say that newcomers to Ronson should read it. And those who don’t like Ronson, or haven’t read Ronson? What is wrong with you people?