Lost at sea
Subtitle: the Jon Ronson mysteries
By: Jon Ronson
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 400
ISBN-13: 9781594631375
Subjects: Eccentrics and eccentricities; Subculture; Counterculture
Description: Ronson investigates the strange things we are willing to believe in, from lifelike robots programmed with the personalities of our loved ones to indigo children to hyper successful spiritual healers. He looks at ordinary lives that take on extraordinary perspectives, for instance a pop singer whose greatest passion is the coming alien invasion, and the scientist designated to greet those aliens when they arrive. Ronson throws himself into the stories. In a tour de force piece, he splits himself into multiple Ronsons (Happy, Paul, and Titch, among others) to get to the bottom of predatory tactics of credit card companies and the murky, fabulously wealthy companies behind those tactics. Amateur nuclear physicists, assisted-suicide practitioners, the town of North Pole, a Christmas-induced high school mass-murder plot: Ronson explores all these tales with a sense of higher purpose and universality, and suddenly, mid-read, they are stories not about the fringe of society or about people far removed from our own experience, but about all of us.
Table of contents: title: The strange things we're willing to believe. Have you ever stood next to an elephant, my friend? ; Doesn't everyone have a solar? ; The chosen ones ; A message from God; title: High-flying lives. The name's Ronson, Jon Ronson ; I looked into that Camera. And I just said it ; I'm loving aliens instead ; First contact ; Stanley Kubrick's boxes; title: Everyday difficulty. Santa's little conspirators ; Phoning a friend ; Who killed Richard Cullen? ; The sociopath mind guru and the TV hypnotist ; Death at the château ; "I've thought about doing myself in loads of times; title: "; title: Stepping over the line. Blood sacrifice ; "I make it look like they died in their sleep" ; Is she for real? ; The fall of a pop impresario; title: Justice. Amber waves of green ; The man who tried to split the atom in his kitchen ; Lost at sea.