The Critics: Louis Theroux’s ‘The Call of the Weird’

Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 02.08.07 | 7:40 AM ET

Fans of the old BBC television series “Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends” will find this material familiar, and readers of Paul Theroux will find the author himself familiar. Louis Theroux is, indeed, the son of the famed travel writer, and The Call of the Weird, published recently in the U.S. after an earlier release in the UK, is a travel book of sorts. The premise: Theroux hits the road to revisit the characters—brothel owners and motivational speakers among them—he profiled on his show about 10 years ago.

“Mr. Theroux puts a lot of miles on his rental car, but otherwise he turns in a lazy performance,” writes William Grimes in a mixed review in the New York Times. “Like Bernard-Henri Lévy in ‘American Vertigo,’ he seems to believe that the real soul of America can be found only at remote religious encampments or U.F.O. conventions. It’s surprising that the two of them did not trip over each other at the same Nevada cathouses and nut-job gatherings. By carpooling, they could have saved a ton on gas. For both, and all others tempted to twang this string one more time, here’s a shocking proposal: The United States is no stranger than any other country. The weird quotient, per capita, is precisely equal to Luxembourg’s.”

And what, precisely, makes someone weird? Theroux says its in the eye of the beholder.