Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries

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North Pole is unique as a town where it is Christmas 365 days of the year and everything in the town is Christmas themed.

It's the same concept, and even has one or two character crossovers, but is a lot more in depth and better written - Ronson's penchant for simple present tense really grates (in my view) and makes it read like the witterings of a madman more often than not. The poet and musician Anthony Joseph met and spoke to Lord Kitchener just once, in 1984, when he found the calypso icon standing alone for a moment in the heat of Port of Spain s Queen’s Park Savannah, one Carnival Monday afternoon. Putting aside for a moment the fact that the witnesses in this case were complaining about sexual assault, and *not* statutory rape, I just want to let it sink in that a supposedly-unbiased journalist decided to take space here to register the opinion that sexual crimes against 15-year-old girls shouldn't be prosecuted in the name of 'fairness'. Born into colonial Trinidad in 1922, he emerged in the 1950s, at the forefront of multicultural Britain, acting as an intermediary between the growing Caribbean community, the islands they had left behind, and the often hostile conditions of life in post War Britain. Ronson uncovers in each story the various phobias, compulsions, and peccadilloes that fill the world with oddity and mystery.

My favourite piece in the book, "Santa's Little Conspirators", is the story of a group of 13 year old high-school students in the town of North Pole, Alaska, accused of conspiring to commit a Columbine-style massacre at their school (they were stopped before anyone was hurt). It's as if he's lowered his ambitions to the level that he can take all sorts of awfulness as long as people talk to him with a little respect. The articles were interesting enough at the beginning but ultimately didn't hold my attention for the duration. He's travelled to the Alaskan theme town of North Pole (where every day is Christmas Day) to investigate a high school mass-murder plot. While parts of "Lost at Sea" have been published in Ronson's other books - more than half have been printed in "Out of the Ordinary" and all but one have been printed in "What I Do" - and numerous other articles have appeared in GQ magazine and the Guardian newspaper, for those who've not read Jon Ronson extensively, this is an excellent collection of his journalism in one handy volume.

You can argue that's what all of Ronson's books are about, but in this case, it stops being funny and starts being depressing.Not only a picaresque hero himself, he was also a scholar of the adventuring rogue in literature and art, witnessing the rise of America’s new liberalism, civil rights, the space race, the New York critics, and was Marilyn Monroe’s constant companion. While I enjoyed the first section of the book (with articles on artificial intelligence, indigo children, etc) more than the rest, it's a testament to Ronson's writing skills that he managed to pique my interest even with the pieces on economics. He doesn't even stick with his subjects over the short term: whenever there is a class that lasts ten weeks, he misses several of the sessions, so the material presented is spotty and incomplete. Through the eyes of Maf we’re provided with an insight into the life of Monroe herself, and a fascinating take on one of the most extraordinary periods of the twentieth century.

A good example of this is the chapter entitled "A Message From God" where Ronson attends the Alpha Course. Lost at Sea" is a fascinating collection of oddball human stories that offers hours of riveting reading pleasure and is a must-read for all readers looking for extraordinary and entertaining non-fiction stories written in an accessible and compelling style. His first fictional screenplay, Frank , co-written with Peter Straughan, starred Michael Fassbender.Religion and pseudo-religious beliefs play a big part in the articles where Ronson meets the Jesus Christians, a fringe Christian group with a membership of 24 people worldwide, most of whom have decided that as well as giving away most of their possessions that they will give away a kidney as well! interviews Bryan Saunders, an unusual man who has devoted his life to drawing self-portraits, but who found unexpected fame on the internet after drawing himself while on a variety of drugs. Quotation panels, featuring many of Churchill’s well-known sayings and comments, and the opinions of his well-known contemporaries, such as Stalin, are scattered liberally throughout. There are a few that fell flat but over all the subjects were fascinating, as always, and Ronson's writing is sharp. His topics range from real-life superheroes to "psychic" Sylvia Browne, and his writing, while pithy and skeptical, shows a remarkable amount of humor and compassion.