The Men Who Stare at Goats

I know I normally post my book reviews on my other blog, but I don't feel like it, so there. This is a review of the book The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson, and it's great timing because I just found out via Twitter (Jon Ronson is on Twitter: @jonronson) that he's just updated jonronson.com. Even though I am a big fan of goats (totally disagree with the military in this book who says that forming an attachment to a goat is nearly impossible), it's not the goats in the title that drew me to this book. It was listening to Jon Ronson on Robin Ince's Utter Shambles (listen here) and then later on Robert Llewellyn's Carpool (watch here). I had seen the trailer for the movie and was undecided about if it was too cheesy. But listening to the author, I became interested in how absurdly funny the American military was in the '70's according to the people Ronson interviewed.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a story about the US government and military trying to use paranormal forces to their benefit, especially different kinds of psychic powers: walking through walls, reading minds, seeing the future, stopping the hearts of animals ("affecting livestock from a distance"), and brainwashing. However, their inability to completely master any of these things mixed with the bureaucracy of it all makes it hilarious. For example, the military had a psychic spy team, but since they didn't technically exist (according to the books), they were not given a coffee budget and were most cross about being the only branch of military to have to buy their own coffee. Throughout the book, Ronson--the writer/narrator/journalist--digs deeper and deeper, discovering how much of this secret effort lies under our American history (9-11, Heaven's Gate, Guantanamo Bay).

I have not seen all of the movie, but I did see about half of it on YouTube. I was shocked to realize that nearly everything in the movie is in the book--very little made up. The things they did make up were trivial:

• Ewen McGregor's character is supposed to be Jon Ronson but is not named Jon, is American instead of British, and has this whole cinematic backstory about his girlfriend leaving him for his one-armed editor.
• They changed character names and combined some of the characters because there are a lot of characters in the book. However, pretty much all their actions and a lot of the dialogue is word-for-word from the book.
• The action adventure part of the movie was obviously exaggerated and in some cases made up. George Clooney's character (Lin) is in the book called Pete, and he does beat Jon up using his Predator weapon and by knocking him to the floor (sharp edges!) and all that--that's true--but they were not meanwhile being held prisoner in the desert and all that drama.

Ronson does an excellent job making the real sound ridiculous. Not that these people needed a whole lot of help from a journalist to sound crazy, but Ronson uses phrases like "when he was busy staring a goat to death" or "Guy, next time you go to Fort Bragg with a hamster, can I come?" This wouldn't make a very good fiction story. I'm not a fan of realistic investigation novels that were made up, but as non-fiction, it sounds made up, it's that insane.

Walking through walls: Both the book and movie begin with a military officer trying to walk through his office wall, failing, and being frustrated that he couldn't do it.
Invisibility: When the military failed to learn how to become invisible, they learned to just be unseen
Sticky foam: Like in the Incredible Hulk, the military created a sticky foam that they spray and it solidifies. They only used it once: to stop a riot by creating a wall between them at the food, which only lasted about a minute before the riot climbed the wall, and the foam was abandoned.
Goat staring: Supposedly, Guy Savelli killed a goat once by just staring at it. They had something called Goat Lab in the military, which was a secret shack where they had to de-bleat and lock in place a bunch of goats to keep them from giving away its secret location. It was meant as a way to teach people how to save the lives of dying humans by practicing on goats, but ended up as a place for people to practice psychic powers of stopping hearts. Ronson suspects in the book it may have been a sick goat.
Visions: Visions of something or someone near the comet Hale-Bopp fueled the Heaven's Gate cult and their suicide.
Brainwashing: They used music as a method of interrogation. In one method, they blasted music non-stop for days--the same song over and over--Metallica and the I Love You song from Barney--in Iraq prisoner holds. In the other method, they played the song once and at a normal volume. One of these was Matchbox 20 (hey, I like M20). Here, they suspect, may have been subliminal messages, or an attempt at them. This was done in Guantanamo Bay. The strangest thing was that the writers to some of the songs they used to torture prisoners wanted to cash in on the royalties, no sympathy for the people being tortured.

The book starts out fairly simply: Ronson wants to track down who stared a goat to death and if it's possible and how the government can use that power. But it spirals into really serious stuff. In fact, one of the people he interviewed had to video tape him while they talked (this is the guy in the movie who has the video of him staring at his hamsters until they fall over and who said the Lockness Monster is really the ghost of a dinosaur--both true stories). Ronson didn't know why he had to be on video tape at the time. But later, he found out, he had been one of six people to call him that week asking if he could stare a goat to death. The other five had been al qaeda.

My only regret is that Ronson was not able to wrap up all of the mysteries that he presented. And maybe he left in all the questions that he couldn't answer because he wants people to know that there is more to investigate and we should keep our eyes peeled. But at the same time, in a narrative, I expected that any questions he brought up would be answered. So when we don't find out who the mysterious Ron is, and we don't find out what happens with the guy with the hamsters at the very end, I feel a lack of closure. But maybe that's why Hollywood came in to fill in the gaps.

Overall, very enjoyable. I'm also interested to hear what Ronson's got to say about memory and about madness in his other writings.