|
menu
 "A gung-ho Candide with a taste for places it is wiser to avoid. . . the reports collected in 'I Wouldn't Start From Here' are graphic, comic, bemused and properly contemptuous of faith and ideology."
- Jonathan Meades, Books of the Year, Evening Standard
"An utterly sui generis report from the world's plague-spots."
- Michael Bywater, Books of the Year, New Statesman
"I can think of no more entertaining companion on a perilous journey than the ever hopeful, wildly optimistic yet clear-thinking Andrew Mueller."
- Rory MacLean, The Guardian
"A tour-de-force of hilarious, harrowing and ultimately enlightening reportage that will remind readers of the work of P.J. O'Rourke, Jon Ronson and David Foster Wallace."
- The Washington Times
"Unafraid to portray the world's warring people not just as victims and sufferers of legitimate grievances, but also as bloody-minded bastards and ill-informed fools."
- The Kathmandu Post
"A mix of dark humour and incisive political discourse."
- CNN Go
"His sardonic, self-deprecating perspective makes for unstuffy company."
- The Los Angeles Times
"Peppered with trenchant observations that reflect a nimble, cut-to-the-chase practicality, Mueller's interviews with everyone from terrorist warlords to international peacemakers are refreshingly irreverent yet astute."
- Booklist
"Travel writing in the danger zone that maintains its hipness and humanity."
- George Dunford, Books of the Year, Readings Monthly
"An addition to the genre founded by P.J. O'Rourke's 'Holidays In Hell', but it is one that pushes the boundaries."
- The Australian
"Mueller is the embodiment of what can happen with a fire in the belly and a desire to write out loud."
- Australian Book Review
"Mueller's travel writing is as incisive and entertaining as anything he's ever written about music."
- TNT
"A joy."
- Financial Times
"Delightfully laconic."
- The New Statesman
"Alternately chilling, funny and surprising, there's some great reportage here as Mueller struggles to reach an understanding of the world, quizzing the highest minister and the lowliest peasant."
- The Glasgow Herald
"His acerbic wit is matched by true empathy. . . we need this kind of gonzo journalism more than ever."
- Wanderlust
"Mueller spins what could have been the grimmest geopolitics into the finest black comedy. Like a print version of 'The Daily Show'."
- FHM
"Lively reporting from a gently humorous narrator."
- Chris Ayres, The Times
"Touching, often blackly comic reportage."
- GQ
"Brilliantly observed, articulate, often funny and immensely readable."
- The List
"Snappy, self-deprecating and sometimes outright hilarious."
- The Age
"Indelibly humorous and heartfelt."
- Sydney Sunday Telegraph
"An instructive ricochet between cities and continents and war zones."
- Time Out
"He brings to his material the mixture of rage and earthy irony that is the mark of a great satirist
. . . rewarding, thought-provoking and ludicrously funny."
- PopMatters
"Mueller's book is an excellent example of why today's brave, lucid hacks are forced to admit fear and confusion."
- South China Morning Post
"His reporting is sharp, his experiences terrifying and funny."
- Melbourne Herald-Sun
"If you enjoy your international affairs and politics with a good dose of cynicism and black humour, then this book is one to read."
- Brisbane Courier-Mail
"Often laugh-out-loud funny, the writing is utterly engaging."
- Launceston Sunday Examiner
"Mueller's irreverent reportage from abroad is fundamentally a clever cover for the author's ruminations on race, religion, revolution, rock'n'roll and other important issues since September 11, 2001."
- The West Australian
"As hilarious and sardonic a host as this ridiculous world of ours demands."
- Shortlist
"Mueller busies himself with finding the odd, the surreal and the laughable as much as the shocking and upsetting."
- New Zealand Herald
"A real eye for surreal moments of black humour. . . Mueller's work here digs much deeper than the standard newspaper travel essay."
- Sydney Sun-Herald
"His best story, about his brief, bizarre jailing in Cameroon, reads like a 21st century 'Goon Show' script."
- Good Reading
"A rollicking ride through some of the world's scariest scenarios."
- Kalgoorlie Miner
"A strikingly funny book about some seriously unfunny places."
- Perth Sunday Times
"Not bad for a guy from Wagga Wagga."
- The Wagga Wagga Advertiser
 "Andrew Mueller's piece about my band's tour with The Hold Steady is my favourite thing ever written about us. The fact that he is a war correspondent (though he claims otherwise) and music journalist and
approaches both with a similar slant makes him one of the most interesting
writers out there to me."
- Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers
"The most important critical anthology on popular music from a single author in a long time, its humour and insight equal with collections by Nick Tosches or Robert Palmer."
- KEXP Seattle
"Take one part P.J. O'Rourke, a healthy dose of Lester Bangs and a dash of Hunter S. Thompson, and you've got Andrew Mueller."
- Bookgasm
"Sharply observed and wittily constructed."
- Honolulu Star-Advertiser
"New edition of the rock classic."
- NY Press
"Mueller's humour makes for some enlightening reading."
- Biloxi-Gulfport Sun-Herald
"Sharp, witty and sarcastic."
- Chicago Tribune
 "Really rather good, in a barnstorming, country-punk sort of way. . . a highly capable ensemble."
- The Quietus
"A more than capable debut - allusive country-tough songs."
- Uncut
"The Blazing Zoos are undoubtedly fun, but they also have depth. . .
everything from Mueller's extensive use of brackets to the band's loving
recreation of classic country riffs bespeaks sincerity."
- Americana UK
|
|
Diana, five years on
Time Out, September 2002
THERE are a couple of hundred people outside Kensington Palace, distributed at a ratio of about four mourners per journalist. A priest standing on a box recites the Prayer of St Francis to a small, mumbling crowd. The palace gates are festooned with balloons, bouquets, and several home-made tributes. These are constructed from cardboard sheets, photographs and photocopies of newspaper cuttings, and look rather like primary school research projects – though that sort of spelling and punctuation would have been punished, in more robust times, with a venomously flung blackboard eraser. All in all, it is a better roll-up than most of us can expect five years on from the day that the Reaper pushes our doorbell, but it represents a pretty half-hearted effort by a country which, according to received wisdom, changed forever on August 31st, 1997 – and which now substantially believes, according to a recent poll commissioned by the History Channel, that the death of the Princess of Wales was the most significant event of the last hundred years.
It wasn’t, of course. It was an occurrence which, while as tragic as fatal accidents always are, was entirely meaningless. It is impossible to believe that anybody who regularly reads unillustrated books would think, after a moment’s serious consideration, that it mattered more in the grand scheme of things than, say, the Battle of Britain. However, people still want to believe that Diana’s demise was epoch-definingly important. This is because they were there, and this makes them feel like they matter, too. It is the same grotesque narcissism that recently propelled dozens of sanctimonious ghouls to Soham, where they could feel part of something bigger than themselves – the technical terms are “mob” and “herd” – and command a lofty moral position without having to think terribly much. Inevitably, one of the posters pinned to the gates of Kensington Palace invites “Those who can” to “imagine the wonderful moment when Holly and Jessica meet Princess Diana.” I cannot – indeed, will not – imagine this. I can, however, imagine my reaction to anyone who staked this kind of proprietary claim on any bereavement I might suffer, and it would leave them unable to consume solid food for some weeks.
The people at Kensington Palace today are only the most hardcore of the Cult of Diana, but they, like most militants, are only able to function because the society surrounding them is broadly sympathetic. I’m afraid that I fail completely to solicit their opinions: against this gross dereliction of journalistic practise I can only plead a pathological aversion to boring nutters. Anyway, a survey of the offerings pinned to the gate reveals them as a singularly dismal, bitter and mean-spirited bunch. For every mawkish lament to Diana, often expressed in verse that would have made William MacGonagall wince (“It was August 31st 1997/When our lovely princess was called to heaven”) there is brutal invective directed against Camilla Parker-Bowles.
A similar vindictive misogyny was on show at the last fifth-anniversary vigil I attended, that of the Ceaucescus in Bucharest’s Ghensea cemetery in 1994 – while Nicolae’s plot was covered in flowers, poems and candles, the snow on top of Elena’s was soaked yellow. But at least the credulous peasants paying homage, of one sort or another, to Romania’s largely unlamented first family, weren’t pushing each other aside to be photographed and interviewed. They were mourning because they were actually mournful – not because they wanted to be seen to be mourning.
“Are you coming?” says one grief groupie in a Diana t-shirt to another. “We’re going to have lunch at Harrods.”
PRINT PAGE | BACK TO TOP
|
|
