|
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
|
|
LUNATICS
The psychology of space travel
The Guardian, March 2007
DANNY Boyle’s “Sunshine”, is set in a near-future in which our planet is threatened by the death of the Sun. In a bid to switch back on the star that warms our world, an eight-person crew is dispatched in a spacecraft, bearing the fate-tempting name Icarus II, to deliver a nuclear bomb which will, apparently, reignite the thing. This is an entirely preposterous premise, which is fair enough – “Sunshine” is science fiction, a genre which is supposed to be a dazzling excursion beyond the surly bonds of Earth.
When it comes to his human characters, however, Boyle has punctiliously attempted to generate a realistic recreation of the psychological struggle of space travel. He cooped his cast in student dormitories, sent them SCUBA diving, stuck them in flight simulators, had them lectured by experts. The attention to detail is admirable when one considers how few cinema-goers – those few hundred people who’ve been to space – would know how accurate the film’s portrayal of space travel was.
The topic of the psychological effect of space travel was recently lent immediacy by the travails of Space Shuttle specialist Lisa Nowak, charged in February with the attempted kidnapping of a fellow military officer and love rival. It may be that the peculiar crime of which she is accused has nothing to do with her 13 days in orbit in July 2006 – people who’ve never been to space do weird stuff all the time – but it is nonetheless true that we are still, 46 years since Yuri Gagarin departed our atmosphere aboard Vostok I, only beginning to understand what space travel does to the psyche. What does seem apparent, though, is that it has effects beyond the stress, claustrophobia and pressure which might be expected – and for which astronauts are trained.
“Everybody that is able to achieve something extraordinary doesn’t necessarily have a balanced personality to start with,” says Dr Fillipo Ongaro. Ongaro, who has worked with astronauts at the European Space Agency and at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Moscow, was one of the consultants prevailed upon by Boyle. “And astronauts do experience something we don’t, that’s absolutely clear.”
Another component of Boyle’s education of his cast was Andrew Smith’s book “Moon Dust”. A few years ago, the author, realising that there were only nine people still alive who’d walked on the Moon, set out to meet them. His superb account of that journey depicted a group of men who were all, at the very least, eccentric. Buzz Aldrin remained morbidly obsessed with his status as the second man on the moon. Al Bean painted prolific landscapes of the lunar surface. Ed Mitchell established something called the Institute of Noetic Sciences to “explore the frontiers of consciousness”. Jim Irwin and Charlie Duke got God.
“What it seemed to do,” says Smith, “was magnify them. Al Bean said he thought they all returned more like they already were. Most of them said they thought the big thing would be standing on the Moon, but the profound experience was returning, and seeing the Earth coming towards them. When epiphanies happened, they tended to happen then.”
The key to understanding why space travel turns people inside out might be in another film, considering a different kind of ecological catastrophe – a surfeit of heat rather than an absence of it. Early in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, the former vice-president pauses at an image of Earth. It’s the picture known as “The Blue Marble”, and it was snapped in 1972 from Apollo 17. It is, says Gore, the most reproduced image of all time, but what’s more amazing is how recent it is. It has only been within the last half-century of human existence that we’ve known what our planet looks like – and seeing something for real is always more overwhelming than seeing its picture.
“Think about it in evolutionary terms,” says Ongaro. “What we have printed in our brains is not that view.”
“Neil Armstrong,” recalls Smith, “for a man who is so stoic, occasionally comes out with moments of poetry. He mentioned that on the Moon, he’d held up his thumb and blocked out the Earth – and instead of making him feel big, it made him feel really small.”
Though the astronauts Ongaro has worked with have never shared an existentially crushing perspective quite that dramatic – all space missions since 1972 have stayed within Earth orbit – he reports that it’s the view that affects them the most.
“Sergei Krikalev, for example,” he says, “who has spent more than 1,000 days in space, says he cannot live without it. The most frequent reason I’ve heard is that it’s so beautiful. Also, there are no borders in space. You fly over Israel, over Iraq, it all looks so simple.”
A mission like the one depicted in “Sunshine” is unlikely ever to be attempted – any voyage to the Sun would be fraught with parking difficulties on arrival. But unprecedentedly long, ambitious space flights are being planned. The US plans to return to the moon in 2020, before proceeding to Mars – potentially a three-year trip.
“That’s the question I’m interested in now,” says Smith. “Can you can go into deep space and come back with your brain intact? How does it feel when you see the Earth disappear?”
PRINT PAGE | BACK TO TOP
|
|
