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Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia
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Review
'delightfully unorthodox history..The strangest decade has received the treatment it has long deserved' Book of The Week Time Out
'This gallery of grotesques is great fun' TLS
'fascinating, wonderfully funny and curiously terrifying' Waterstones Books Quarterly
'wonderfully deadpan and precise writer' The Scotsman
'Wheen expertly controls the reins, pacing the narrative just right so there is always the desire to be led further into the maze of '70's madness. Wheen is surely our most eminent satirical writer, and I just hope that he is looking at our present decade through the same lens, and is just as busy getting that book ready' Tribune
'Wheen's view of the Seventies in Britain is unrelentingly grim' The Spectator
'hugely entertaining…Wheen has a tremendous sense of the absurd' Independent on Sunday
'What makes this book such an outrageously funny, entertaining read is the stream of anecdotes, from the Oz obscenity trial to the mercenary coup plotters who fly into the Seychelles posing as rugby-playing members of the fictitious Ancient Order of Froth Blowers, their weapons hidden in their luggage under piles of toys 'for disabled children'. Not even the most outrageous novelist could make this kind of stuff up, but perhaps only a writer of Francis Wheen's skill and touch could turn it into a book as glorious, memorable and laugh-out-loud hilarious as this.' Literary Review
'Wheen's high-octaine, rollicking and impressionistic survey' Mail on Sunday
‘First review of Francis Wheen's brilliant Strange Days Indeed ran at the weekend:'Wheen couldn't write a dull book if he tried…And while not even he could make the 1970s likeable, few could make the crimes, follies and misfortunes of that wretched decade so entertaining' Christopher Hart, Sunday Times.
Product Description
Strange Days Indeed, by Francis Wheen.
The nostalgic whiff of the seventies evokes memories of loons and disco, Abba and Fawlty Towers. However, beneath the long hair it was really a theme park of mass paranoia.
Strange Days Indeed tells the story of the decade that a young Francis Wheen walked into having pronounced he was dropping out to join the alternative society. Instead of the optimistic dreams of the sixties he found a world on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown, huddled over candles waiting for the next terrorist bomb, kidnapping or food shortage warning. Whether it was Nixon's demented behaviour in the White House, Harold Wilson's insistence that 'they' (whoever 'they' were) were out to get him, or the trial of Rupert Bear, it is a story almost too fantastical to be true. With his brilliantly acute sense of the absurd Francis Wheen slices through the pungent melange of mistrust and conspiratorial fever to expose the sickly form of a decade in which nations were brought to a sclerotic halt by power cuts, military coups, economic anarchy and the arrival of Uri Geller.
Since the Great Crash of our generation barely a week passes without some allusion to that distant decade. As we are consumed by the heady stench of our own collective meltdown, there is no better guide than Francis Wheen to shine his Swiftian light on the true nature of the era that has returned to haunt us. Amidst the chaos Strange Days Indeed is an hilarious and jaw-droppingly revealing chronicle of the golden age of the paranoid style.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
`I'll read anything by Francis Wheen', says Nick Hornby on the cover blurb. Well, so will I. He's one of England's most entertaining popular essayists, always intelligent, thought provoking, gloriously sarcastic and a master of the well aimed bon mot that deflates pretentions and pomposity. `How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World', his previous book, is a masterpiece - a principled and impassioned defence of rationality in the face of the lunatic forces of chaos.
However, I must confess myself a little disappointed by his latest. I was really looking forward to `Strange Days Indeed'. I find the 70s a fascinating period in political and social history, and couldn't wait to read Wheen's take on it. The result, however, while certainly entertaining, was less coherent than I'd expected.
I assume that Wheen was responding to the current vogue for `Mamma Mia' / `Life on Mars' 70s nostalgia, and to books like Howard Sounes' `The Seventies', that seek to celebrate the decade's many contributions to art and society. No, says Wheen, it really was the decade when the 60s party ended and the hangover set in. His thesis is that it was during the 1970s when `paranoid thinking' or `the paranoid style' became widespread in both political and popular circles. It was this, he says, that laid the groundwork for irrationality to dominate public discourse - the subject of `Mumbo Jumbo'.
The problem is, he never truly gets to grips with what he means by `the paranoid style'. The bulk of the book consists of what are basically essays on political figures or events. Nixon justifies a couple on his own. Others are devoted to the likes of Idi Amin, Harold Wilson, Carlos the Jackal and International Terrorism, the Oz trial and underground culture. These people were undoubtedly paranoid. But you can't base such a broad brush social thesis on a handful of leaders. Amin and Mao were monsters; Nixon was a highly complex individual who was clearly in the grip of a nervous breakdown, a description which would also apply to Wilson. Besides, you can find similar examples from every decade, from Stalin in the 30s and 40s to the anarchist bomb throwers of the 1900s. Every era has its paranoid groups.
Other chapters try to broaden out the thesis, for example tracing the collapse of public confidence in government following the Watergate revelations, and the rise of the popular conviction that the UK was ungovernable and headed for a military dictatorship. The problem here is that these were perfectly rational responses to particular circumstances. The fact is, the UK of the mid-seventies did appear to be ungovernable, and US intelligence was bugging its own citizens and plotting to destabilise foreign governments. Distrust and suspicion, then, weren't paranoia - they were sensible responses to new information. Weird conspiracy theories, aliens, opus dei and black helicopters can't be blamed on Watergate, then. They're a different phenomenon and, if their roots are in the 70s, Wheen doesn't prove it.
The three stars are a bit of a compromise. If what you want is a biting, well-written, highly entertaining series of essays centred on some of the wackier characters of the 1970s, then it's all here. It's also a timely corrective to the 70s nostalgia industry. On the other hand, Alwyn Turner's `Crisis, What Crisis?' does a better job of blending high and low culture to give a more balanced view of the decade. The best place to start, however, if you really want to understand the decade (at least as it played out in the UK) is Andrew Beckett's `When the Lights Went Out'.
However, I must confess myself a little disappointed by his latest. I was really looking forward to `Strange Days Indeed'. I find the 70s a fascinating period in political and social history, and couldn't wait to read Wheen's take on it. The result, however, while certainly entertaining, was less coherent than I'd expected.
I assume that Wheen was responding to the current vogue for `Mamma Mia' / `Life on Mars' 70s nostalgia, and to books like Howard Sounes' `The Seventies', that seek to celebrate the decade's many contributions to art and society. No, says Wheen, it really was the decade when the 60s party ended and the hangover set in. His thesis is that it was during the 1970s when `paranoid thinking' or `the paranoid style' became widespread in both political and popular circles. It was this, he says, that laid the groundwork for irrationality to dominate public discourse - the subject of `Mumbo Jumbo'.
The problem is, he never truly gets to grips with what he means by `the paranoid style'. The bulk of the book consists of what are basically essays on political figures or events. Nixon justifies a couple on his own. Others are devoted to the likes of Idi Amin, Harold Wilson, Carlos the Jackal and International Terrorism, the Oz trial and underground culture. These people were undoubtedly paranoid. But you can't base such a broad brush social thesis on a handful of leaders. Amin and Mao were monsters; Nixon was a highly complex individual who was clearly in the grip of a nervous breakdown, a description which would also apply to Wilson. Besides, you can find similar examples from every decade, from Stalin in the 30s and 40s to the anarchist bomb throwers of the 1900s. Every era has its paranoid groups.
Other chapters try to broaden out the thesis, for example tracing the collapse of public confidence in government following the Watergate revelations, and the rise of the popular conviction that the UK was ungovernable and headed for a military dictatorship. The problem here is that these were perfectly rational responses to particular circumstances. The fact is, the UK of the mid-seventies did appear to be ungovernable, and US intelligence was bugging its own citizens and plotting to destabilise foreign governments. Distrust and suspicion, then, weren't paranoia - they were sensible responses to new information. Weird conspiracy theories, aliens, opus dei and black helicopters can't be blamed on Watergate, then. They're a different phenomenon and, if their roots are in the 70s, Wheen doesn't prove it.
The three stars are a bit of a compromise. If what you want is a biting, well-written, highly entertaining series of essays centred on some of the wackier characters of the 1970s, then it's all here. It's also a timely corrective to the 70s nostalgia industry. On the other hand, Alwyn Turner's `Crisis, What Crisis?' does a better job of blending high and low culture to give a more balanced view of the decade. The best place to start, however, if you really want to understand the decade (at least as it played out in the UK) is Andrew Beckett's `When the Lights Went Out'.
35 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Its a common allegory to compare the sixties to the hedonistic party while the seventies was its hangover, but coupled with the sour anxiety at the time ran an even deeper, all-pervasive band of post-excess malaise, rampant paranoia.
The cast here are Nixon and Kissinger acting like Bond Villians, a button-press from a world destroying nuclear arsenal; Wilson and his huddled, terrified acolytes in Downing Street, Uri Gellar and a milion bending spoons, and numerous other mad or maddening characters, acted out against a canvas of drab, the psychadelic rainbows of the previous decade now drained to various shades of grey, lurching deeper into stagnation, fear and gloom. If you've ever read Wheen's previous pieces on the Seventies (theres a couple of choice cuts in 'Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies')you'll know what to expect.
As with every book, indeed everything Wheen has ever written, this is Grade A Unputdownable. His style is hilarious yet terrifying, his research deep and thorough, and his eye for the absurd sharp. The anotations come thick and fast, each one a juicy little side order to the main course you'll wolf down.
How the hell we got out of the decade without revolution, right wing coup or nuclear annhiliation remains a mystery, but Im only glad I wasn't around till 1973, and 3 Day Weeks, Crazed Presidents and paranoid PMs meant rather less to me than Watership Down, Star wars and Floella Benjamin.
A great companion piece to David Aaronovitch's very fine 'Voodoo Histories'...but wait. Two brilliant books on paranoic conspiracy out at the same time...there must be a more sinister connection...
The cast here are Nixon and Kissinger acting like Bond Villians, a button-press from a world destroying nuclear arsenal; Wilson and his huddled, terrified acolytes in Downing Street, Uri Gellar and a milion bending spoons, and numerous other mad or maddening characters, acted out against a canvas of drab, the psychadelic rainbows of the previous decade now drained to various shades of grey, lurching deeper into stagnation, fear and gloom. If you've ever read Wheen's previous pieces on the Seventies (theres a couple of choice cuts in 'Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies')you'll know what to expect.
As with every book, indeed everything Wheen has ever written, this is Grade A Unputdownable. His style is hilarious yet terrifying, his research deep and thorough, and his eye for the absurd sharp. The anotations come thick and fast, each one a juicy little side order to the main course you'll wolf down.
How the hell we got out of the decade without revolution, right wing coup or nuclear annhiliation remains a mystery, but Im only glad I wasn't around till 1973, and 3 Day Weeks, Crazed Presidents and paranoid PMs meant rather less to me than Watership Down, Star wars and Floella Benjamin.
A great companion piece to David Aaronovitch's very fine 'Voodoo Histories'...but wait. Two brilliant books on paranoic conspiracy out at the same time...there must be a more sinister connection...
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
So I see it. When you've had enough of superstition, political hypocrisy, and intellectual dishonesty in general, one of the writers you can turn to for oxygen is Francis Wheen. I've read this book with the greatest of pleasure from start to finish. The work of a mind even more disillusioned than the author of HOW MUMBO-JUMBO CONQUERED THE WORLD. In any case the same wit, the same clarity of thought, the same understatement are present. I am almost surprised that such a rational work can nowadays get published.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hugely entertaining, and scary
This great book by Francis Wheen (the author of a series of excellent and thought provoking titles) presents the almost forgotten decade of the 70s. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Ioannis Glinavos
The time the Brits started changing their manner
I recently have read Francis Wheen's political book, i.e. Strange Days Indeed." As a former columnist for the Guardian, he recalls a number of drastic scandals conducted by... Read more
Published 8 months ago by superblues
Rather, the discordant decade.
An entertaining reminder of what was indeed a very strange time. Certainly there seemed then to have been more paranoid political leaders around. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Grr
Goodbye 70s
The 70s were a grim, depressing decade (no wonder Erasure had a song where Alison Moyet bid farewell to the decade with no regrets)..... except it wasn't ALL bad. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Hugh Scantlebury
An alternative perspective on the 1970s
This is an extremely entertaining book about the decade I find most fascinating: the 1970s. Wheen's central theme is the fear, paranoia and conspiracy that pervaded both American... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Neil Kernohan
Absolute Bull
Those of us who lived through the 70's know that this is absolute rubbish.
There was no 'mass paranoia' and we certainly did not have 'cold leftovers for supper and a... Read more
There was no 'mass paranoia' and we certainly did not have 'cold leftovers for supper and a... Read more
Published on 4 May 2010 by ML
The 1970s
This book is an amalgam of facts, fiction, biased - and dis-information and pure propaganda. It contains hilarious portraits of a beleaguered Richard Nixon and his room mate Henry... Read more
Published on 1 May 2010 by Luc REYNAERT
Strange Days Indeed
the book arrived very promptly and in good condition. I have not yet read it, as I have a large backlog of literature!
Published on 3 Nov 2009 by C. Walker-Lyne
Makes the Soviets seem sane.
At a safe distance, we can laugh at this history. If everyone had known at the time what Francis Wheen reveals of the time we would all have had a nervous breakdown. Read more
Published on 23 Oct 2009 by James-philip Harries
Up to scratch
The idea that a decade can be defined by events or a prevailing mood is open to question but Francis Wheen has used it to rest his thirteen pieces of writing on. Read more
Published on 27 Sep 2009 by Brim
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