In 2023, journalist and filmmaker Jon Ronson woke up to a barrage of texts from his son, Joel. He read the final message first: “We left. Completely f***ed. All good now.” Joel had gone to a party in Connecticut, held in a faux-gothic castle. The owner of this sub-Disney monstrosity was Chris Mark, the great-grandson of a Gilded Age steel tycoon. There was, it turned out, no party. Instead, Mark asked his guests if they wanted to take part in a “reality show” which involved the women putting on princess dresses and competing for his affection.
Into the castle owner's mad world
In his quest to find out more, Ronson gets pulled into the mad life of the castle’s owner. He is bombarded by messages, some threatening lawsuits and one even promising a visit from “some friends of mine that were in prison for killing somebody” if he keeps writing about the castle. Mark is the springboard for Ronson’s entrance into the wider world of “unmoored” men.
Many people will be loath to read another word about the much-covered “masculinity crisis”; if so, let The Castle be the exception. It’s full of the leftfield twists and witty asides that make Ronson one of the most entertaining writers in journalism. It’s also moving. One of the saddest interviewees is Greg Chism, who started a popular parenting YouTube channel and had a nervous breakdown once the algorithm and his audience turned against him.
A spiritual sequel to So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
The Castle feels like a spiritual sequel to Ronson’s 2015 book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. A lot of today’s online angry anti-feminism is a reaction to the public shaming which was common in the #MeToo era. Ronson cites a jaw-dropping example of a school in Australia at which the head made all the boys apologise to the girls for the concept of rape. Can we be surprised there was a backlash?
Ronson is no stranger to the culture wars and he navigates their minefields deftly. Only once, in a chapter on anti-woke influencers, does he misstep. It’s a bit far for him to declare that the YouTube videos of Piers Morgan-wannabe Andrew Gold are “extreme content”. They’re not exactly Islamic State beheading videos.
Publication details
The Castle by Jon Ronson is out now (Viking, £20). William Moore is the features editor of The Spectator.
