fear and loathing in america by hunter s thompson

With many letters devoted to Thompson's detailed haggling over AWOL royalties and expense policies, the narrative of Fear and Loathing in America occasionally drags. ('If the garbage on this coat is leather, I'll eat it.') In others, he's laying out the basic tenets of Gonzo, or organizing ambitious political conferences with top Democratic Party operatives, or dressing down a 91-year-old lady who inadvertently read Rolling Stone and was offended by his 'vulgarity.' In one letter, Thompson demands a refund from a catalog merchant called the Alaska Sleeping Bag Company.

At more than 700 pages, the book has room for a little bit of everything. The Proud Highway includes Thompson's letters from 1955 through 1967 Fear and Loathing covers 1968 through 1976, when he was writing his most important works and exerting his greatest influence on the culture. Like his 1997 The Proud Highway, this one is a collection of his personal letters, the second in an eventual three-volume series. Shaped like a book, priced like a book, Screwjack is ultimately little more than an exercise in selling gonzo soup to the boomer soul - and while Thompson has certainly established his wholly understandable willingness to publish recycled and less-than-inspired work over the past two decades, even he must be a little embarrassed by the pure meretriciousness of this endeavor.īut Fear and Loathing in America, Thompson's other new old book, is as substantial as Screwjack is slight. Synopsized like that, it sounds at least as entertaining as an Eminem CD, but it isn't. Screwjack, which was originally published in 1991 in a limited edition of 326 copies, is a slim collection of three pieces that are simultaneously slight and rambling: In the first, Thompson takes lots of drugs in the second, his friend commits suicide after squabbling with a sex doll in the third, Thompson makes out with his cat. Thompson has two new books out, and both of them are old. The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, 1968-1976

Fear and loathing in america by hunter s thompson