Customer Reviews

Fear And Loathing In America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist (Gonzo Letters)

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Considering there are at least 5 biographies floating around about Hunter S. Thompson, and he doesn't seem the type to write an autobiography, this is the closest thing we will ever get. Picking up where Volume I left off, Fear and Loathing in America is a complete reversal of fortune from its predecessor.

Whereas Volume I documented the lament and poverty of Thompson as a young, struggling writer, dealing with the rigors of hustling a career in journalism or literature without working a "real job"--this volume covers Thompson in his shining glory years. Fresh off the success of Hells Angels, he conquers with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Not only that, but it covers everything in-between, providing a much-needed counterpoint to the extreme surreal elements of his gonzo journalism, showing us the facts that exists outside the books and the articles.

Thompson almost always portrays himself as the smirking, all-knowing, invulnerable watcher of things. Even when writing from his own point of view, he becomes the omniscient narrator and the cruel god watching over the world he is describing. Very rarely does he get really personal and revealing in his writing, nor does he need to.

This volume is filled with personal correspondence, journalistic entries about Thompson's life and times. And his writing here is just as solid as it is in any of his books. His ability to bend language and make it bark and snarl at the end of his leash is what makes Thompson an irreplacable American writer, and a perfect vehicle to have documented the turbulence of the last 4 decades. This volume of letters is the perfect companion to the flash and bang of his books, giving us an altogether different point of view of Thompson's life and lets us make our own conclusions about how much life imitates art and helps us realize that it works the other way 'round as well.

...'course you'll have to work for it. This is a massive book that in my opinion isn't meant to be plowed through, but rather enjoyed from time to time.

A complition of his letters written over a decade or so (during his rise from a relatively obscure journalist/writer to cult hero) most every letter is interesting in one way or another, some are so funny that you'll be laughing about them for days.

HST's humor is unmatched in my opinion by any writer I've read. This book is an extraordinarily private, very insightful, often hilarious glimpse into one of America's most interesting social figures.

Enjoy...

Two of my favorite contemporary writers have died unexpectedly in the past few months - the Mississippi writer Larry Brown and, more recently, Hunter S. Thompson, who committed suicide on Feb. 20.

Both were deaths that affected me greatly. Usually when I hear of a notable passing, my reaction is, "Oh, no," but in both of these cases my first thought was to hope that the news wasn't true.

In the days following Thompson's death, I found myself going over some of his work - a documentary on the Criterion "Fear & Loathing" DVD, "The Great Shark Hunt" and "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas."

But the book that I found myself reading the most, and finding a kind of solace in, is this one: Thompson's collected letters from 1968-76.

I used to work in a bookstore and there was always a question of where "Las Vegas" belonged. It obviously wasn't fiction but it also couldn't be entirely true, and that's part of its genius. But with "The Gonzo Letters, Volume II" there is no doubt that this is the genuine article, this is probably the closest look we'll get at what Thompson was like. The sheer fact that he wrote and saved so many letters in the first place tells you a lot about the man himself.

The correspondence here runs the gamut: letters to Oscar Acosta, Tom Wolfe, Charles Kuralt, William Kennedy, Jann Wenner, his brother, his mother, his broker and anybody he had a beef with. The letters take us through his early ups and downs, his campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County and we not only get to follow him through the success of "Las Vegas," but also part of the process of him refining surrealism and colorful exaggeration into the style he'd use in that book.

And tucked away in the book, on page 181 is a letter that gave me a smile and a shiver of sadness as I read it with the news playing in the background on TV. It's a May 19, 1969 letter to the Disabled American Veterans Association, in response to a solicitation for a donation. Thompson opposed the then-raging war in Vietnam and was flabbergasted that the DAV would support it. His reply is so fierce and funny and sad that it even stung me, a bystander, 35 years later.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't think letters would be that interesting. But Thomson's style and sense of humor are so outrageous, I find myself laughing out loud every few pages or so.

But it's much more than humor. The letters overlap the period of Martin Luther King's Assassination, Robert F. Kennedy's Assassination, the Democratic National Convention of 1968 (which he attended), etc.

I was struck at how he tried to convince his younger brother to stay in college for at least another semester, because by then, we would probably be out of Vietnam. It was apparent to him at the time that we would leave. And yet...Saigon didn't fall until April 1975.

He also has a particular revulsion for Nixon, who has always been a fascinating figure for me. And of course,there are letters to his fans. He clearly has fear and loathing for some of them. His letters to and about them are hillarious.

A great read.

The main reason I've always enjoyed Hunter S. Thompson is his utter refusal to be nice. He tells it like it is, and to hell with the consequences. "Fear And Loathing In America," a collection of Dr. Thompson's correspondence between 1968 and 1976, will have the reader running back to their bookcase for another look at "Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas" and, possibly his best work, "Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail," which despite having been written nearly thirty years ago resonates as loudly and as truthfully today as it did in 1972. Fans of the Doctor will welcome yet another glimpse into the heated mind of arguably the greatest counterculture journalist ever. My only complaint--editor Douglas Brinkley must think Thompson's audience isn't too bright, because when anyone's name is brought up he has to stick in a footnote explaining who they are. Some of them are helpful, but . . . um, Mr. Brinkley, I think most people know who Hitler and J. Edgar Hoover are . . .

This is a special, limited edition of Hunter S. Thompsons' Fear and Loathing in America. To see more reviews of this title, look it up under the regular hardcover edition. What makes this edition so special is the signature, spelled out "H.S. Thompson" on the book itself, rather than on a bookplate. There are a number of instances in the past where the Doctor signed a bookplate "HST", or even a front page, yet even these are extremely uncommon. Collectors may note that full signature Hunter S. Thompson works are very, very rare indeed, and sell for up to $2900.00.

According to a Simon & Schuster rep, there are only 300 of the special signed edition in existence. It is a reddish, leather-bound volume with the knife-and-fist Gonzo trademark imprinted on the front cover. The edges are gilt, making this edition look rather more like a bible then other, more familiar Steadman covers. Obviously designed for the dedicated fan of an American legend, this edition will occupy a prize position on your bookshelf, next to other HST works that you would be wise not to lend out.

When I started to read this book - I must admit, I was disappointed. Having read everything that Hunter Thompson had written, I was a lttle under whelmed at first. However, I started to warm to the book as the years ran by. I could picture the events described in his letters - the Vegas book, the 72 campaign trail, fall of Viet Nam, the fall of Richard Nixon thru his eyes - it brought back my own memories of the events. In the end, the Gonzo style of prose took over and I found myself devouring the book in big chunks. For anyone who wants to remember the crazy, wild times of the late 60's - mid 70's, there isn't a better book.

As a big fan of Hunter's I especially enjoyed Volume I in this series, I found this edition much less satisfying. The problems with it lie chiefly in editor Brinkley's selection of material and his approach to assembling it. Thompson's laundry list likely makes more compelling reading than many scribes' magnum opuses (opii? opum?), it's true, but too many of the pieces here drown the reader in the minutae of logistical details involved in putting a book together. The extensive correspondence between Random House Editor Jim Silberman and Hunter, for example, gets awfully repetitive after a while, with Hunter scrambling to find new ways to explain his writer's block. And the letters of complaint about his jacket are not very interesting; and the letters to Wenner become tedious early on. One thing I noticed in this volume versus the last is a tendency to run on at the mouth and stray from the (often vital) subject at hand -- illustrating what must have been the pivotal role of the editor in the heyday of Hunter's excellent 70's work. Finally, Brinkley's selections are odd and his annotations often bizarre. Thompson will mention some individual mentioned in passing a hundred pages ago and we scratch our heads and wonder who it is he's talking about, yet a passing reference to Hitler is footnoted with a helpful explanation of who Hitler was!! All in all this book has a more slapped-together feel, and perhaps it's because Thompson at this point was more heavily into drugs an liquor, but I found his earlier correspondence more arresting and interesting.

I'm a contemporary American Lit. scholar, and for any literature scholar, primary documents are of utmost importance when determining relevant interpretations and plausable meanings for pieces. Here, in the second volume of Thompson's letters, you are able to get a glimpse of how Thompson constructs the public image of madness and depravity, all the while maintaining his reflective distance from the material he's writing.

Within these covers you can see the arduous revision process as Thompson struggles with the work-in-progress of his best known book, _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_. He considers it a "failed experiment in Gonzo journalism," but that's what makes it great. The revision process makes so many good writers into great writers (I have in mind most of the great Maxwell Perkins' disciples - F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemmingway, Ring Lardner, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, et al.)

This book, and the first collection of his letters, _The Proud Highway_, are essential to anyone who wants to know more about the REAL Hunter S. Thompson, and the method behind the madness.

This 2nd volume of letters written by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson covers the years in which Dr. Thompson was writing his opus on the death of the American dream, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Picking up after the publication of "Hell's Angels" and covering the late 60's and 70's, this collection provides an insight into the often twisted genius that is Dr. Thompson. However, as interesting as some of the letters between Thompson and his editor regarding "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" are, the real prize of this volume is the everyday letters that he writes to fans (who want more information from him on how to join the Hell's Angels), his Dentist (who tries to collect $277 from Thompson at once, a tactic which Thompson calls "sheer madness"), and an outdoor clothing catalog (from whom he wants a refund when he finds that one of their products which is supposed to be made from leather is no longer made of leather). It is these letters that show how normal Thompson thought his actions were, even though they may have seemed anything but normal to those he was writing to. Other highlights include the book's opening essay on Bob Dylan and the hippie dream, his earliest ramblings from his lawyer Oscar Acosta, and a letter to mystery writer Sue Grafton who grew up in the same town as Thompson. Perhaps the most interesting discovery to fans of Thompson are the letters detailing Thompson's plans to have his novel, "The Rum Diary" published as early as 1968, a promise that would not come to fruition for another thirty years. Overall this collection of letters is an essential piece of the puzzle that is Thompson's literary catalog, even more so than the previous volume of letters published in 1997.