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Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness Modern History from the Sports Desk

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Review of Hunter S. Thompson's new book "Hey Rube."

"Hey Rube" lacks the magic that kept Hunter in the tower of literary song for so long. Where he once shone bright as a welding torch in the junkyard, somebody or something has been tinkering with the fuel knobs lately and his famous glow has diminished. Other gonzo authors no doubt feel comfortable with this, believing his greatness is now approachable, even achievable. But hell, not even the universal genius of Einstein shone as bright in the twilight years of his life, and only a fool would think it somehow moved the goal posts closer. Hunter's new book is a natural easing back on the pedal, a law of nature that even he can't defy - despite the number of other natural laws he's broken by living this long on a diet of toxins so horrible that he must surely struggle to find honest medical insurance.

Hunter S. Thompson, father of Gonzo Journalism and author of over a dozen books on topics from The Hells Angels, Las Vegas & The American Dream, to Politics and Sports, now at the luminous age of 67, is still carving his initials ever deeper into the laureate's desk. To me, Hunter stands across the years as a writer of genius; an author of nerve, talent, insight and creativity - and this latest work is yet another step up the ladder, another rung ahead of the rest. Sure, not as large a stride he has taken with previous work - where he could bound four or five leaps ahead of the pack with a single essay - but it's a step none-the-less; a step in an infinite series that seems to keep Hunter one pace ahead of his peers on any subject he ponders.

Yet "Hey Rube," essentially a collection of his sports column writings on ESPN's website, is lacking. There is no great eye in the sky view, little of Hunter's famous and intelligent insights on the human condition. It is like killing and skinning the beast only to find that somehow the heart is missing. How could it be? Did the editors snatch the work first - stealing the manuscript from his desk late in the night, before he'd instilled the life giving ink, the literary blood into the skeleton?

Possibly. Hunter is a man with a view that the Bush family will understand but not appreciate. Their growing sphere of influence is as encompassing and clueless as Charlotte's web; they would've seen this book coming from a long way off, and fixed it, like only they can do.

And it's a shame, an opportunity lost not only for Hunter fans, but for all of us. There has never been a more opportune time, a more urgent need for a loud and clear trumpet call to the rank and file citizen, a firing of the imagination and passion of man, than there is today. Traditionally Hunter has been the piper many of us followed, but in handing the instrument across the generations, somewhere the brass was lost - like that one ring that ruled them all - and now standing in the doorway, staring at the horizon all he can offer us is a distant mutter..."Hey Rube, look at the sunset."

Well, it's not over, he's not dead. As long as we show a flicker of humanity we can hole-up, wait for further musings, news - and god bless us - wait for direction. I refuse to believe this is the end, with even the man himself going out on a whimper. I may have closed the book, but I refuse to shelve Hunter and all he means to so many.

It was like being socked in the gut when I read that the doctor is dead. Hunter S. Thompson was--pound for pound and word for word--the most talented author of the Twentieth Century. Here was a man who could start from anywhere, write about anything, and have you completely sucked into his world be the end of the first paragraph.

And this is the least of the reasons he will be missed.

The doctor wrote in eulogy of his friend George Plimpton a little over a year ago: "He lived his life like a work of fine art."

If Plimpton was a piece by Michaelangelo, Hunter S. Thompson was the biggest, boldest Kandinsky ever to stalk the canvas.

Of my three favorite Twentieth Century authors (the other two being Thomas Merton--who reached upward, ever searching the silences, and Jack Kerouac--who was always reaching inward, bravely facing what he saw as the void) Hunter S. Thompson was my favorite. His writings reached out. They slapped one hell of a bear hug on the world he knew.

There is something to be said for letting it ride.

I read most of the columns in this book as they were published on ESPN.com. I recently reread them this past December when I checked Hey Rube out of the library. If you don't know the doctor, you might as well start here with his last work.

It's like everything else he ever wrote: damn good. My God, you made one heck of a writer when you made this guy. What a journey he had.

Now, to my great regret, I don't know where the good doctor has gone. I am truly saddened by the loss--the world is just smaller without him. Yet I am thankful all the same for having known him, if only through his works.

We all tip our hats and send up a good word.

Mahalo Doc...fare thee well.

May you make half the show of the second act that you did of the first.

The biggest shame of this book is how little work has been put into it. Hunter is still a lot of fun to read, and for what it is Hey Rube is an excellent read. It is NOT Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, or F&L at the Watergate. It's a collection of short ESPN columns that are usually half about sports, and half about politics. There is little room for development of either, but he's usually fairly interesting to read in both cases throughout Hey Rube.

One problem is how much Hunter has been copied over the years, and how it really weakens his delivery. When you compare Hey Rube to the Great Shark Hunt articles, very little has changed. He hasn't resorted to catch phrases more than before, nor has he become brain dead. Its just now more and more people have begun stealing from his style, and he's just published so much that it seems redundant.

But having said that I had more fun reading Hey Rube than I had reading The Proud Highway or Generation of Swine, since Thompson is very much in his element with the ESPN articles. They are quickly done, and mostly what is on his mind at the time. There's little revision, its very raw, but an absolutely needless release seeing how little NEW content there is in there that you can't just read for free. Even something on the 2004 election would be a nice addition to make it a real book, or small pieces to link articles together as he did in Songs of the Doomed.

Anything Hunter wrote was acerbic and psychedelic, but somehow hopeful and downright hilarious.. I suggest you read all of it, including this collection of ESPN articles.. Read especially Hunters article on the last election:

Some samples,

...Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to pre-industrial America, when only white male property owners could vote...

...Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all...

Hunters Fear and Loathing of Bush and the Republicans since the 60s shot to the heart of political commentary.. Not bad for a Sports Writer..

I wonder what the future holds when the Weird start checking out.. Hunter will be missed by anyone with a heart and mind.

I loved "Fear and Loathing in America." And while I think there is some decent stuff in here, it is just too sports oriented. I mean the book is based on columns from ESPN, so don't be surprised. And I like sports as much as anyone. But the crazy energy of Thompson and blinding insights are diluted by information about betting against the spread. Still there is enough in here to like. He wrote this before and after 9/11/2001. Some of his earliest thoughts on the fascist tendencies of some of the early post-9/11 policies. A good, but not great read.

I'm heartbroken. I admit it. I'm not a year around sports nut. I don't watch games all the time. I don't even get ESPN. And I've never allowed myself to get sucked into the uber-geeky world of fantasy leagues. But the Bears are special for me. And if you let yourself care enough, you'll get hurt. It's unavoidable. You can't experience the thrills without being vulnerable to the pain. Especially the way it happened. With the Bears jumping to a lead within the first 14 seconds, and having a nice action-packed first quarter, I couldn't help but believe. But the Colts managed to dominate. And what hurts the most, what's got me down, is that the Colts won by out Bearing the Bears. They played good hard-nosed defense and then wore down the Bears defense with a relentless running attack. Oh well. I still think Peyton's a bit of a goober but the Indiana coach seems to be a real class act, so I'll try and be happy for them. And I know it's just a game. There are bigger crises in the world. There are bigger crises in my life for that matter. Still, it hurts. This goes down in my top five for losses that hurt, along with the Bears of the late 80's being eliminated in the playoffs by the Redskins and then the Niners, and maybe along with some of those Nebraska victories over Colorado. Particularly those real close ones in that painful, smarmy Neuheisal era.

So when the soul is truly in pain, where else would I go for comfort but Hunter S? I didn't even know about this book until recently. I didn't know he was writing a regular column for ESPN's web site. But he was and these columns are among the last writings we'll have for him. And what better a topic for Mr. Thomson than gambling? Hunter was at his best when writing about those little vices, those things that can be wonderful, even enlightening, in the right doses, but much more entertaining to read about when they are pushed to and beyond the limits of self-destruction. Great stuff.

By the chance of timing, almost a twisted kind of serendipity, this collection contains a generous allotment of Mr. Thomson's political writings as well. The collection spans a period of time containing the Presidential coup in which Bush stole the election from Al Gore and then 9-11 and its aftermath as well. There is an essay written by Thomson dated September 11th, 2001, written that evening following the attack, with classic Thomson vitriol, filled with his trademark fear and loathing, as well as some paranoia that history reveals to be more prescient than delusional, warning that the power that be would use the tragedy of the terrorist attacks to justify further tragedy of an even grander scale. That may be near universal sentiment in hindsight but remember back to that time to realize how deranged and treacherous that would have sounded to the average citizen. Certainly to the chattering hens in the mainstream news media, who couldn't give the American public credit for anything more sophisticated than black and white thinking.

A great voice is gone. I suspect he may have been trying to commit suicide by lifestyle for decades, but when that repeatedly failed, he finally had to take more direct action. And the Chicago Bears are not the world champions. Maybe I should admit that the NFC really is a weak division this year. Or maybe the Bears got what they deserve for playing the entire game with their safeties twenty yards back, trying to win by being the more conservative team. With that mentality, not even the point spread could help Bears benefactors. What would Hunter have said?

Hunter S. Thompson is still the heavyweight of American alternative journalism, the original Gonzo. . . . HEY RUBE, a collection of his sports articles for ESPN.com, may have nothing new in terms of Thompson's unflinching insight and humor, but that is, after all, why we read Thompson. The book contains some significant articles -- "Stadium Living in a New Age" and "Will Sports Survive Bin Laden?," for two, put to words (when few will) our collective sense of dread over the direction our country is headed. There are also pieces of refreshing levity, such as "The Tragedy of Naked Bowling," Thompson's own fantastical solution to the war news tyrannizing our TV channels. What is frightening about HEY RUBE is that Thompson's "Gonzo" approach -- a melding of fact and fiction -- isn't so fictitious anymore: sports may survive bin Laden, but it may well go the way of the Patriot Act's no-more-fun club, which makes rubes of us all indeed.

Reading "Hey Rube" is a bit of a disorienting experience. Doc narrates his gambling-man take on parts of four different football seasons, and it all starts to run together long before the paperback concludes on page 243. Honestly, by the end, I couldn't keep track of who had won which Super Bowl, and whether or not HST beat the point spread. Are the Raiders still in the league?

Reading a collection of ESPN.com colums covering November 2000 through October 2003 in something far quicker than real time is perhaps not the way Hunter S. Thompson is meant to be read. The columns that stuck in my memory, oddly enough, were not the Gonzo columns (except for the stories about Prince "Omar" running through the 2001 World Series). The single column take on Dale Earnhardt's death at the Daytona was the first reprint in the book to grab me by the lapels of my T-shirt. The discussion of the Honolulu Marathon raises a point so amazing I can't believe I hadn't read it elsewhere before -- in what other sport do professionals and amateurs compete on the same course and the same time?

I wish the editing of "Hey Rube" had been a bit tighter. The back cover blurb promises "critics' favorites, and never-before-published columns"... without identifying inside the book which is which. The first "Hey Rube", from November 2000, is printed out of sequence and highlighted on a gray background.... and that's the only column in the collection to be given special treatment.

Finally, the paperback ends in mid-October 2003, not compiling the balance of HST's columns through February 2005. We thus miss his take on the 2004 Presidential election. Did Kerry win? Did Doc cover the 3-point popular vote spread? ESPN.com still has these final columns archived. Read more than a year after the release of the hardcover, the paperback edition of "Hey Rube" is a book without an ending.

Man, another dead hero. Hunter was the last true voice in america. The spirit of independance flowed through him and his pen was mightier than any sword forged. The last work published in his lifetime is a collection of his columns which appear on the internet. You can read them for free. Buy Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, if you haven't read it you haven't lived.

This is the last book published while Hunter was still alive. Althought i seen the movies Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Where the Buffalo Roam i didn't start reading his work seriously until i read this archived on ESPN page 2 column. I have since purchased and read all of his books and read some of his other columns. Dr. Thompson's writting was brilliant, interesting and amusing. To me he brought the fun back in reading again and he will be missed by all who has enjoyed reading his works and those who have known him.Rest in Peace Dr. Thompson. Feb 20 2005