From Amazon.co.uk
Louisville's finest returns with another huge batch of his private correspondence, hammered out from Woody Creek on his typewriter with the frenzied rat-tat-tat report of shots from the hip. Covering the Wonder Years, from the election of Nixon (which first fired his invective), Vietnam, the 1972 campaign, publication of the instantly notorious
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, to Watergate, the walking pharmacy reveals himself to be a surprisingly dedicated librarian, having dutifully filed carbons of all his correspondence for such an eventuality. By 1968, the success of
Hell's Angels had seen his stock, if not his income, rise, and on the magazine Scanlan Monthly was born Gonzo journalism, dismissing objectivity for furious spontaneity fired from both barrels. However, the hidden image on the Polaroid was a bleary-eyed moralist in deadly earnest, uncontrollably seized by the free-associative rantings of a Tourette's sufferer.
The good doctor sees himself, the sub-title suggests, as an outlaw journalist. He certainly wants to resettle his country, and in many ways these 750 pages read as a "Dear John" from an estranged and bitterly spurned lover, the offending suitor being the American Dream. It's no coincidence that Gatsby, that symbol of its empty heart, is a recurrent reference. In fact, a book about the Death of the Dream was the white elephant that stalked these years, the Big Work that never happened. At least this volume contains much invention, not least of the self, and, if not always sober, then certainly incisive thinking, whether he's addressing fellow Gonzoid Ralph Steadman, Tom Wolfe or the Alaska Sleeping Bag Company. He claims his business is "defusing bombs and disarming landmines", a disingenuous reversal of how he often seems to be acting. An iconic reputation became his ball and chain, and he grew into a love/hate figure, particularly to himself, resembling an outrageous uncle at a family party. He was to become worshipped beyond his means, but for this period, while he huffed and puffed to blow Nixon's White House down, he remained a legend in his own overblown inkdom, something these letters vividly capture. --David Vincent
--Ce texte provient d'une édition qui n'est plus publiée ou qui est non diponible.
From Publishers Weekly
"The years that were covered in these letters," says Thompson, "were like riding on a bullet train... with no sleep and no wires to hang on to." Apparently he hung onto his typewriter, though, churning out not only his drugged-up, wigged-out road book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and similarly outrageous articles for Rolling Stone but also for letter after lengthy letter, in the same white-hot, turbo-charged style. Thompson altered permanently the nature of political journalism by injecting into his reportage the personal and the pathological, and this second volume of letters reads like rehearsals for his more public utterances, almost every page ringing with the sound of gunfire, revving motorcycle engines and partying that began at a level where most partying ends. What may surprise readers is the sweetness of much of the writing. While Thompson's correspondents include a virtual who's who of the era, from Tom Wolfe and Kurt Vonnegut to Jimmy Carter and George McGovern, he wrote to his fans like a kind if slightly deranged uncle, trying to convince one not to join the Hell's Angels, offering a second help with her term paper. Despite the occasional lollipop, however, Thompson's strong suit is still invective, of which he remains the unsurpassed master. It's been 30 years since his series of sulfurous missives to a local Colorado TV station for showing only "the cheapest, meanest swill" and to mail-order companies that dared send the journalist from hell what he deemed shabby merchandise, but surely Thompson's name still provokes shudders at the Alaska Sleeping Bag Company and elsewhere. B&w photos. (Dec. 13)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
de Hunter S. Thompson
de Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
de Hunter S. Thompson
de Hunter S. Thompson
de Hunter S. Thompson
