Hunter S. Thompson Books

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" by Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Thompson practiced total immersion journalism. This form of reporting is called gonzo journalism.

Hunter Thompson drove to Las Vegas to report on a motorcycle race and ended up writing a story about himself writing a story about a motorcycle race. If he would have written a conventional report on motorcycle racing it would have been interesting to motorcycle enthusiasts for a few days. Since he wrote a gonzo story he had a very wide canvas and he used it well to create a classic.

The reader might be turned off by the obstreperous behavior, extreme self indulgence and offensive inconsiderate language. If you can look past this offensive conduct and you will see that Hunter Thompson gave us an insight into the American character of the 1970's.

See also: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library)

I completely enjoyed this book and recommend it to others.

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" by Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Thompson practiced total immersion journalism. This form of reporting is called gonzo journalism.

Hunter Thompson drove to Las Vegas to report on a motorcycle race and ended up writing a story about himself writing a story about a motorcycle race. If he would have written a conventional report on motorcycle racing it would have been interesting to motorcycle enthusiasts for a few days. Since he wrote a gonzo story he had a very wide canvas and he used it well to create a classic.

The reader might be turned off by the obstreperous behavior, extreme self indulgence and offensive inconsiderate language. If you can look past this offensive conduct and you will see that Hunter Thompson gave us an insight into the American character of the 1970's.

See also: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library)

I completely enjoyed this book and recommend it to others.

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" by Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Thompson practiced total immersion journalism. This form of reporting is called gonzo journalism.

Hunter Thompson drove to Las Vegas to report on a motorcycle race and ended up writing a story about himself writing a story about a motorcycle race. If he would have written a conventional report on motorcycle racing it would have been interesting to motorcycle enthusiasts for a few days. Since he wrote a gonzo story he had a very wide canvas and he used it well to create a classic.

The reader might be turned off by the obstreperous behavior, extreme self indulgence and offensive inconsiderate language. If you can look past this offensive conduct and you will see that Hunter Thompson gave us an insight into the American character of the 1970's.

See also: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library)

I completely enjoyed this book and recommend it to others.

This unauthorized biography of the Doctor is a great one. the chapers are seperated into time frames of Hunter's life (louisville, south america, what he was doing in the 70's, etc), and are filled mostly with antecdotes, quotes from people who knew him, and various backround information.

there are three picture sections in the book- 1st from when he was in his 20's, second is a Ralph Steadman's pictures of Hunter gallery, the third is random pictures of Hunter from the 70's through the 90's.

I recommend the book highly to every Hunter Thompson fan, especially if you like reading about his exploits as much as i do.

(this book is 200/5 stars, btw)

I was a young, impressionable 18-year-old high school senior in upstate New York in 1970 when I read Hunter Thompson's first book, "Hell's Angels," and was totally blown away by his first person, in-your-face, stream-of-consciousness "Gonzo" writing style. It was absolutely incredible to me. His unique writing style combined with a fearless attitude toward actually living and riding and learning the truth about this outrageous band of motorcycle outlaws produced an incredible look at the seamier, lawless side of life. And, of course, the alcohol and drugs and high-powered Harleys and thugs and ex-cons who eventually beat the crap out of him also added a real-life luster and dimension that Thompson captured so brilliantly in this amazing classic.

It's Hunter S. Thompson's classic work. If you're interested in the subject matter or HST then buy this book, read it, put it on the shelf, then pull it back down and reacquaint yourself with it everytime you despair over the lack of original prose in your life. Any investment in any of the works by Dr. Thompson amounts to wise expenditures of those inflated Yankee dollars.

Like most people, the only thing I knew about Hunter S. Thompson was that he was the author of "Fear and Loating in Las Vegas" and that mostly because I had seen the movie. I then went on to read the book (a long time ago, in a French translation, since that's my mother tongue) and quite liked it. But even with this background, I wasn't sure what I'd find with this book.

I wasn't disappointed. Quite to the contrary. In fact, this is a most well-written book, well researched, very insightful and thought-provoking. Thompson makes very interesting analyses about the relationship between the actual Hell's Angels and the way they are portrayed throughout the media; that alone is worth the interest. Naturally, you also get to know about the Hell's Angels proper.

I especially like how they fit in historically. To put it in simple terms, here's how it'd be: the world after World War II seems to have no idea where to go anymore, and the mix of wasted energy and confused lives led in an existential vacuum brings about self-destructive behaviour. That doesn't sound quite right, because things are way more complicated than this, but that's a model, so don't take it too literally. The Hell's Angels were started shortly after the end of World War II, and many of them were war veterans who couldn't get back to a normal lifestyle. So I think it's fairly legitimate to put it in such a perspective.

As to the book itself, I definitely love Thompson's style. Not only is he clever and witty, he's also hilarious at times, and moving at others. I never once got bored reading this book: it's a pure reader's delight.

I like his writings on Bay Area sports... hes a fan and a gambler so he has a weird twist on sports... A reader for the bathroom ...and a sports fan

Ralph Steadman goes with HST like chalk with cheese. They were so different from one another but they collaborated together like a well oiled machine. Steadman speaks fondly for the good Dr. but he DOES stand up for himself because Hunter could take people for granted or could be demanding or selfish. Excellent book about two very different men that had one thing in common. They both understood the nature of *weird*.

Reading Thompson is a blast. It's fun to pick out the references in his work that the ordinary schmuck misses. As a humble truck driver (with a liberal education and wondering why I ply the concrete sea) I think I'll stencil "Dr. Gonzo" on the door of my Freightliner; 99.999% of truck stop denizens will miss the citation. The microscopic remainder will ask if that's the name of a guest host for Geraldo.
If I could figure out a way to shed 16 of those 18 wheels and still pay the bills I'd do it then write full time. Oh, well, time to get in touch with my inner Raoul Duke and contemplate the universe. That's a lie but it sounded good.
Go thou and read this book.
Ride free,
Rich G

How can a book be hilarious and drab at the same time? Well, imagine this situation: you've arrived at a huge party with your friends. You're really pumped, you're telling jokes, and everyone is laughing, and your friends are enjoying your company, and everyone is having a good time. But then, a few hours later, your adrenaline runs out, and you've already told your best jokes. Now, you have to force yourself to have fun -- you're talking much louder than you should, trying to affect a witty tone for some laboured one-liners. Nobody wants to leave the party, because they came to have a good time, but everyone is already kind of tired and mildly irritated. At the end, you feel like you shouldn't have bothered.

That's exactly this book. The fun part of the party is over in the first few pages, when Thompson and his attorney embark on a road trip to Vegas in a car full of drugs. That introduction conveys a sense of excitement, the guys seem to be looking forward to a good time. The rest of the book is the irritated, laboured stage of the party. The guys keep pushing themselves to be manic and devil-may-care, apparently for no reason. Often, their insults and one-liners are grotesquely funny. But they are also hostile and snarling. There's no sense of friendship between them whatsoever.

Frequently, the protagonist tells long, complicated lies (well, more like "yarns," I guess) to various people. This is exactly the part of the party where you're trying to be funny and you keep talking and talking in the hope that, if you're not actually saying anything funny, maybe sheer volume will work. Sometimes it does, and one reads in disbelief, wondering how far Thompson can go.

The book occasionally recalls Kerouac with the road trips and the drugs, but they're taken to extremes, with none of Kerouac's literary name-dropping or his muddled thoughts on enlightenment. Thompson is more honest than Kerouac, in the sense that Thompson's characters casually say and do horrific things (like the scene with the underage artist girl, or the one where Thompson's attorney pulls a knife on the diner owner in North Vegas), without trying to cover up their nastiness with insincere booze-soaked lamentations about the sorrow of life. But that doesn't make Thompson's characters any more appealing, just honestly nasty.

Then again, Thompson's recurring references to the "American Dream" are kind of similar to Kerouac's Buddhism, putting a half-baked intellectual veneer on a trip that had no aim other than doing lots of drugs from the outset. This inspires the most unfunny and laboured part of the party, the dialogue allegedly transcribed directly from a tape recording. Thompson tells some people that he wants to find the American Dream and asks them where it is. A very laborious conversation ensues, it feels that Thompson is trying very hard to be outlandish and unpredictable.

Drugs are the one subject that the main characters are interested in, and possibly the only thing they have in common. They talk about drugs a lot, and Thompson's descriptions also expound in great detail upon the finer points. For instance, when they sneak into a national police conference about drugs: "I suspect we could have done the whole thing on acid...except for some of the people; there were faces...who would have been absolutely unendurable on acid. The sight of...[the faces]...was just barely tolerable on mescaline--which is mainly a sensual/surface drug that exaggerates reality, instead of altering it--but with a head full of acid, the sight...would not be emotionally acceptable." (143) The pedantry is great, he just has to carefully explain that distinction there. Or this one: "Acid is a relatively complex drug, in its effects, while mescaline is pretty simple and straightforward--but in a scene like this, the difference was academic." (144) That whole episode is hilariously pedantic, like the use of the word "academic" to describe drugs. It really is academic!

Thompson goes around ridiculing the clueless cops, because they were "telling each other that 'we must come to terms with the drug culture,' but they had no idea where to start. They couldn't even find the...thing." (144) He repeats this many times, but after all, he doesn't say much about the "drug culture," either. There are a few times when he appears ready to explain the essence of the "drug culture," but he never finishes his thought. It's kind of frustrating -- since he's so pedantic about drugs, and so contemptuous of the clueless cops, you'd figure he might as well go ahead and explain this "culture" for the benefit of the audience. But all that really comes out is his heartfelt regret (possibly the only emotion expressed in the entire book) for the passing of the sixties. It seems that he regrets it so much, that he decides to purposefully dedicate his life to acting out what he believes to be the spirit of that time. It's less clear why he feels that way.

The book is very fast-paced and easy to read, often funny. While you're reading, you'll probably want to finish the whole thing, and you'll laugh at Thompson's creative insults and yarns. But, after I read the book, I have to say, I don't really feel like ever meeting the main characters.

I read this first in college, and then again recently. It's still just as funny and wonderful as ever.

Just to be short, this book is great. Unfortunately for me, i've seen the movie for 5 or 6 times before reading it, so the book just felt repetitive. Especially since all the movie is like a quote of the book. Which is great if i wouldn't have seen the movie.

So if you liked the movie, you'll definitely like this book. No surprises there, but some of the blurry situations in the movie are cleared out.

For those who haven't seen the movie, you should read the book first. it makes the movie so much rewarding, and of course, you don't want to miss Hunter S Thompson's great writing skills. He just writes everything the way he thinks and sees (hence the idea of Gonzo journalism).

My father had always liked hunter thompson but i had yet to read him. When my friend told me of this book I knew I had to check it out. What a trip. If you're looking for a straight forward book that explains everything with a nice plot and central characters who learn valuable life lessons...then this isn't the book for you. In many ways I say this book rings more true than most others. The character is really just an everyday druggie with a job and a hotel room in Vegas. The writing is superb and the illustrations were out of this world (literally). Even if you saw the movie and didn't like it, i would still read this book. It explains a lot more.