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GONZO

                                                  July 27, 1992

Ah, Hunter S. Thompson...

The one, ultimate, infamous Thompson book is
_Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_.

A crazy and (hopefully?) exaggerated
story of our depraved hero-journalist
Raoul Duke, a man out to *cover the         Later ripped off
story*, though it's not clear to him        to create the Duke of
what the story is, exactly.                 "Doonesbury"

                                              And then again
                                              in the Vertigo comic
                                              "Transmetropolitan"



       There's a Vintage Books edition,
       from 1989 and a Random House
       edition from 1976...  I read it a
       few years earlier than that in a
       set of "Rolling Stone"s where it             Those belonged to:
       was original serialized in 1971...
                                                    WHATNOT


I also really liked

   _Hell's Angels : a strange and terrible saga_.

The real story: some politician
decided he could score points using the
Angels as boogeyman, and the New York
Times bought his story without question,
and thus the Angels reputation was born.
A strange and terrible saga, indeed.

   Of course, Thompson, being a good journalist, also hung out
   with a bunch of the Hells Angels for awhile, bought himself
   a bike, got himself hospitalized "going over the high side",
   and ended up running away from them in fear of his life...

             (There was a Balantine
             edition, copyright 1967.)


I was less impressed with _Fear and
loathing: on the campaign trail           The "Fear and Loathing"
'72_.  It's a collection of articles      brand: accept no
he wrote at the time, while covering      imitations.
the '72 election.  Mostly it was
kind of dull, with only a few
interesting bits... probably much
like the '72 election itself.
(Warner books, '83)

I haven't read a lot of his recent
stuff... his irregular column in the old
Hearst _Examiner_ was okay, but mostly a
rehash of things said before.  Maybe
P.J. O'Rourke is the new Thompson, I dunno.


        There's a friend of mine,
        Yusuf, who was really into
        HST when last we spoke. He
        showed me some news clips
        from around his drug bust
        of a few years back:

              HST turned to the press
              photographers and said "Let
              me do a Nixon," and gave 'em
              the two handed peace sign,
              arms outstretched.

              HST also said something
              like "Just remember: today's
              pig is tommorow's bacon",
              which impressed Yusuf so
              much he wrote a song around
              it.

                          HAVERING


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