Re:How Hunter S. Thompson Became a Legend
by NoGravitas on Friday June 09, 2017 @01:28PM
(#14522866)
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 will also make you swear he had a time machine. I guess the scale at which things change is longer than we think it is.
Yeah, absolutely. I went through a period last year where I read every HST book in one continuous binge. One of the great pleasures I had was driving SF to SLC via nevada route 50 and listening to the '72 on audiobook. Something about that really helped it sink in.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it surely rhymes.
Excited to see your comments on Hell's Angels. Taking a trip tomorrow and been planning on reading that on the train journey.
Hell's Angels is a landmark in investigative writing -- it's one of my favourites as well. It's sobering and eye-opening. The only other groups with knowledge of their workings that he acquired are in the IC, or the police (at least at the time).
I lent my copy to a friend a few years ago and never saw it back. That reminds me...
>There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda.… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.…
That sounds like rampant hedonism and malignant narcissism to me.
That passage remains one of the most meaningful things I've read in my life.
However, his defining work in my opinion is Hell's Angels. It is prescient in so many ways. Among the most interesting is how early he is able to see, inside the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, the rise of so many later developments in US politics. I will not ruin the surprise, but some of the passages would make you swear that the man had a time machine. I've read it 3 times now.