Hunter S. Thompson was born in Louisville Kentucky in 1937, during the course of his colourful life he worked as a journalist in South America, ran for sheriff of Aspen Colorado on a “Freak Power” ticket and lost by a very small margin, participated in Ken Kesey’s first “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests” and is attributed with pioneering “Gonzo” journalism. Many of his books are Penguin or Harper Perennial modern classics including “Hells Angels: A strange and terrible saga”, cult classic “Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas” and “Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail ’72”. He took his own life in 2005 at the age of 68.
In 1972 Hunter S. Thompson travelled across the U.S.A covering the democratic primaries and ultimately the presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon and George McGovern. The man described by Guardian as “The first rock-star writer” gives us a savagely honest account of the campaign, laying bare all the shameful, treacherous realities of American politics. But the mood is not always so serious, Thompson’s trademark rants are a recurring mood lightener as are the very crude drawings of British sketch artist Ralph Steadman who has illustrated a lot of Thompson’s work including “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas“.
The overall theme of the book is corruption in politics with an underlying theme of the death of the American dream. The latter is the same as that of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas“. In 1966 Thompson, the first journalist ever to compare Richard Nixon to Adolf Hitler, was commissioned by publishers Random House to write a book on the death of the “American Dream”, after a couple of years of fruitlessly trying to write the book, things were looking dim. In 1971 Thompson travelled with his attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta, a Mexican-American “Brown Power” Lawyer referred to in the book as “a 300lb Samoan” to cover the “Mint 400“ dirt bike race and ultimately a narcotics convention attended by police from all over America for Rolling Stone magazine. They armed themselves with a suitcase full of drugs, among the collection was “Acid”, Mescaline, Ether and Adrenachrome. What came of the trip was not two articles but the book Random House had commissioned from him on the death of the “American Dream” an experiment in a form of journalism he coined “Gonzo”. It was originally published in Rolling Stone under the psuedonym Raoul Duke in two parts on November 11th and 25th 1971. What first earned Thompson notoriety was “Hells Angels: A strange and terrible saga”. He wrote “Hells Angels” after a year of hanging around L.A with the notorious motorcycle gang. Thompson maintained that these men were the last remnants of the old west, which is what beat author Jack Kerouac said of the box-car “hobo’s” in his 1957 cult classic “On the road” The overall theme of the book is corruption in politics with an underlying theme of the death of the American dream. The latter is the same as that of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas“. In 1966 Thompson, the first journalist ever to compare Richard Nixon to Adolf Hitler, was commissioned by publishers Random House to write a book on the death of the “American Dream”, after a couple of years of fruitlessly trying to write the book, things were looking dim. In 1971 Thompson travelled with his attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta, a Mexican-American “Brown Power” Lawyer referred to in the book as “a 300lb Samoan” to cover the “Mint 400“ dirt bike race and ultimately a narcotics convention attended by police from all over America for Rolling Stone magazine. They armed themselves with a suitcase full of drugs, among the collection was “Acid”, Mescaline, Ether and Adrenachrome. What came of the trip was not two articles but the book Random House had commissioned from him on the death of the “American Dream” an experiment in a form of journalism he coined “Gonzo”. It was originally published in Rolling Stone under the psuedonym Raoul Duke in two parts on November 11th and 25th 1971. What first earned Thompson notoriety was “Hells Angels: A strange and terrible saga”. He wrote “Hells Angels” after a year of hanging around L.A with the notorious motorcycle gang. Thompson maintained that these men were the last remnants of the old west, which is what beat author Jack Kerouac said of the box-car “hobo’s” in his 1957 cult classic “On the road”. In this time he went on “runs” with them, witnessed orgies and “stompings” and even received one himself by gang members for objecting to an “Angel” beating his wife and dog. The prose in all three of these books is more or less the same, savagely honest as well as very creative and amusing. The theme of all three can tie in together basically as the death of an old way of life looked at in a mournful and fearful way hence the catchphrase “Fear and Loathing”. Thompson illustrates this in many ways throughout the book. Some of the most prominent examples of this corruption are the Watergate scandal, drug abuse of democratic nominees, the Anyone But McGovern movement and Nixon selling out his own party. Also he discusses the fact that Nixon’s election in the 1968 effectively ended the sixties and also the “American Dream”.
The book begins with an authors note on how it was lashed together in a 55 hour sleepless, foodless, high-speed editing frenzy. This is “Gonzo” journalism, the style of writing Thompson is accredited with starting. After this he discusses the biggest democratic nominees George McGovern, George Wallace, Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson, John Lindsay and Shirley Chisholm as well as the importance of the “youth vote“ and George McGovern’s talk of “new politics“. Each chapter covers a month and each month there is a primary. Thompson also reveals the harsh and stressful realities of a presidential campaign and the need for some candidates to turn to speed and ibogaine to keep up their hectic schedule. The most important months of the book are March, April, June, July and December. In march democratic frontrunner Ed Muskie’s campaign begins to fall apart culminating in a drunken horror show as a vagrant Peter Sheridan armed with Thompson’s press credentials runs amok on the Muskie “Sunshine Special” campaign train, then claws at his ankles and screams at him for gin as he tries to give a speech in Florida. April features McGovern’s stunning upset in Wisconsin and his building of momentum while Muskie’s overcrowded bandwagon starts to go off the rails. In June some “Heavy Pol’s” take over the McGovern campaign, Humphrey(who Thompson describes as a treacherous, brain-damaged old vulture) threatens to give his state to Nixon if McGovern wins, Nixon comes from behind in the GOP race and the first signs of the “Anyone But McGovern” movement. In July McGovern “stomps” the A.B.M movement and wins the democratic nomination. December is in Thompson’s own words “A crude autopsy and quarrelsome analysis on why McGovern got stomped”. The epitaph is a great ending to the book featuring an analysis of how political journalism cripples the ability to go back to sports writing etc and some more amusing stories, like him introducing himself to Ed Muskie as Peter Sheridan saying “We met on the sunshine special in Florida…I was out of my head”.
Although Thompson may have been biased in the favour of George McGovern in the presidential race, he remains objective in his analysis of the campaign as a whole and the reasons for McGovern’s landslide defeat. The New York Times called “Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail ‘72” “The best campaign book ever published” and George McGovern called it “The most valuable book on the campaign”. In my opinion this book is excellent, it gives you all the important facts and information you need to understand the complexities of the American presidential campaign. Not only does it give you all the facts, it does so in an entertaining and amusing way as opposed to a lot of political journalism which reads like a computer manual. There are also many insightful observations throughout. Like the comparison of the last days of the democratic race when the “old bulls” like George Meany were desperately trying to save their party, to that of the Roman empire, saying that everywhere you looked there was a prominent politician publicly “degrading themselves”. Based on the facts of this book and events that happened afterwards(Watergate etc.), I agree with the central theme of this book, that politics is full of lies and treachery. Especially in America were the corruption seems more sinister than the misappropriation of funds by our Irish politicians which seem almost trivial when compared to perverting the course of justice and burglary. On a scale of one to ten I would give this a ten, which I do not feel is too generous due to the fact that all the information was there and it was entertaining, amusing, understandable and honest which is rare in politics.
Raoulduke 1989 