Home of the Hunter

[rayge]

Found this article about Hunter S Thompson in the Grauniad today and it brought on a tumbling of memories. Rolling Stone first appeared in the UK in the late Sixties, when I was an (entirely drug-free) undergraduate,  and very sensitive to the times in the way that only a 19 year-old is. I was a confirmed reader from the first issue I saw, on import somewhere in London I expect. The info and coverage on the US, well, West Coast music scene was staggering: that's what hooked me in at first, that and reading reviews of albums that were yet to appear in the UK, but I stayed for the long-form music essays and interviews, the political/countercultural stuff (my postgraduate thesis subject had to do with black American writing), and the quality of the writing. And of course Hunter was a big part of that. I'd read his book about the Hell's Angels, which is a stunner, so I jumped on anything and everything I saw from him in Rolling Stone, and carried on buying the mag until the late ’70s or so, when our tastes in music diverged. Most of them got junked in various house moves, but I still have a few somewhere...

I stayed a Hunter fan through several books, too, well into the ’90s, and only really dropped him when I more or less dropped reading for pleasure in general, at the start of the long goodbye.

So, stoned ramble, but anyone got anything to say about Hunter, Rolling Stone, or the advisability of a septuagenarian getting around a decent pipe of hashish immediately after lunch, feel free.

[sloopjohnc]

Big influence on me. I must've read his Hells Angels book when I was 16 or so and read his other works after that.

I'm a bit more precocious than our man, Ray. 

I have a professional journalist friend who's a big fan too. While he's not completely derivative of Thompson, you can tell his writing influenced my friend's work. When you work at big metro papers, you have to play it a lot more straight, but you could tell by a line or two that it came from Thompson and not one of the other new journalists.

As I entered college and considered journalism as a career, I bought this collection, which really influenced me. It's a great primer or overview on new journalism from that era.

[sloopjohnc]

No other comments?

Philistines.

[tory]

I'll be honest and say that, despite admiring his originality and his style, his writing and what he stood for never really appealed to me. I've read his major works and enjoyed them for what they were, yet, like Bukowski, there's something innately cunty about him as a person that puts me off.

[Deleted]

Jan 11, 2022 15:01:59 GMT sloopjohnc said:

Big influence on me. I must've read his Hells Angels book when I was 16 or so and read his other works after that.

I'm a bit more precocious than our man, Ray. 

I have a professional journalist friend who's a big fan too. While he's not completely derivative of Thompson, you can tell his writing influenced my friend's work. When you work at big metro papers, you have to play it a lot more straight, but you could tell by a line or two that it came from Thompson and not one of the other new journalists.

As I entered college and considered journalism as a career, I bought this collection, which really influenced me. It's a great primer or overview on new journalism from that era.

I forgot I had read that Hells Angel book. 

It's a cracking read. I think I ended up reading Sonny Bargers book after that.

[oleandermedian]

I read a lot of his stuff as a callow youth. The Great Shark Hunt and Hells Angels are my favourites. I never warmed to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I think the last thing I read by him was Songs of the Doomed, which had a definite more-of-the-same feel about it. One mint julep too many! You have to wonder what he’d make of the current political situation in the US. When the going gets weird…

[Deleted]

He was someone I read a lot when I was younger.
The main thing I love about him was his very original use of language, that edge of hysteria hyperbolic style he has. I always found it very funny. I remember him describing a meeting with Clinton where he describes Clinton attacking this bowl of fries like a ravenous wild animal while his assistants just stood around in shock. Stuff like that cracks me up.
I don't view him as particularly insightful or anything like that, but he was a great prose stylist who could be very funny.

[cousinlou]

Jan 13, 2022 10:58:36 GMT @madcyril1 said:

He was someone I read a lot when I was younger.
The main thing I love about him was his very original use of language, that edge of hysteria hyperbolic style he has. I always found it very funny. I remember him describing a meeting with Clinton where he describes Clinton attacking this bowl of fries like a ravenous wild animal while his assistants just stood around in shock. Stuff like that cracks me up.
I don't view him as particularly insightful or anything like that, but he was a great prose stylist who could be very funny.

Same with me. I read some of his books years ago, 'Better than Sex', 'Hells Angels', 'The proud Highway', and 'Fear and loathing'.
As you say, there are bits and pieces that make the books worthwhile but not enough to make me re-read them again.

[Deleted]

Well I probably do rate him higher than that and 'Fear and Loathing..' is an absolute classic.

I do feel he got too stuck in the American politics niche, some would say rut, but that's what Rolling Stone wanted and they were paying the bills.

[sloopjohnc]

Jan 13, 2022 7:50:03 GMT tory said:

I'll be honest and say that, despite admiring his originality and his style, his writing and what he stood for never really appealed to me. I've read his major works and enjoyed them for what they were, yet, like Bukowski, there's something innately cunty about him as a person that puts me off.

There's no doubt, he was a curmudgeon redlining at dick.

I have never gotten past the first chapter of Confederacy of Dunces because of the protagonist's dickishness. For some reason, I give Thompson a pass when I probably shouldn't.