Worship and Cowardice
on the Biographical Trail:
A Critical Journey into Paul
Perry’s Tale of
Hunter S. Thompson 

I read Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream when I was twenty-one. It was about the right time for it, I think.  I was immediately hooked on Thompson’s fuck-you style and Guiness World Record chemical intake.  There was a broad-brushed anger in my younger self that found several types of expression in Thompson’s work.  As I have moved on in life, stopped drinking, and come to peace with many of my own demons, I have still enjoyed reading Thompson.  But instead of continuing on as an anti-society hero to me, his image has slowly become tinted various shades of asshole.  I mean, that’s what I was ten years ago, I just admired him because he was a more polished and professional asshole than I could ever be.  And he got paid to write about everything that repulsed and horrified him through the perspective of that special asshole lens, and for a time… my, he wrote well.  To a young punk first time reader like myself, Thompson’s craftsmanship was awe-inspiring.  It still manages to make my mind twitch and squirm in just the right way when I fall upon the better passages of his writing.  But what became more obvious to me after a while was The Darkness:  What’s left when it’s just him sitting naked in the darkness on his porch in Colorado without the shield of alcohol, pills and coke, without anyone to shock?  Is there any warmth to be found?  Unfortunately, Paul Perry’s Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Hunter S. Thompson didn’t answer these questions for me, although out of the three biographies on Thompson published almost simultaneously in the early nineties, Perry’s probably did the best job with the events and contacts of Thompson’s life, and when I read it four or five years ago, it added to my sense of intrigue about Thompson. Perry didn’t tackle any tough questions in the book, presumably to remain seemingly unbiased, but he provided enough background on Thompson for those of us who care to strap on the waders to create a big picture out of the details.

            Hunter Stockton Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1939 to middle class parents.  The first of three children, he was obsessed with sports, and started off several projects as a kid, such as launching his own athletics club with friends.  Most of these projects had to do with creating kid-scale replicas of organizations that existed in Louisville’s upper class.  When Thompson was 15, his father died of a heart attack, and friends from high school said that Hunter was completely wild after that.  Immediately upon trying alcohol in high school, Thompson was a daily drinker and was arrested frequently for drunk driving.  Just before his father’s death, Thompson was invited to join Athenaeum, a private, upper-class literary club usually restricted to wealthy young men. Only because Thompson was immensely well read and could write with ease was he allowed into the club. Perry makes one of his only insightful comments in the biography by pointing out that Thompson was always on the outside looking in when it came to class, thus perhaps much of his rage might have come from social stratification issues.

          During his high school career, Thompson wrote an essay for Athenaeum entitled “Security,” which posed the following question as its thesis: “Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”  This time in Thompson’s life (or this time in Perry’s book about Thompson’s life) is punctuated with tales of crazed and drunken debauchery beyond the experience of the average teen.  Thompson seems to have excelled in shock-street-theater designed to get the maximum rise out of witnesses.

Just weeks before graduation, Thompson and two friends were arrested for crimes that his friends say they committed and Thompson just witnessed.   His two wealthier friends got off with no sentences and left for Ivy League schools, while Hunter got sixty days in jail, military service when he got out, graduation from high school denied, and membership in The Athenaeum revoked.  According to friends at the time, Thompson had lost all regard for anyone after this public lynching of his societal standing.

After his short incarceration, Thompson quickly joined the Air Force as directed by the Judge.  In all, he spent about two years in the military, where it became clear that he and authority did not mix.  He was assigned to electronics school after superiors learned that he was afraid of electricity.  He soon took an opportunity to work for the base newspaper and thus started his journalism career.  Writing for the sports page, he was permitted to leave the base to cover events and enjoyed relative freedom for an enlisted man, especially one who was on The Command’s shit list.  Eventually, though, he got himself kicked out.  Thompson was given an honorable discharge after writing an article that exposed the scandal of another airman being given a fake medical discharge so that he could play football.

After the Air Force, Thompson decided that he wanted to continue the life of a journalist.  The most prominent thing that comes out of Perry’s tale at this point is that Thompson couldn’t hold down a job if his life depended on it.  He drifted; he lived in Greenwich Village and worked briefly at Time as a copyboy; he lived in Puerto Rico and reported for sports pages; he and his future wife, Sandy, crewed a boat to the Bahamas, but Thompson and the Captain weren’t speaking to each other after the first two days; he and Sandy moved west to Big Sur, where he mostly worked on one of two never-published novels he had started in New York.  During this time, his work was rejected more often than published.  Probably as a direct response to his deep idolization of Ernest Hemingway, Thompson convinced editors at the National Observer to let him spend a year in South America dispatching articles as subjects came his way.  One of these pieces, “Why Anti-Gringo Winds Often Blow South of the Border,” is said by Observer editors to be “among the best ever to appear in the paper” (Perry 73).  Thompson wrote for the National Observer from 1962 to ’64, but eventually left them, characteristically, on bad terms. 

It wasn’t until 1965 with the publication of an article about the Hell’s Angels that Thompson’s career took off.  The piece was the first that viewed the outlaw gang from an objective standpoint.  He was offered a book contract based on the article and in 1967 after he spent a year with the California Biker Scene, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga was published to generally good reviews. Requests for articles came from everywhere after Hell’s Angels, although some of Thompson’s work was still rejected because of his wild style.  He wrote often for Rolling Stone and became its greatest voice in the early seventies.  In 1970 the word “gonzo” was first used to describe Thompson’s work in reference to a wild article on the Kentucky Derby.

On another book contract in 1971, Thompson published Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, probably his best work and definitely the closest he ever got to writing a solid novel.  And soon after came the second and probably only other definitive work, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.  Although it is a book filled with incredible political insight, Thompson went into writing it knowing nothing about politics.  He had to ask around to get any decent connections.

          Since 1973 Thompson’s writing quality and his career have declined but not entirely puffed out.  He had enough political clout to lead some to claim that Carter may not have been elected without Thompson’s endorsement in Rolling Stone.  Four anthologies of articles and excerpts have been published, along with two volumes of letters, and one rather failed book called The Curse of Lono, a poor attempt to revive Fear and Loathing in the South Seas.  He was arrested and acquitted in 1990 on sexual assault, drug possession, and explosives charges. Thompson’s last new writing in book form was in 1994.

Perry has punctuated his biography with shock-value anecdotes of Thompson’s escapades in every phase of life.  Hunter Thompson’s activities since childhood paint a picture of an alcoholic, violent, hateful, screamingly creative writer who by his own admission hates writing, and could never fit into The System, and so told The System to go take a flying leap at itself, and to do it fast. And through his wrathful escape, he brought us Gonzo Journalism, perhaps his only good deed.  So, with that picture fresh in mind, yes, biographical considerations are important in discussing the work of this particular animal of a writer.  Without Thompson’s obvious sense of being shown the exit door of upper class mechanisms, and his father’s early death, we may not have seen the anger, craziness, and disregard for convention that has highlighted his writing.  Nor would we see the subject matter; searching for the death of the American Dream by taking a 1960s-style heavy drug binge into the heart of  a cop convention on dangerous drugs in Las Vegas; or while covering an America’s Cup race attempting to write “Fuck the Pope” on the side of one of the boats.  Perry made a point of relating that in the early sixties, Thompson became obsessed with the character Sebastian Dangerfield in J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man.  Dangerfield is a dangerous, drunken, wife-beating young man who expects everyone to take care of him.  This character was a hero to Thompson.  His friends say in Perry’s book that Thompson just wanted to beat the system.  Thompson’s writing certainly reflects a man living outside the boundaries.  And what Thompson’s works of the typewriter give to me today is enriched by Perry’s chronology of the origins of Thompson’s Source Attitudes.

          Beyond granting me these gains, however, I don’t think Perry has accomplished much with his biography, to which the review literature is limited to Sunday-Times-type of book reviews.  I think literary scholars have tired of the sensational in Thompson, and of Gonzo in general, and, I suspect, they didn’t think much of Perry’s work on this biography either.  Perhaps Thompson’s feelings toward the review crowd have something to do with it.  It is well worth quoting his thoughts on how others view his work: “…that gang of senile hags who run the Columbia Journalism Review, who have gone to considerable lengths in every issue during the past year or so to stress, very heavily, that nothing I say should be taken seriously. ‘Those who can, do.  Those who can’t, teach.’ George Bernard Shaw said that, for good or ill, and I only mention it here because I’m getting goddamn tired of being screeched at by waterheads” (Thompson The Great Shark Hunt 332-3).

          However, there is intelligent discussion in what reviews I could find.  None of the three biographies (the other two were by E. Jean Carroll, and Peter O. Whitmer) were very well received in the reviews, but again, Perry’s is probably the best researched of the books.  Reviews gave praise, though, to Perry’s use of Ralph Steadman among his sources.  Steadman is a British cartoonist who has worked with Thompson on several projects, and it seems that Thompson has done some of his best writing in short projects where Steadman was present during research.  The pair feed each other’s creative needs when working together.

          The negative criticism of the biography is summed up well in a Washington Post review:  “That Whitmer, Perry and Carroll generally suck up to their man instead of pinning him to the board like a chloroformed frog and dissecting him is not more a surprise than the anemia of their prose in comparison with their subject’s” (Dolan).   This reflects my sentiment as well.  Not that I can write any better, but Perry inadvertently raises questions about Thompson’s self image and driving background without even attempting to clarify or categorize any of it.  With all of the biographical testimony he went through from friends on the other side of burned bridges, or from Thompson’s wife Sandy (who was beaten so routinely that she finally left him in 1979), one would think that someone had speculated to Perry about how Hunter really saw himself and his world.  Someone must have had an informed opinion about Thompson’s, say, constant drunkenness or total contempt for most laws, for example.  No, apparently Perry was given only tabloid-sensational accounts of Amazing Shit, because with the exception of detailed chronology of Thompson’s life, the biography doesn’t get too deep. 

          The sensational stuff is all part of Thompson’s package, of course, and I think it raises some important questions.  Does Thompson drink and drug and act so crazed because he is afraid and wants to escape from himself and the pain writing causes him?  Would he be a better writer if he were sober and tackling his fears head on?  Or is he a better writer because he is so messed up, and only in that state can his inhibitions be suppressed enough to let the great writing out?  I can’t pretend to say yes authoritatively to any of these questions, but I do think it likely that any one of them may be true for Thompson.  My guess is that Thompson’s writing is largely shaped by his alcoholism.  He wouldn’t be the first American Writer to fall into this niche.  Through his writing, Thompson talks to us like a drunk to his tired, abused family; he often candidly interjects his own fears, thoughts, and worries into his writing when they are completely out of the context of the story, but usually after describing something horrific or hateful that he has done.  Thompson does this almost apologetically, as if he is letting us know something about his inner faults in order to ease our minds.  But then he just commits the same ugly buffoonery again, making mockery of his own attempted sincerity.  This may be why his popularity as a writer has declined; at first his eloquent ravings had us all sold on his brilliance, but after a while he’s spent the dog food money and come home late one too many times.  We’ve heard it before, Hunter, and we don’t think you’re telling the truth this time.

          I don’t know if I’ve really stuck my neck out, or said anything of import or even truth with the preceding conjecture, but my point is that I know Thompson only from a reader’s standpoint, and at least I’m taking a stab at figuring him out.  My disappointments in Perry’s biography were that he didn’t offer enough telling speculations of his own and that his own fan-club image of Thompson got in the way of that investigation.  I don’t know anything about Perry himself besides what this biography reveals, which includes the story that he once worked as an editor for Running Magazine on an article Thompson wrote.  Perry was personally responsible for pushing Thompson through the writing to meet the deadline, a feat few editors have accomplished without great frustration.  This success implies that Perry had done his homework on Thompson prior to their working together, and Perry seems proud of the event.  This pride is one aspect of the biography that suggests bias in Perry.  It’s not that there is necessarily a biased view of Thompson’s writing, but there is a preference in Perry to deify Thompson as a person.  You see, Hunter Thompson is not necessarily an exciting person. He is a tired, frightened and drunken person with gifts for both spontaneity and solid writing.  The way he acts is exciting.  The things he writes about are exciting.  Perry is reinforcing Thompson’s own mask of super-dramatized sensationalism by trying to portray only that part of Thompson’s life.  He has written a biography of the legend and not the man.   The biography’s introduction, by Perry, says, “The more pictures, the more images, the more substances, the more mischief [Thompson] lets out, the more he makes a fool of any of us who think we’re on to him” (xiv).  How convenient that Thompson is so mysterious and untouchable.  Before we even read the story, Perry lets us know that no one can say anything definitive about Thompson.  I guess this means Perry couldn’t say anything significant either.

          Of course, telling the biographical story “as it is”—from the testimony only, is okay, yes?  Well, even if the straight story is what he was shooting for, Perry still let his drool for Thompson drip through.  And Thompson is one journalist who could never and would never tell an unbiased tale.  He couldn’t describe anyone or anything without viciously, unforgivingly judging and estimating them at every chance.  At its best and most brilliant, that is part of what Gonzo Journalism was all about.  I just can’t see why Perry as The Biographer wouldn’t have the courage to use the same toolbox to tell us the story of Hunter S. Thompson.

References

Baker, Phil.  “Smashed Column.”  Times Literary Supplement  25
         June 1993: 27

Dolan, Michael.  “Bedtime for Gonzo.” Washington Post Bookworld
         21 March 1993

Gomer, Peter.  “Hunter S. Thompson: Eaten Alive by an Image.”
         Chicago Tribune Books  31 January 1993.

Perry, Paul.  Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of
         Hunter S.Thompson . New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press,
         1992.

Schulian, John.   “Bedtime for Gonzo.”  Los Angeles Times Book 
         Review 11 April 1993:  1, 12.

Thompson, Hunter S.  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage
         Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.  New York:
         Random House, 1989 (1971).

---,     Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail ’72  San
         Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1973.

---,     The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From a Strange Time.
         New York:  Warner, 1982 (1979).