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Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist: The Gonzo Letters, Vol. II, 1968-1976
by Hunter S. Thompson

You don't have to be an ether-sniffing fiend to appreciate Fear and Loathing in America. I'm not saying it wouldn't help, but...it would serve as an unnecessary component of the literary experience, and should only be added at the reader's discretion.

Fear and Loathing in America

This collection of Thompson's correspondence covers the crucial years of the infamous journalist's career: from the bad craziness of 1968, including Thompson's political awakening at the Democratic convention in Chicago that year, to the election year of 1976, when Thompson's prophetic vision of the possibilities of Jimmy Carter's campaign--recognized two years before--finally came to fruition.

For longtime Thompson readers, there are some surprises, but few major revelations. It doesn't come as a shock, considering the personality in question, to learn that some of the Doctor's responses to random fan mail could be as entertaining to read as his correspondence with political and literary heavyweights. More surprising, perhaps, are the troubles Thompson had with his writing, both in trying to follow up his first Hells Angels success--the abortive "American Dream" nonfiction project--and in his attempts to stride beyond his celebrity status in the wake of his greatest success with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Looking back, it's difficult to imagine a writer of Thompson's talent struggling to put words on the page. Yet, again and again, Thompson expresses his frustrations with all the destructive interference that plagued his writing output: his lack of any handle on the American Dream project's greater meaning, the inevitable distractions that went with running for sheriff of Pitkin County back in 1970, and the demands of celebrity in the wake of his outrageous success.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in these pages centers not on Thompson at all, but in the person of Oscar Zeta Acosta, both the legendary "Dr. Gonzo" of Las Vegas fame and the all-too-real Chicano lawyer and activist from Los Angeles. Acosta was a friend and collaborator with Thompson from the late-'60s onward, until disputes over his depiction in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the potential film rights and clearances scuttled their friendship, not long before Acosta's mysterious disappearance in the mid-'70s. Reading their correspondence, particularly Acosta's letters to Thompson, reveals a much deeper portrait of the man than the Doctor's readers ever got from the Gonzo canon. "Strange Rumblings in Atzlan" gave readers a bare portrait of a thoughtful, dedicated man; the Dr. Gonzo character of Las Vegas, in retrospect, really did border on caricature, if not outright libel. It is disquieting to think, from the vantage of the future, that the falling out may very well have been Thompson's fault. Perhaps. It's only a handful of letters, and they are subject to interpretation, to be sure. But clearly, more went on there than met the eye.

Fear and Loathing in America has its downsides. The book is quite long, covering its eight year period in exhaustive detail, and some inevitable repetition. Thompson, in his correspondence, never hesitated to reiterate himself, and his letters to his editor concerning the American Dream project, composed over the course of three plus years, often tread over the same ground. Also, Thompson's narcissism often held sway; any event in his life was sure to find its way into his letters, again and again, in carbon copy detail. For each individual letter recipient, the story undoubtedly held together as a coherent thread; but for anyone reading those letters collected, an inevitable sense of deja vu creeps into the proceedings.

Finally, despite the interesting tidbits revealed in Fear and Loathing in America, these pages also represent something sad for Thompson fans. Except perhaps for his Rolling Stone obituary for Richard Nixon--a work well worthy of the Gonzo canon--Thompson rarely hit the high notes after the period covered in Fear and Loathing in America. Once The Great Shark Hunt reached bookstore shelves back in the late '70s, Thompson's output consisted of sporadic pieces of uneven work, from then until his eventual suicide. The experienced reader knows, as he reads through Fear and Loathing in America, that he is peering back at a height already ascended, glancing over his shoulder at a mountain that will never be climbed all the way to the top again. That knowledge lends the effort a melancholy air, one that colors the entire effort.

Still, if you are a Thompson fan, you always welcome a chance to read his words, especially pieces that you may not have seen before. There's always a passage or two that calls up the magic once again, words that summon something that few writers have ever been able to conjure. Perhaps the next volume of Thompson's letters will reveal greater insights, and possibly provide better material than the published works of later years. In the mean time, we can console ourselves with what we have: the voice of a great writer that, despite death and time, has not yet been silenced. In Thompson's case, that is enough.