The Hunter S. Thompson Appreciation Thread

[Sir Stewart]

Another great quote SS. And just because you may have been high doesn't make it (the weeping)any less legitimate, does it?

Oh hell no!

[mountain bed]

Here's one from the good old daze when the TV preachers were finally beginning to be seen for what they were/are:

 

"Oral still needed more. God's price, said Richard on TV, was not just 8 million, but '8 million above & beyond our normal operating expenses'.

 

In other words, God was talking net-- not gross-- and he wanted his 8 big ones in a brown bag by the midnight hour on April Fools Day.

 

And he WILL get his money, there is no doubt at all about that. Oral Roberts is a greed-crazed white trash lunatic who should have been hung upside down from a telephone pole on the outskirts of Tulsa 44 years ago before he somehow transmogrified in to the money-sucking animal that he became when he discovered television."

[jahilia]

-From Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72

 

I got this about 10 years ago when I was first discovered and fell in love with HST - but have never read it. Would you recommend this to someone who wasn't even alive at the time and has no particular interest in politics?

[IATTBYB]

I got this about 10 years ago when I was first discovered and fell in love with HST - but have never read it. Would you recommend this to someone who wasn't even alive at the time and has no particular interest in politics?

 

Hell yeah!

[Lammycat]

I got this about 10 years ago when I was first discovered and fell in love with HST - but have never read it. Would you recommend this to someone who wasn't even alive at the time and has no particular interest in politics?

You know, it is a nice historical document. It's through the lenses of HST, of course, which makes it a unique take on not just the lead up to the election/election itself, but as a social commentary. There's a good deal of political talk involved, obviously, along with some dry parts about primary predictions/results, but ultimately it's a worthy read because of what HST brings to it.

 

He wasn't a political analyst and he wasn't an "insider," so he had nothing to lose in telling it like it is (or at least how he perceived it to be). It's loaded with his trademark wit, too, with lots of sidetracks/anecdotes/stories that have little/nothing to do with politics.

 

 

It's a cool piece to read to see how his political take on later events were bred.