SAVAGE JOURNEY

A lively, loping study of Hunter S. Thompson as litterateur.

As the author of books about Carey McWilliams, the Grateful Dead, and Ramparts magazine, Richardson is well situated to lead us on a journey through the life of gonzo journalist Thompson, who was both a maker of and, in a sense, victim of a myth. He became so well known as an “outlaw persona” that it became easy to forget that he was a serious writer, and eventually, he descended into drug and alcohol abuse so severe that he couldn’t maintain professional standards. Still, Richardson advances several themes that he explores at length. The first, particularly useful to students of journalism and literary history, is the work of editors in shaping Thompson’s work. It was an editor who suggested that Thompson write about the Hell’s Angels, another editor who encouraged the quest for the “death of the American Dream” that eventually resulted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. From his now-canonical takedown of the Kentucky Derby (suggested by fellow writer James Salter) on, Thompson’s work was also helped by Ralph Steadman’s visceral illustrations, “an indispensable part of its success.” Perhaps most important, though not exactly news, is the thought that Thompson took new journalism a step further to the point of blending fact and fiction; after all, he called Las Vegas a “nonfiction novel.” Richardson does yeomanlike work in untangling the real from the fictional, sometimes to angels-on-pinheads levels, as when he reduces the pharmacopeia in the trunk of Thompson’s Vegas-bound convertible to “only marijuana, Dexedrine, and Benzedrine.” The narrative sometimes wobbles, introducing and dropping threads only to pick them up later. Still, Richardson makes numerous valuable points, including the argument that, given the steady decline of journalism in the internet era, “mainstream media outlets have faced much more critical problems than the effects of New Journalism, and American letters certainly would be poorer without its contributions.”

Of secondary importance in the literature of Thompson-iana, but a good choice for devotees.