“Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72” is a great reporting job and a great nostalgia trip for a Baby Boomer. I got a similar dose of nostalgia from watching a couple of Netflix documentaries, one about Sonny Liston, the other about Muhammed Ali. Ali’s journey was a sensation in my youth. He spoke once at Rutgers. The hall was packed, with people who watched by hanging on the windows, from outside.
Without having read much HST, I have to admit I tried to write like him on my blog and on Twitter. I’d say the style in both cases owes a lot to William S. Burroughs. A difference is that HST had current events to work from, while for WSB it was pure imagination.
A few closing observations on HST:
HST’s fears about another Nixon term in office verge on the apocalyptic. It was very much what we radical hippies were saying. Something something the McCarren Act. Everybody was going to be thrown into concentration camps. HST was not too fond of hippies, even though he was stealing all his material from us.
In retrospect, Nixon’s remaining years in office were a paradise compared to the prospects for another Trump term, even knowing what we know about Watergate. The real repression had already been layed down — on the Black Panther Party. Assassination by cop, ridiculous prison terms for possessing one joint, that sort of thing.
On page 468, HST muses about running for senate in Colorado, possibly against Gary Hart:
[Interviewer]: What would your platform be?
[Thompson]: I haven’t thought about it.
I submit this proves HST, notwithstanding his several literary gifts, fundamentally had nothing to say.
On to “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”