Der Fluch des Lono

by Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson erhält den Auftrag, über den Honolulu-Marathon zu berichten: für ihn in erster Linie ein bezahlter Urlaub. Doch wie immer bei Thompson entwickelt sich die Reise zu einem durchgeknallten Trip, in den neben dem Marathon-Wahnsinn auch Surfer, Orkane, ein Riesen-Marlin und natürlich der hawaiianische Gott Lono irgendwie verwickelt sind. Der König des Gonzo-Journalismus beweist einmal mehr seine Meisterschaft: ein halluzinogenes Vergnügen.

Genres: Fiction, Travel, Journalism, Humor, Art, Novels, Business

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1983

About the author

Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author, widely regarded as a pioneer of New Journalism alongside Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe. He gained prominence with Hell's Angels, living among the motorcycle club to provide a first-hand account of their lives, and later wrote the unconventional article "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved," which established his signature Gonzo journalism style, in which the writer becomes central to the narrative. He is best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, serialized in Rolling Stone, exploring the failure of the 1960s counterculture, adapted for film in 1980 and 1998. Thompson ran unsuccessfully for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, on the Freak Power ticket and became known for his intense disdain for Richard Nixon, covering George McGovern's 1972 campaign for Rolling Stone in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. His output declined in the mid-1970s due to fame and substance abuse, though he continued writing sporadically for outlets including Rolling Stone, Playboy, Esquire, and ESPN.com, with much of his work collected in The Gonzo Papers. Thompson was known for lifelong alcohol and drug use, love of firearms, and contempt for authority, often noting that such vices "worked for him." He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Virginia Davison Ray, a librarian, and Jack Robert Thompson, an insurance adjuster, and grew up in the Cherokee Triangle neighborhood. After his father’s death, his mother raised him and his two brothers. An athletic youth, he co-founded the Hawks Athletic Club, attended several schools including Louisville Male High School, and became a member of the Athenaeum Literary Association, contributing to its yearbook until expelled for criminal activity. He enlisted in the Air Force, studying electronics and becoming sports editor of the Command Courier, then worked briefly for Time and local newspapers before moving to Puerto Rico to write for El Sportivo and the San Juan Star. He traveled to South America for the National Observer, then lived in Big Sur, where he worked as a caretaker and security guard and published his first magazine feature and short story. Thompson married Sandra Dawn Conklin, with whom he had a son, Juan, and continued writing, experimenting with dextroamphetamine and later cocaine. His reporting on the Hell's Angels and coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention shaped his political outlook. After Hell's Angels, he published for national magazines and critiqued the hippie movement, then moved to Woody Creek, Colorado, establishing his home Owl Farm. In 1970, he pioneered Gonzo journalism with his Kentucky Derby article, later collaborating with illustrator Ralph Steadman, and began writing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, combining fiction and reportage. His coverage of the 1972 presidential campaign broke traditional boundaries of political reporting. Thompson struggled with fame and substance abuse, missing assignments such as the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974, and retreated to Owl Farm, continuing to write sporadically. He produced The Gonzo Papers, contributed to The San Francisco Examiner, and published memoir Kingdom of Fear in 2003. He married Anita Bejmuk in 2003, and in 2005 took his own life at Owl Farm. Thompson’s Gonzo style blurred fiction and nonfiction, placing himself at the center of his narratives, often creating a mythic persona, Raoul Duke. His political beliefs included support for drug legalization, firearm rights, civil liberties, and skepticism of official narratives, and he engaged in advocacy through the Fourth Amendment Foundation and NORML. Posthumously, scholarships in his name support journalism students and veterans. Thompson remains a cult figure, celebrated for his audacious, immersive writing, fearless social critique, and enduring influence o

Reviews

[J.L. Sutton · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.”



I was intrigued by the claim that Hunter Thompson's The Curse of Lono was to Hawaii what Fear and Loathing was to Las Vegas. Though Thompson predictably interjects himself into the story he is reportedly covering, the Hawaii Marathon, I didn't feel as immersed in his crazed adventures as I had with Fear and Loathing. I had some interest in how Thompson covered big game fishing and I liked how he used journal entries from Captain Cook's voyage to establish context, but The Curse of Lono still fell short to me.

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I accepted my assignment with some wild trepidation. It’d been a while since I spent time with Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and I knew the crazy bastard would give me the shakes if I let off the throttle for half a second.

Before I uploaded the book, his 1983 visit to Hawaii and the dark underbelly of Americana, I fired up the El Camino and went for provisions, I wouldn’t be left stranded high and dry like a potbellied iguana the way I had in Costa Rica; I’d be ready this time. I surveyed my haul: three cases of Kona Beer, two gallons of rum, a couple pints of gin, a handle of Kentucky bourbon, a carton of American Spirit cigarettes and a bag of Lays potato chips. I was on a shoestring budget, but this might just get me through to screaming end.

Thompson was in rare form, describing a quick survey of the Hawaii marathon that ended up with weeks on the Kona shore, holed up like a gang of demented ferrets in a hot dog factory. The good doctor mixed in his cacophony of gonzo literature with snippets of history of the island and especially of Captain James Cook and his fatal last voyage and his attempted kidnapping of a Hawaiian king. It was a blood curdling song of despair, nervousness and confusion – but worth the shamble through the back alleys of Honolulu to a high resting place atop a summit of clear perspective.

So long again, Thompson, you frenzied maniac, we’ll meet again.

[Christopherseelie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most elaborate, hilarious, and engrossing "big fish" tale ever committed to print. This is one of Hunter Thompson's greatest achievements, and it doesn't hurt that the packaging is lavish. A huge coffeetable book with quality prints, facsimiles of the Good Doctor's relevant letters, and interspersed excerpts from other books that fill in the Hawaiian history relevant to the story. What is so fascinating about this last feature is that it reveals what other HST books have left out: the studious preparation behind the wild stories.
Roughly ten years after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the action opens with the line "We were about forty minutes out of San Fransisco when the crew finally decided to take action on the problem in Lavatory 1B." Remarkably similar to the iconic opening "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold". And so begins a manifold tale of America in the '80s-a tale of a Christmas vacation gone horribly, horribly wrong-a tale of high stakes sports fishing-and the tale of a man finding his inner godliness on the westernmost edge of America.
Put that way, The Curse of Lono might be the most ambitious book in the Thompson oeuvre. Either way, I personally think it is his funniest.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can just picture him now - sun visor on, orange tinted sunglasses, cigarette holder/Dunhill cigarette, cocktail in hand, tripping out on mescaline and mushrooms whilst hula dancing with reptile beings. Well, I had to imagine these things because overall I found this a rather disappointing and flat read. There are flashes of brilliance on a few occasions, but it's nowhere near the levels of my fave, The Rum Diary, nor as rollickingly crazed as Fear & Loathing to become as memorable. Thompson's antics during his coverage of the Honolulu Marathon probably being the book's highlight, but other than that after, he really isn't up to much, and nothing of any real interest occurs, which was a pity.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was such an amazing and twisted read. I couldn't put the book down. I even cuddled with it.

[Mike Marsbergen · Rating 5 out of 5]

My current favourite book of all time, from my current favourite writer of all time.

I never thought I'd ever get a chance to read this badboy, or at least not until I hit the age of forty. But my parents were kind enough to splurge on it for my birthday back on July 11th, 2013.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that this thing is bloody ginormous. My version is a coffee-table book, meaning it could technically be used as a weapon or to club off intruders.

The pictures are beautiful, and the size of the book really allows them to come to life.

The story itself is a wonderfully wacky Thompson tale which blends comedy and weirdness with darker stuff (the dogs, man!) and even some Hawaiian history. A genre-blender of the highest order.

Highly recommended to anyone and everyone. I was laughing until tears came out of my eyes, and then two lines later I'd be questioning my own sanity.

If only Hunter S. Thompson had written more...

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One afternoon this week as I rode my bicycle home from the library I passed under the branches of an array of stout old trees along the roadway. But I had my suspicions about them, and this, more or less verbatim, was what I was thinking:
"They look safe enough, but you read about their dastardly ways once in awhile, dropping a trunk onto some hapless unsuspecting bastard, pile-driving him into oblivion. You'd think I was safe, being a tree-hugger, but they don't care. I'm human."

Now, would I have thought about that, in this way, unless I had read Hunter S. Thompson? I don't think so.

The funny thing is, once you've read some Hunter, his mode of thinking becomes yours, or maybe that only happens with people who share some kindred spirit with him, with his skewed outlook; I was already inclined toward that bent. I'm also a native of Louisville, like Thompson, and that's an exclusive club of shared weirdness.

My imitation is easily explained, too, because there is a certain formula to Thompson, and it attracts all manner of bad imitators. The fact that it can be replicated does not detract from its originality, and its particular qualities -- which can only be had from lived observation -- means his prose style can never be duplicated without someone calling the faker out.

The Curse of Lono has long been considered a bastard stepchild in Thompson's oeuvre. For some reason, it was only given a small print run in 1983 after which its rarity ensured its cult status and high prices for used copies. Upon Thompson's death in 2005, it was reissued in a deluxe edition sporting even more of collaborator Ralph Steadman's beautifully twisted paintings and illustrations. That edition, too, became a collectible.

Why the book has been treated as a specialty item is a mystery to me, because, at least in terms of laughs per square column inch, it possibly beats even Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

As I started reading it, I was inclined to think of it as a junior league retread of ...Vegas, down to its conceit of having a reporter, Thompson, covering a minor local sporting event (a marathon in Honolulu), then losing interest in it quickly and setting off on a maddening, aimless, drug-fueled surreal adventure informed of local lore and mythology.

To a certain extent, Thompson does stumble into a well-gouged mine to extract some familiar ore. Luckily, though, he's very good at this and the story, though derivative, has its own grotesque charms as well as the always impish off-kilter humor that I love so much in Thompson's work, and as it proceeded, the book won me over. Even when the incidents to some degree seem like repeated variations on a theme, and the constant drug references threatened to take the wink-and-nudge factor too far, I was constantly impressed by Thompson's piquant observations and brutal cosmic punchlines.

Once again, Hunter faces The Fear in search of The Wisdom, fearlessly and irrationally, or at least his first-person alter-ego protagonist does. In the process, he stares it down -- the locals facing off against the outsider, and vice versa. The result is ironic, comic gold.

The book's "plot," in a nutshell, has Hunter and a drug-dealing acquaintance flying to Hawaii to cover the marathon, meeting there the writer's always reluctant artistic collaborator Steadman and his family. After aceing some beautiful and hilarious observations on the insanity of running, he and his cadre head for the Kona Coast on the big island where things get much stranger. There Thompson becomes determined to snare the ultimate prize, a big Blue Marlin, on a fishing trip journey that matches any harrowing sea adventure. During all of this, a hospital-load of drugs and booze are downed, Steadman becomes deathly ill causing him and his family to split and allowing Thompson to continue to charge insane amounts on his running tab, a fishing companion has his toe crushed by an oxygen tank, a firecracker bomb wreaks unintended havoc, the locals and beach thugs get very surly, the weather turns vicious, Thompson is stung in the eye by a wasp stuck behind his shades, a hibachi grill nearly threatens disaster on the sea-tossed fishing vessel, murderous and litigious real-estate moguls threaten vengeance, a stubborn anchor almost leaves the hapless fishing crew forever adrift, a companion has his armed died blue for the entire book as the result of an airplane toilet bowl mishap, a savage outbreak of red fleas infects the men's mascot, a major drug operation threatens to expose the motley crew, a veterinarian ships out illegal drugs labeled "dog medicine..." and so on.

On top of all this, Thompson is pondering the island legend of Lono, the God who the locals once dubbed Captain Cook before cultural misunderstandings led to his violent death. When the crazed Thompson arrives in port with his proud marlin catch, he harbors a God complex and delusions of grandeur and proclaims himself to be the God Lono returned to them, a move that goes too far, pissing off the islanders. You can say and do almost anything, he is told, but don't mess with their religion. Needless to say, he goes into hiding with the help of a weed-smoking park ranger.

The book's descriptions of sport fishing are great and the attendant tales imaginative. This is possibly the funniest fishing story ever written.

And, trigger warning for the easily offended, the book is sprinkled with Thompson's typical casual racism, which one can deal with in context.

The last chapters in the book take an epistolary form, in letters to Ralph Steadman, and conclude with a breathlessly beautiful sentence of Thompson describing a companion's swim in the sea.

This is not a book the Hawaii Chamber of Commerce could ever endorse. This is not the Hawaii of blue skies, crystal seas and languid green palms. This is the alternate Hawaiian universe, a Dantesque version of a paradise as hell on earth. Leave it to Thompson to find that underbelly.

And nowhere else would you find a friend's alienation described as "kinky brooding" -- an amazing insight into the contradictory impulses of self pity.

I will admit, I read an online "renegade" copy of this, so I was not able to see all of Steadman's crazy and amazing illustrations, but most of those too are posted online to see.

This was a unique experience and I would like to read it again someday.

(Kr@Ky 2016)

2019 update: I did find a Taschen reprint copy for $10 and decided to keep it despite its promising Ebay potential. And yes, I now have all the glorious Steadman illustrations I missed in the first reading of some renegade online PDF.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED THIS STORY!

Hunter beating a mythical sized Swordfish over the head with an "ancient hawaiian war hammer". What more could you ask for???

[Arthur Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Song of Waahia, Renowned Prophetess

O the long knife of the stranger.
Of the stranger from other lands,
Of the stranger with sparkling eyes,
Of the stranger with a white face!
O long knife of Lono, the gift of Lono;
It flashes like fire in the sun;
Its edge is sharper than stone,
Sharper than the hard stone of Hualalai; The spear touches it and breaks,
The strong warrior sees it and dies!
Where is the long knife of the stranger? Where is the sacred gift of Lono?
It came to Wailuku and is lost,
It was seen at Lahaina and cannot be found, He is more than a chief who finds it,
He is a chief of chiefs who possesses it. Maui cannot spoil his fields,
Hawaii cannot break his nets; His canoes are safe from Kauai.
The chiefs of Oahu will not oppose him,
The chiefs of Molokai will bend at his feet.
O long knife of the stranger,
O bright knife of Lono!
Who has seen it? Who has found it?
Has it been hidden away in the earth?
Has the great sea swallowed it?
Does the kilo see it among the stars?
Can the kaula find it in the bowels of the black hog?
Will a voice from the anu answer?
Will the priests of Lono speak?
The kilo is silent, the kaula is dumb.
O long knife of the stranger,
O bright knife of Lono,
It is lost, it is lost, it is lost!

[Arthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the Hunter Thompson book you've never heard of, but really want to read. It's mostly about how crappy Hawaii is. It has the best ending of any of his stuff I've read, hands down.

Getting the book though is another matter. The paperback of it has been out of print since the early 80s. It's only produced now by Taschen, the art book company, as a big 60 dollar coffee table book. And they only started really printing it about a year after the first batch of 1000. The first 1000 Taschen put out were signed by Ralph Steadman, Thompson's artist and partner, and numbered. You can find these first 1000 on used book pages on BN.com or Amazon for around a thousand bucks, making it one of the more pricey things I know of on those used services, besides that Madonna Sex book from the early 90s.

So basically if you want to read it, you're screwed, unless of course you know somebody that has a DRM free digital copy. But who would possibly have one of those?

[Philip Girvan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a persistent myth that Hunter Thompson's formidable talent had faded sometime around Carter's inauguration. This incredible book, featuring horrific, wonderful drawings by his collaborator on the Fear and Loathing books (at the Kentucky Derby, in Las Vegas, on the Campaign Trail '72) gives a very interesting history of the Hawaiian Islands, provides an excellent critique/prophecy of greedy Reagan America, and tells a wild story of sportfishers, shifty lawyers, and, of course, Thompson himself, warts and all.

Highly recommended. Still stunned that I only finally got around to reading the book this fall.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read a lot of Hunter Thompson over the years but wasn't acquainted with this title. Having spent my sixteenth summer in Hawaii, his story, ostensibly of his own months there, mostly on the Big Island, in the early eighties, attracted me.

As ever, I found some of this 'memoir' very funny, enough to elicit laughter. That was mostly from the first third of the narrative. Afterwards I got the sense that Thompson was just fulfilling a book contract. Reading him, however, did get me to go to the computer to look up photos of places that I hadn't seen in decades.

[Duchess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is my fave HST book. Coupled with Steadman's delicious gonzo art, the writing and story really comes alive.
Its a crazy romp through Hawaii which no Thompson or Steadman fan should go without reading!
*If you're a fan of Steadmans art, as I am in a big way - look for a recently published version of Lono. Its a huge oversized hardback printed on high quality pages where Steadman's art really is given center stage. I keep it on display at all times!

[bteam · Rating 4 out of 5]

woaw et ben je sais pas trop quoi en penser finalement très proche du film las vegas parano adapté d’un autre de ses ouvrages je peux seulement affirmer que hunter s thompson incarne parfaitement la folie des années 80 au pays du peuple qui tire sur des tornades un régal à lire court simple et divertissant

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know why I have been in Hawaii this long without reading this. It was time to pick it up.

It has all the hallmarks of a Hunter Thompson work.... energy, macho, drugs & alcohol, fast cars, loose talk and some politically uncorrect nouns and adjectives. The drawings of Ralph Steadman add even more edginess. The story is secondary to the style.

Also, like any Hunter Thompson book, there is redeeming content. While an ordinary journalist would cover Waikiki, surfing and flowers... they rate only a mention with HST.

The first focus is the Honolulu Marathon - not even present in most travel books although it is every bit as international as its NYC and Boston cousins. The description is pure Thompson... and right on.

Thompson does the same for 2 week storm on the Big Island - again - not often mentioned in other travel literature.

The longest part is about sport fishing in Kona.

Interspersed is some period writing of the voyage of Captain Cook and one from Mark Twain.

It's a good fast read. I like the layout. Nicely wedged in Hawaiian allusions. Pure, but not vintage, Thompson.

[César Ojeda · Rating 4 out of 5]

«La vida no debería ser un viaje a la tumba con la intención de llegar a salvo en un cuerpo bonito y bien conservado, sino más bien llegar derrapando de lado, entre una nube de humo, completamente desgastado y destrozado, y proclamar en voz alta: ¡Wow! ! ¡Qué viaje!»

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wild and hilarious trip to Hawaii by the gonzo man!
With great historical notes and references this book is quite a tale.
Deep sea fishing, and surviving wild storms are just a few of the crazy adventures the author writes about.

[Tobias Mcevoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not HSTs best work to be honest, but the art is top notch—so it might be worth picking up a copy just to have this one on the shelf.

[D.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curse of Lono came out in 1983, which means I would've been about 14 when I found it inexplicable racked in my small town's sole bookshop/newsstand. I freely admit I'd never heard of Thompson or Steadman, and that it was actually the latter's frenetic and vaguely frightening art that drew me to the book. Ten bucks would've been hard for me to come by at the time (probably proceeds from my short-lived Sunday-paper route), but this book was something I had to have. It is not hyperbole to say that it changed my life forever.
While now, in retrospect and having since read most of Thompson's writing, I can see this is not at all a classic book (let alone classic Thompson), when I was a small-town teenager it was a window in a world I couldn't have imagined existed. Most of my reading up to that point was no more recent than Sherlock Holmes, so to witness the savagery, catastrophe and balls-out insanity that was Hunter Thompson was mind-blowing.
The book today reads like what it was: Thompson attempting a return to classic form. By this time in his career, he had regrettably found himself utterly hemmed in by the Gonzo character he had created. In ...Lono, he admits he'd been turning down writing assignments for years when he took one to cover the Honolulu Marathon for a small mag called 'Running.' Perhaps he saw it as a chance to relive the magic that caused Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (which, of course, started as an assignment to cover a motorcycle race, but turned into something bigger and stranger). Unfortunately, this book lacks the grand mission that ...Las Vegas took on. There is no American Dream pursued here, in fact nothing is pursued at all. Even what could have ended as a journey of self-discovery for Thompson ends in a manic fizzle rather than any kind of resolution. Too many threads are left dangling (Whatever happened to Ackerman and the pot? What became of the dog in the suite and its killer fleas?) to qualify this as a concrete novel either. What we end up with is a slightly beefed-up magazine article that reads like something between Rum Diary and ...Las Vegas, padded further by extensive excerpts from other sources on Hawaiian history (does he do that in ANY other book?).
The writing itself, of course, is classic Thompson, and thus a wonderful, fun read. And the beautifully reproduced Steadman illustrations are a rare delight in the Thompson library. It's small wonder German art-book publishers Taschen chose to reprint it in coffee-table format. It is a gorgeous example of Steadman's work, but only an adequate one of Thompson's.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of a conversation about this book:

E: Just ate a sub-par dinner, reading Hunter S. Thompson, avoiding cleaning....I'm doing pretty good.
P: Fear and Loathing?
E: The Curse of Lono. Hawaii in the 80s, marathons, botched fishing excursions, mescaline.
P: Right up there with brown copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Exactly.

[lapetitesouris · Rating 4 out of 5]

HST was an absolute legend, I can never get enough of his work. This book is brilliant (as always), full of experiences only HST could get into. Pages full of Steadman's artwork in-colour make the wild ride come to life.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not his best effort, a little disjointed and and depressing, but it was an interesting read.

[Jaer Mertens · Rating 3 out of 5]

The protagonist is invited to write a piece about the Honolulu marathon. He decides to stay a bit longer on the Hawaiian islands, with the idea of a nice sunny holiday. It turns out quite differently, as all odds seem to stack against him. The island people, the realtors, and the weather all seem to have it out on him. It’s a terrible couple of weeks that lead to the descend into madness, which leads to the protagonist finally being convinced that he is the embodiment of the god Lono.

I like this story a lot. The style is very direct and personal. There is beautiful prose to be found in the reflections of the protagonist. Another interesting thing about this story is that there are inserts of other books about Hawaiian history. Either mycology, or stories about Captain Cook’s arrival and his demise. It cleverly resembles the modern day story of the protagonist, or add least adds to the mythological curse of Lono about how the island handles incoming foreigners.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who enjoy Thompson's style, this is a must-- every bit as good as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the stuff collected in The Great Shark Hunt, if not quite reaching the heights of Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, for me easily the best books of his career. This one, while very slim (not necessarily a flaw, as frankly Thompson's shtick can sometimes wear thin for me over the course of an entire book), deserves a lot more love than it has historically gotten, having frequently fallen out of print and languished in obscurity, while forgettable, HST-by-numbers works like Better Than Sex, Kingdom of Fear, and the collection of his frequently embarrassing Hey Rube ESPN.com Page 2 columns have remained widely available since publication. Proceed here after the three classics (Vegas, Campaign Trail, Hell's Angels) if you want long-form Thompson.

[Elias · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would have to consider The Curse of Lono my favourite Hunter S Thompson book I have read so far. It has the type of sharp, sarcastic, ludicrous, narrative that Hunter S Thompson is known for but combines this with the history of Hawaii. Hunter relates his own trip to Hawaii and the experiences he has with the myths of the island. This book combines hysteria with genius and this is exactly what one is looking for when they read Hunter S Thompson. Ralph Steadmans illustrations are also outstanding.

[Designated Hysteric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hunter S. Thompson's curse was his annoyingly persistent belief that his comically deranged style could be employed in the service of any narrative, with the end result being satisfactory.

[Ian Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not his best. An attempt to recapture Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The local characters are well conceived. Just the kind of mad bastards you would expect from a HST novel.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me: yeah, I can see what others meant when they said this isn't his best work

Also me: laughing in a good way mostly the entire time, nonetheless

[Jack Nicholls · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the good doctor's later books, and one that suffers from the many circumstances that underwent his life. I love Hunter S Thompson's writing but this is a mess even by his standards. Judging by how this book has the reviews for all his previous work on the back but absolutely none for the very work it's trying to sell, it's clear even the book knows this is a lesser affair.

His journey to find the heart of Hawaii, through marathon running, boating, fishing, and the myth and culture of its people, is fraught with a man who seems less present for most of the proceedings. The low word-count of this book is apparent, and events feel sparse and glossed over sometimes. The illustrations by Ralph Steadman are great as always, but end up feeling like filler more than a worthy accompaniment, since there's so little writing from the writer. Add in as well excerpts from Mark Twain and about Captain Cook's voyage, and it becomes clear we have a very anaemic work that wears baggy clothing to hide its insubstantiality.

It endeavours to find a point that's barely perceptible, brushing up against all sorts of topics relevant to the island life but never really getting a good grip with them, not tackling them as it feels he should. He is detached, the problems are all spectres over an island that he does not see or reckon with while schmoozing at the hotel bar.

It feels that ends up being the point in the end, at least somewhat. Arguably the highlight of the whole book is the finale where Thompson feels like he's the one in charge and engaging with where he is, with who he's with. Everyone gazes in horror or embarrassment at the crazed man, and it feels it's as it should be. It's during these moments the lighter has finally struck and the fire of the old familiar Doctor Gonzo is burning again, but it's all too late now.

[Metin Yılmaz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hunter abimiz yine eğlendiren ama anlaşılırken zorlamaya özen gösteren bir kitap bırakmış bize. Çizimlerle çok ama çok daha iyi bir hale gelmiş olan kitap, Taschen kalitesiyle eşsizleşmiş. Ralph Steadman’ın daha fazla kitabını, çizgi romanını görme şansımız olsa keşke.
Tabi bir de Hunter S. Thompson’un hayatının çizgi romanını okuma şansımız olsa! Ne güzel olmaz mı acaba?