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The Gonzo Papers #1
The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time
Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the bestselling "Gonzo Papers" is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style.
Ranging in date from the National Observer days to the era of Rolling Stone, The Great Shark Hunt offers myriad, highly charged entries, including the first Hunter S. Thompson piece to be dubbed "gonzo" "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved," which appeared in Scanlan's Monthly in 1970. From this essay a new journalistic movement sprang which would change the shape of American letters. Thompson's razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful '60s and '70s.
602 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
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About the author
Hunter S. Thompson
110 books10.9k followersHunter Stockton Thompson (1937-2005) was an American journalist and author, famous for his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become the central figures of their stories. He is also known for his promotion and use of psychedelics and other mind-altering substances (and to a lesser extent, alcohol and firearms), his libertarian views, and his iconoclastic contempt for authority. He committed suicide in 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 459 reviews
May 10, 2018
Gets bogged down with minutiae at points, but then this is where we often find some of HST's keener insights re: sports, politics, and everything else, after all the bullshit has been laboriously shoveled, scraped, and swept away. Quite a lot to wade through, but if you're anything like me, you'd probably rather hear it from a drug-addled maniac with no claim to objectivity than some shill for the New York Times.
HST was a remarkable thinker and writer, not only for pioneering a whole new form of journalism, but for the sheer range of seemingly contradictory qualities that embodied his life and work. Somehow he was able to espouse the better qualities of libertarianism while at the same time resisting the infantile urge to make a total island of himself. He was a civil rights activist, a champion of the poor and the environment, an unrepentant substance abuser and a card-carrying member of the NRA. Calling bullshit on Americans and their elected representatives from every wavelength of the political spectrum, HST succeeded in bringing a certain measure of impartiality back to journalism when it was needed most, ironically through his personal investment and immersion in the very stories he covered.
HST was a remarkable thinker and writer, not only for pioneering a whole new form of journalism, but for the sheer range of seemingly contradictory qualities that embodied his life and work. Somehow he was able to espouse the better qualities of libertarianism while at the same time resisting the infantile urge to make a total island of himself. He was a civil rights activist, a champion of the poor and the environment, an unrepentant substance abuser and a card-carrying member of the NRA. Calling bullshit on Americans and their elected representatives from every wavelength of the political spectrum, HST succeeded in bringing a certain measure of impartiality back to journalism when it was needed most, ironically through his personal investment and immersion in the very stories he covered.
August 3, 2018
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
This collection of HST articles from the 1960s and 70s primarily focused on politics and sports, but it also touched on damn near every topic imaginable, including—thank god!—some of his hilarious (mis)adventures with outrageous amounts of highly illegal substances. While it contained quite a few intelligent insights and arguments, the real joy of reading this lunatic—at least for me—is to take a ride on his incomparably weird and manic wavelength, to experience all of the bizarre, frantic and frenzied energy he was able to channel into much of his work. His crazed tone and wild antics never fail to crack me up. It makes me really happy just knowing that someone that eccentric and sleep-deprived and strange actually walked the planet. One of my favorite excerpts:
“I have never seen much point in getting heavy with stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as the one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I... And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots.”
Mother of twelve bastards! He was spot-on.
March 17, 2012
Readers who only know of Hunter S. Thompson from his acid-washed hunt for the American Dream in one of this countries most deranged metropolitan wastes will find a different sort of Hunter here. Given the man's talent for spectacle, pomposity and grand acts of destruction, it's easy for people to forget that before he was a legend, Hunter S. Thompson was a talented and capable journalist- one of those rare souls who was perfectly able to capture the flavor of the 60s zeitgeist, both its rapturous highs and its naive faith that a better world could simply be visualized into existence. Before his image became a caricature to be bandied about by everyone from Doonesbury's Gary Trudeau to Johnny Depp's recent ham-fisted offerings (I take no umbrage with Fear & Loathing, that was Gilliam at his greatest, but rather the execrable adaptation of The Rum Diaries and the animated spoof of Rango) Thompson offered up some truly great pieces of journalism.
The Great Shark Hunt collects many of these lesser known writings of Thompson's. There are some definite retreads of what has been widely available elsewhere- the entirety of Part II was culled primarily from his Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, which is an interesting snapshot of life on the campaign trail with the underdog George McGovern campaign that somehow found itself the Democratic nominee despite the Dem establishment's fiercest protests and then fell apart with supreme gusto, allowing Nixon a landslide re-election. The closest example I can think of from recent elections is how close Howard Dean came to upsetting the staid Democratic platform before an unfortunate moment of exuberance caused the nomination to be handed to John "Do I Have A Pulse?" Kerry.
For the most part, however, much of this material was new to me and featured many fine gems. The book is worth reading if only for Thompson's magnificent reporting from his hometown in "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent & Depraved," which recounts the author's first meeting with his long-time illustrator Ralph Steadman and their liquor-fueled romps during the pinnacle event of white Southern gentry's year. Most interesting for me, Part III features political reports sent North during 1963 while Thompson was covering events in ever-turbulent South America. With his characteristic sneer for all those who would use their power to enrich rather than help, Thompson issues communiques from Puerto Estrella, a lawless city of Colombian smugglers, reports on the Peruvian military's overthrow of the popularly elected APRA party in order to maintain the same 40 family's grip on the nation, and recounts a showdown between the Brazilian military and a Rio nightclub which ends with bullets spraying and grenades being lobbed onto the bustling dance floor all to teach the owner a lesson in respect. All throughout Thompson never fails to shine a critical eye on the American expats and businessmen who never fail to embrace the inherent racism of former colonial masters, despairing about Peruvians inability to realize that the gringos are only trying to help and refusing to realize that riding in on a white horse to save them is just a rebranding of the same paternalism that South Americans have been dealing with since the Conquistadors decided to save by slaughter.
This is by no means a must-read, and I definitely found myself lagging through many of the articles, but for anyone who enjoys Thompson's personal brand of biting rhetoric it is an amusing and informative look at the works of a man who was never afraid to say exactly what he was thinking at a given time and who never failed to be shocked and appalled by the perversion of his American Dream by moneyed interests playing upon a populace's fears. In an era that seems so eerily reminiscent of the times in which Thompson was at the top of his game, reading the words of a man who was always willing to voice his outrage is a useful reminder.
The Great Shark Hunt collects many of these lesser known writings of Thompson's. There are some definite retreads of what has been widely available elsewhere- the entirety of Part II was culled primarily from his Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, which is an interesting snapshot of life on the campaign trail with the underdog George McGovern campaign that somehow found itself the Democratic nominee despite the Dem establishment's fiercest protests and then fell apart with supreme gusto, allowing Nixon a landslide re-election. The closest example I can think of from recent elections is how close Howard Dean came to upsetting the staid Democratic platform before an unfortunate moment of exuberance caused the nomination to be handed to John "Do I Have A Pulse?" Kerry.
For the most part, however, much of this material was new to me and featured many fine gems. The book is worth reading if only for Thompson's magnificent reporting from his hometown in "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent & Depraved," which recounts the author's first meeting with his long-time illustrator Ralph Steadman and their liquor-fueled romps during the pinnacle event of white Southern gentry's year. Most interesting for me, Part III features political reports sent North during 1963 while Thompson was covering events in ever-turbulent South America. With his characteristic sneer for all those who would use their power to enrich rather than help, Thompson issues communiques from Puerto Estrella, a lawless city of Colombian smugglers, reports on the Peruvian military's overthrow of the popularly elected APRA party in order to maintain the same 40 family's grip on the nation, and recounts a showdown between the Brazilian military and a Rio nightclub which ends with bullets spraying and grenades being lobbed onto the bustling dance floor all to teach the owner a lesson in respect. All throughout Thompson never fails to shine a critical eye on the American expats and businessmen who never fail to embrace the inherent racism of former colonial masters, despairing about Peruvians inability to realize that the gringos are only trying to help and refusing to realize that riding in on a white horse to save them is just a rebranding of the same paternalism that South Americans have been dealing with since the Conquistadors decided to save by slaughter.
This is by no means a must-read, and I definitely found myself lagging through many of the articles, but for anyone who enjoys Thompson's personal brand of biting rhetoric it is an amusing and informative look at the works of a man who was never afraid to say exactly what he was thinking at a given time and who never failed to be shocked and appalled by the perversion of his American Dream by moneyed interests playing upon a populace's fears. In an era that seems so eerily reminiscent of the times in which Thompson was at the top of his game, reading the words of a man who was always willing to voice his outrage is a useful reminder.
February 6, 2017
I stayed away from Thompson for a while, due to an impression I'd developed in part from a comic book I read as a kid called Transmetropolitan (which featured an ostensibly Thompson-like protagonist) and in part from the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, that his writing was cartoonish, overly preoccupied with trying to be funny, and basically not serious. I would say there are a few pieces here that really do fit that description ("The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved", supposedly the first work of "gonzo" journalism, as well as the title essay), and they seem to be disproportionately well-known and praised, while his better writing (about George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, the killing of Ruben Salazar) is, maybe not surprisingly, lesser-known.
I initially wanted to say that his two great topics are sports and politics, but I think that needs some clarification. For one thing, while he started his career as a sportswriter, it doesn't seem that he wrote about sports by choice any more often (nor any less insightfully) than, say, David Foster Wallace, which would make his one great topic politics- or to put it more narrowly, Richard Nixon. About 200 pages in the middle of this collection are dedicated to Nixon- from "Memoirs of a Wretched Weekend in Washington" ("I went to the Inauguration for several reasons, but mainly to be sure it wasn't a TV trick. It seemed impossible that it could actually happen: President Nixon...") to "The Scum Also Rises" (Watergate and its aftermath)- and it's clear that Nixon brought out the best in him. There are many other ways to look at Nixon, but on an artistic level he provided Thompson with a tragic, Shakespearean, bottomlessly grotesque figure:
You can almost feel the boredom that sets in for Thompson in 1974, at "...the prospect of some harmless, half-bright jock like Gerry Ford running a cautious, caretaker-style government..." Nor is it an accident that this collection is dedicated to "Richard Milhous Nixon, who never let me down."
One of the things I found interesting about Thompson's book on the 1972 US election (Nixon won re-election in a landslide), chapters of which are excerpted here, is that it begins and ends with descriptions of two successive Super Bowls. I would say that most sportswriting- like TV criticism- is limited by its subject matter, and it's often the case that the better written it is, the more it seems like a waste of talent. It's been a while since I've laughed out loud while reading as I did at Thompson's explanation of what makes for good sportswriting:
But football brings us back to Nixon. When Thompson and Nixon met, in the backseat of a limo in New Hampshire in early 1968, they talked about football. This was the prerequisite of Nixon's handlers; the boss is tired, they told Thompson, and he doesn't need someone yelling at him about Vietnam or civil rights. So they talked about football, and Thompson was astounded at how well Nixon knew the game. "You know", Nixon told him, "the worst thing about campaigning, for me, is that it ruins my whole football season. I'm a sports buff, you know. If I had another career, I'd be a sportscaster- or a sportswriter."
Thompson never quite makes the point explicitly, but the mindsets engendered by sports and by politics, as well as by a certain variety of drug use, are all very similar. It's Thompson's mindset: the spirit of gambling and competition, the addictive buzz that comes with playing for 'all the marbles' and being on the verge of losing it all, the ephemera of numbers, odds, records, predictions, point spreads, dosages and ounces, the black-and-white morality of winning or losing, the comfort of tradition (the draft, training camp, getting to know the new players, preseason predictions...speculation about who's going to run, debates, getting to know the new candidates, the setting of favorites and underdogs, primaries, conventions), the pageantry; maybe things shouldn't be this way, Thompson's writing seems to be saying, but they are, and if you try to pretend otherwise in this dirty world you're going to get crushed. And as I watched last week the grotesque spectacle of Trump's inauguration, and listened to the commentators discuss the 'symbolism' of Obama's wearing a blue tie and Trump's wearing a red tie, and the ceremonial limo ride (inside, left to our collective imagination, the incomprehensible conversation between Obama and Trump) symbolizing the 'peaceful transition of power', really giving the audience a play-by-play, I felt like I was watching through Thompson's filter: a sporting event (the only aspect that wasn't choreographed, it seemed, was that the rain commenced with the beginning of Trump's speech [although he later claimed that it had been sunny], which the rabbi who came to the lectern afterwards to read a prayer rather pathetically and desperately tried to convince the audience- or maybe himself- was a sign of "god's blessing").
Football is of course not the only indigenous American sport, and it's far from being the country's oldest, but nowadays it is the most popular here by a good margin; nor does it hurt its suggestive power that most of the games take place on Sunday, Christianity's holy day. I don't think it's evil, but it is strongly correlated in the popular consciousness with patriotism (see, for example, the controversy that erupted last year when a player for the 49ers, Colin Kapernick, had the audacity to refuse to stand for the national anthem, or the end of a GOP primary debate last January where the final 'question' for each candidate was his Super Bowl prediction), and its unspoken essence is violence, often head trauma that can lead to violent behavior, suicide, etc.; and somehow, in the era of Trump, I find it hard to watch stadiums full of people wearing the same color clothing, waving identical towels, declaring their allegiance and that they are one with the crowd. I think Thompson understood that sports are not just harmless, benign entertainment, and that is furthermore probably part of what he liked about them.
Another aspect of Thompson's writing that I think gets overlooked is that he is a writer of the spiritual, as well as the material world. As a journalist, Thompson's starting point is always the material- the grounded, common experience we can all more or less agree on, such as sports, politics, drugs as a social phenomenon, the Hell's Angels, the counter-culture. And yet here are some other things that recur in Thompson's writing: the buzz you get from gambling or taking a risk, the pleasure of swimming, the pleasure of eating a large breakfast, the pleasure of rain pounding on a hotel room window, sleep deprivation, the subjective experience of drug use, the subjective experience of listening to music, riding a motorcycle so quickly around a sharp turn that you almost lose control and die, letting yourself stay underwater to the point where it feels peaceful and you almost close your eyes and let yourself die, etc. One of Thompson's favorite drugs was speed, and when he describes riding a motorcycle too quickly and reaching what he calls The Edge, he is looking for the same thing he is in just about every story he writes- a buzz, adrenaline, transcendence.
That's part of what makes him such a relatable writer, at least in my view. But in contrast to a writer like, for example, Henry Miller, Thompson, in his writing at least, rarely allowed himself that transcendence. Writing for him always begins with engagement. The day JFK was shot, Thompson wrote the following in a letter to a friend:
Ten years ago, I would have disagreed with this. Now I agree. It reminds me of something George Orwell wrote about Henry Miller- that as talented a writer as Miller was, he used his talent only to describe his life of introspection and sexual discovery in the Paris of the late 30s, while Europe was descending into war. What can we say about a writer who focuses on aesthetics and the inner life when there's a massacre happening outside his window? Orwell called it being 'inside the whale.' Thompson, at his best, didn't allow himself that.
I initially wanted to say that his two great topics are sports and politics, but I think that needs some clarification. For one thing, while he started his career as a sportswriter, it doesn't seem that he wrote about sports by choice any more often (nor any less insightfully) than, say, David Foster Wallace, which would make his one great topic politics- or to put it more narrowly, Richard Nixon. About 200 pages in the middle of this collection are dedicated to Nixon- from "Memoirs of a Wretched Weekend in Washington" ("I went to the Inauguration for several reasons, but mainly to be sure it wasn't a TV trick. It seemed impossible that it could actually happen: President Nixon...") to "The Scum Also Rises" (Watergate and its aftermath)- and it's clear that Nixon brought out the best in him. There are many other ways to look at Nixon, but on an artistic level he provided Thompson with a tragic, Shakespearean, bottomlessly grotesque figure:
the sleazy...argument that 'Nixon has been punished enough' is an ignorant...cliche...But that image of him walking awkward and alone across the White House lawn at night, oblivious to everything...except that little black and silver tape recorder that he is holding up to his lips, talking softly and constantly to 'history', with the brittle intensity of a madman: when you think on that image for a while, remember that the name Nixon will seem to give off a strange odor every time it is mentioned for the next 300 years, and in every history book written from now on, 'Nixon' will be synonymous with shame, corruption and failure.
You can almost feel the boredom that sets in for Thompson in 1974, at "...the prospect of some harmless, half-bright jock like Gerry Ford running a cautious, caretaker-style government..." Nor is it an accident that this collection is dedicated to "Richard Milhous Nixon, who never let me down."
One of the things I found interesting about Thompson's book on the 1972 US election (Nixon won re-election in a landslide), chapters of which are excerpted here, is that it begins and ends with descriptions of two successive Super Bowls. I would say that most sportswriting- like TV criticism- is limited by its subject matter, and it's often the case that the better written it is, the more it seems like a waste of talent. It's been a while since I've laughed out loud while reading as I did at Thompson's explanation of what makes for good sportswriting:
...sportswriters are a kind of rude and brainless subculture of fascist drunks...The two keys to success as a sportswriter are: (1) a blind willingness to believe anything you're told by the coaches, flacks, hustlers...and (2) a Roget's Thesaurus, in order to avoid using the same verbs and adjectives twice in the same paragraph. Even a sports editor...might notice something wrong with a lead that said: 'the precision-jackhammer attack of the Miami Dolphins stomped the balls off the Washington Redskins today by stomping and hammering with one precise jackthrust after another'...And there was the genius of Grantland Rice [Nixon's favorite writer]. He carried a pocket thesaurus, so that 'the thundering hoofbeats of the four horsemen' never echoed more than once in the same paragraph, and the 'granite-grey sky' in his lead was a 'cold dark dusk' in the last lonely line of his heart-rending, nerve-ripping stories...Like all great sportswriters, Rice understood that his world might go all to pieces if he ever dared to doubt that his eyes were wired straight to his lower brain...
But football brings us back to Nixon. When Thompson and Nixon met, in the backseat of a limo in New Hampshire in early 1968, they talked about football. This was the prerequisite of Nixon's handlers; the boss is tired, they told Thompson, and he doesn't need someone yelling at him about Vietnam or civil rights. So they talked about football, and Thompson was astounded at how well Nixon knew the game. "You know", Nixon told him, "the worst thing about campaigning, for me, is that it ruins my whole football season. I'm a sports buff, you know. If I had another career, I'd be a sportscaster- or a sportswriter."
Thompson never quite makes the point explicitly, but the mindsets engendered by sports and by politics, as well as by a certain variety of drug use, are all very similar. It's Thompson's mindset: the spirit of gambling and competition, the addictive buzz that comes with playing for 'all the marbles' and being on the verge of losing it all, the ephemera of numbers, odds, records, predictions, point spreads, dosages and ounces, the black-and-white morality of winning or losing, the comfort of tradition (the draft, training camp, getting to know the new players, preseason predictions...speculation about who's going to run, debates, getting to know the new candidates, the setting of favorites and underdogs, primaries, conventions), the pageantry; maybe things shouldn't be this way, Thompson's writing seems to be saying, but they are, and if you try to pretend otherwise in this dirty world you're going to get crushed. And as I watched last week the grotesque spectacle of Trump's inauguration, and listened to the commentators discuss the 'symbolism' of Obama's wearing a blue tie and Trump's wearing a red tie, and the ceremonial limo ride (inside, left to our collective imagination, the incomprehensible conversation between Obama and Trump) symbolizing the 'peaceful transition of power', really giving the audience a play-by-play, I felt like I was watching through Thompson's filter: a sporting event (the only aspect that wasn't choreographed, it seemed, was that the rain commenced with the beginning of Trump's speech [although he later claimed that it had been sunny], which the rabbi who came to the lectern afterwards to read a prayer rather pathetically and desperately tried to convince the audience- or maybe himself- was a sign of "god's blessing").
Football is of course not the only indigenous American sport, and it's far from being the country's oldest, but nowadays it is the most popular here by a good margin; nor does it hurt its suggestive power that most of the games take place on Sunday, Christianity's holy day. I don't think it's evil, but it is strongly correlated in the popular consciousness with patriotism (see, for example, the controversy that erupted last year when a player for the 49ers, Colin Kapernick, had the audacity to refuse to stand for the national anthem, or the end of a GOP primary debate last January where the final 'question' for each candidate was his Super Bowl prediction), and its unspoken essence is violence, often head trauma that can lead to violent behavior, suicide, etc.; and somehow, in the era of Trump, I find it hard to watch stadiums full of people wearing the same color clothing, waving identical towels, declaring their allegiance and that they are one with the crowd. I think Thompson understood that sports are not just harmless, benign entertainment, and that is furthermore probably part of what he liked about them.
Another aspect of Thompson's writing that I think gets overlooked is that he is a writer of the spiritual, as well as the material world. As a journalist, Thompson's starting point is always the material- the grounded, common experience we can all more or less agree on, such as sports, politics, drugs as a social phenomenon, the Hell's Angels, the counter-culture. And yet here are some other things that recur in Thompson's writing: the buzz you get from gambling or taking a risk, the pleasure of swimming, the pleasure of eating a large breakfast, the pleasure of rain pounding on a hotel room window, sleep deprivation, the subjective experience of drug use, the subjective experience of listening to music, riding a motorcycle so quickly around a sharp turn that you almost lose control and die, letting yourself stay underwater to the point where it feels peaceful and you almost close your eyes and let yourself die, etc. One of Thompson's favorite drugs was speed, and when he describes riding a motorcycle too quickly and reaching what he calls The Edge, he is looking for the same thing he is in just about every story he writes- a buzz, adrenaline, transcendence.
That's part of what makes him such a relatable writer, at least in my view. But in contrast to a writer like, for example, Henry Miller, Thompson, in his writing at least, rarely allowed himself that transcendence. Writing for him always begins with engagement. The day JFK was shot, Thompson wrote the following in a letter to a friend:
I suppose you will say the rotten murder has no meaning for a true writer of fiction, and that the real artists in the little magazines are above such temporal things. I wish I could agree, but in fact I think that what happened today is far more meaningful than the entire contents of the little magazines for the past twenty years, and the next twenty, if we get that far...
Ten years ago, I would have disagreed with this. Now I agree. It reminds me of something George Orwell wrote about Henry Miller- that as talented a writer as Miller was, he used his talent only to describe his life of introspection and sexual discovery in the Paris of the late 30s, while Europe was descending into war. What can we say about a writer who focuses on aesthetics and the inner life when there's a massacre happening outside his window? Orwell called it being 'inside the whale.' Thompson, at his best, didn't allow himself that.
March 5, 2008
"If I followed my better instincts right now, I would put this typewriter in the Volvo and drive to the home of the nearest politician -- any politician -- and hurl the goddamn machine through his front window ... flush the bugger out with an act of lunatic violence then soak him down with mace and run him naked down Main Street in Aspen with a bell around his neck and black lumps all over his body from the jolts of a high powered "Ball Buster" cattle prod.
But old age has either mellowed me or broken my spirit to the point where I will probably not do that -- at least not today, because that blundering dupe in the White House has just plunged me into a deep and vicious hole. " - The Great Shark Hunt, p. 318
But old age has either mellowed me or broken my spirit to the point where I will probably not do that -- at least not today, because that blundering dupe in the White House has just plunged me into a deep and vicious hole. " - The Great Shark Hunt, p. 318
August 30, 2007
I came into reading this really long Thompson collection somewhat accidentally, but it shows that he is an extraordiary journalist with a convincing desire to pursue greater truths - an impression that really outshines the whimsical, drug-obsessed icon that he has been reduced to by the culture at large. Most of this book is about his experiences covering Richard Nixon and, given that we are at the height of another excessively arrogant conservative regime on the verge of self-destruction resulting from an obvious ethic of corruption and single-mindedness, his observations ring frighteningly true.
Funny, while Nixon and co. were the greatest enemy of Thompson's lifetime, he said before his death that he would take Nixon over Bush in a moment. Anyway, he's not really interested in being on the otherside (Democrat, liberal, blahblahblah) and his critiques of Nixon don't feel calculated, just honest. Oh, and he tries to spraypaint "Fuck the Pope" on an America's Cup boat in Newport while on mushrooms...
Funny, while Nixon and co. were the greatest enemy of Thompson's lifetime, he said before his death that he would take Nixon over Bush in a moment. Anyway, he's not really interested in being on the otherside (Democrat, liberal, blahblahblah) and his critiques of Nixon don't feel calculated, just honest. Oh, and he tries to spraypaint "Fuck the Pope" on an America's Cup boat in Newport while on mushrooms...
January 4, 2013
Hunter S. Thompson defines everything good about journalism, despite extreme subjectivity, rampant decadence and pure mania. There's strange power in words, how Hunter seems more trustworthy than any other piece of longform work out there.
The last writer who had this impact on me was David Foster Wallace, due to how his extreme maximalism and constant introspection created the illusion that he was right there talking in your face. Well, while David Foster Wallace manifests himself as that philosophical and introverted friend who'd rant about all the troubles in the world over online chat, Hunter S Thompson is the friend who'd take that rant and drive it into your eye sockets with the fierce intensity of a drunk preacher.
Journalism should be two things, entertaining and informative. Hunter encapsulates both aspects in one dose of pure literary LSD and shoves it down your throat. He is THE man you go to to get that feel of the 60s and 70s wildness and insanity, maybe even pick up a history lesson or two while you're following him on that joyride through time.
Nixon, Ali, Peru, Beatniks and Hippies, Aspen... All the weird and wonderful friends of a time long past are summoned by the flowing prose of Hunter S Thompson. It was a ride I'd wanna go on again, maybe next time when I pick up F&L on the Campaign Trail or Las Vegas.
What a grand way to start this 2013 reading log.
The last writer who had this impact on me was David Foster Wallace, due to how his extreme maximalism and constant introspection created the illusion that he was right there talking in your face. Well, while David Foster Wallace manifests himself as that philosophical and introverted friend who'd rant about all the troubles in the world over online chat, Hunter S Thompson is the friend who'd take that rant and drive it into your eye sockets with the fierce intensity of a drunk preacher.
Journalism should be two things, entertaining and informative. Hunter encapsulates both aspects in one dose of pure literary LSD and shoves it down your throat. He is THE man you go to to get that feel of the 60s and 70s wildness and insanity, maybe even pick up a history lesson or two while you're following him on that joyride through time.
Nixon, Ali, Peru, Beatniks and Hippies, Aspen... All the weird and wonderful friends of a time long past are summoned by the flowing prose of Hunter S Thompson. It was a ride I'd wanna go on again, maybe next time when I pick up F&L on the Campaign Trail or Las Vegas.
What a grand way to start this 2013 reading log.
April 3, 2022
This is my favorite of the Gonzo Papers (his collections of journalist columns for newspapers, magazines etc.). The stories are just the best and the most fun to dive into. This is the best place to start for anyone new to HST. It's easier to digest than Las Vegas or the campaign trail as every story is short and cuts right to the good stuff.
Something fun I do with the Gonzo papers series is find an entry that's close to the time of year I am (all are dated) and read it. It's fun to see what national "issues of great importance" he's going on about. Betting on the super bowl, elections, etc.
Something fun I do with the Gonzo papers series is find an entry that's close to the time of year I am (all are dated) and read it. It's fun to see what national "issues of great importance" he's going on about. Betting on the super bowl, elections, etc.
November 21, 2020
It captures the zeitgeist of the USA during the Vietnam years as well as anything I can think of. As Gonzo journalism I am putting it on the literature rather than the non-fiction shelf which is contrary to the zeitgeist of the era when it appeared.
The quality of the pieces is highly unequal. I found that "Fear and Loathing at the Kentucky Derby" was absolutely dreadful despite the fact that he used the same formula to brilliant effect in his book on a drug-soaked excursion to Las Vegas. His article on his friend Oscar Zeta Acosta ("Strange Rumblings in Aztlan") was very touching.
Although not the best thing in the collection, I particularly liked his lucid account of his interview with Jean Claude Killy. In it, Thompson admits that he utterly failed in his attempt to make Killy angry who treated him at all times with impeccable courtesy. Thompson's explanation was that Killy simply considered him to be an American and that as a guest in America, it was duty to be respectful with him studiously ignoring his rudeness.
Thompson greatly moved the liberal arts undergraduates of my era in North America. To Europeans however he is utterly incomprehensible.
The quality of the pieces is highly unequal. I found that "Fear and Loathing at the Kentucky Derby" was absolutely dreadful despite the fact that he used the same formula to brilliant effect in his book on a drug-soaked excursion to Las Vegas. His article on his friend Oscar Zeta Acosta ("Strange Rumblings in Aztlan") was very touching.
Although not the best thing in the collection, I particularly liked his lucid account of his interview with Jean Claude Killy. In it, Thompson admits that he utterly failed in his attempt to make Killy angry who treated him at all times with impeccable courtesy. Thompson's explanation was that Killy simply considered him to be an American and that as a guest in America, it was duty to be respectful with him studiously ignoring his rudeness.
Thompson greatly moved the liberal arts undergraduates of my era in North America. To Europeans however he is utterly incomprehensible.
March 3, 2013
A little tedious. I think I've overdosed on Thompson. I thought some of his usual outrageousness was out of place and read like he was trying to hard to be crazy. A few good essays. I especially liked the one on Jean Claude Killy.
December 16, 2024
Greatest book ever made!
December 28, 2025
I’m pretty confident in saying there’s no one like Hunter S. Thompson - a chaotic, charismatic, hilariously insightful dope fiend; so authentically comfortable as himself be it speaking to the President of the United States, drug runners, liberation leaders or the greatest of all time in Muhammad Ali. I don’t want to be like him but god fucking dammit am I inspired. I now hate Richard Milhous Nixon and want to get twisted on acid. For someone so loose and carefree I loved how he exercised his beliefs and convictions and wasn’t afraid to stand and live by them. Great insight into 60s and 70s beat and political cultures. Would’ve been 5 stars if I didn’t lack some necessary context.
January 6, 2021
A great collection of articles from one of, if not my favourite writer. Collating a swathe of work detailing twenty years of his career, The Great Shark Hunt offers some of the best Hunter S. Thompson articles to date. From The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved to excerpts from his time covering the rise and fall of Richard Nixon.
We get a feel for his prose, his characteristics and his anecdotes, all of which are tremendous offerings of a drug-addled creative with venom in every word he typed. There are pockets of instability, copy/pasting extracts from Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for much of Act IV was an odd choice, especially considering the rest of the offerings, up until that point, had created a loosely assembled narrative of Rolling Stone articles, unpublished ramblings and reflective notions on a generation gone by.
For those that thought he had passed his prime long ago, The Great Shark Hunt will serve as a near-600 page document of evidence to suggest otherwise. His encounters with Jimmy Carter and Muhammad Ali in the latter days of the 1970s make for some of his most engaged and interesting writing. We go into these articles not for information or news, but to learn more of Thompson and the experiences he was served. There's more than enough on offer for those wanting to dive deep into his creative process, a strong compendium to begin the Gonzo Diaries series with.
We get a feel for his prose, his characteristics and his anecdotes, all of which are tremendous offerings of a drug-addled creative with venom in every word he typed. There are pockets of instability, copy/pasting extracts from Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for much of Act IV was an odd choice, especially considering the rest of the offerings, up until that point, had created a loosely assembled narrative of Rolling Stone articles, unpublished ramblings and reflective notions on a generation gone by.
For those that thought he had passed his prime long ago, The Great Shark Hunt will serve as a near-600 page document of evidence to suggest otherwise. His encounters with Jimmy Carter and Muhammad Ali in the latter days of the 1970s make for some of his most engaged and interesting writing. We go into these articles not for information or news, but to learn more of Thompson and the experiences he was served. There's more than enough on offer for those wanting to dive deep into his creative process, a strong compendium to begin the Gonzo Diaries series with.
February 13, 2015
This is the true Hunter S Thompson. Building his legend writing about whatever they throw at him and making it his own. It's easy to forget that despite his public persona, Thompson was a tremendous WRITER who could draw many emotions out of his readers. A personal favorite of mine and a book I never tire of.
June 19, 2025
Hunter S Thompson is an author who I appreciate more on each subsequent reading. I first read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I was 21 and in the prime age to be into HST. The outrageousness of his life and stories really hooks you, especially at that age. In 2022 I read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 for the 50th anniversary and was really impressed with how poignant his political commentary was. He still offered the outrageousness but he was backing it with something of more substance than just a bender indulging in substances. Now, throughout the first half of this year I’ve been reading The Great Shark Hunt and I’m left even more impressed, wondering why hadn’t I read this sooner?
The Great Shark Hunt is the first of a collection of essays entitled the “Gonzo Papers”. First published in 1979, this collection holds over 600 pages of Hunter S Thompson essays, primarily from the 1970s, although some date back to the late 1950s.
The 1970s really were HST at his peak, back when he was raging against Nixon and the counterculture was a prominent force in American society. These essays were the works that made a name for HST. Published in newspapers and magazines, most famously in Rolling Stone.
This collection really has everything that is essential to the HST library. While I had never actually read many of these stories I had heard about them and was aware of their legacy, both in popular culture and HST’s own bibliography. His time crossing the border back from Mexico high and hiding a stash of illicit substances, his time at the Kentucky Derby, his time running for sheriff of Aspen, CO.
You get everything you could want from this collection, especially considering the samplings of excerpts from Las Vegas and Campaign Trail ‘72. While not chronological you get a real sense of the gonzo style and how it develops. You get to follow the cultural events of the 1960s and 1970s through HST’s eyes, which are eyes unlike any other.
The way that HST covers reality in an otherworldly way is something to admire. The way he flips from describing the course of events as they play out to the absurd or surreal scenarios, making you wonder what really is truth. In our current world more and more of our society has come to reflect the world of HST. While that is an amazing thing to reflect on reading in this collection, it is a horrifying realization to come to when it comes to closing the book and returning to reality.
I read this on and off over the last 4 months and it was always some of the best writing I was reading at any given time. HST is often seen as a very introductory author. Someone who young males in their teen years read and move on from but each time I read something from him I find a stronger appreciation for his work. Early on readers are drawn in by the irreverent debauchery but it really is the political and cultural analysis, as well as the writing style that offers a reading experience at a higher level. If you have written off HST as only introductory writing I would suggest that you revisit him.
This is the work I would suggest as an introduction to HST. The only downside being the length. You get a real understanding of the gonzo style and the snapshots of life in the 1970s offers a more bitesize experience than a full novel. Considering many readers back in the 1970s were probably first introduced to HST through his Rolling Stone articles this feels like a better starting point than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which is where most 21st Century readers start.
I felt like I got a much better understanding of the man himself reading this collection than I have in any other previous work I’ve read. You get more of his opinions and views in a more tangible way and the variety of subjects really helps build out this picture of HST.
In the last year I’ve seen many exhaustive discussions on the decline of male readership in the modern world and many lists of authors to suggest men read. I don’t think I’ve ever seen HST featured on these lists, maybe it's too obvious but I think he really fits the criteria in a way that is apt. HST has long been seen as an archetype of masculinity, for better or worse. In many ways he was a man of his time but he also offers a staying power reading 50 years past publication. The coverage of sports, politics, and the life of excess and excitement. While stereotypical in a sense these subjects do appeal to readers of this demographic.
For how long this collection is it hardly feels exhaustive. Each time I would read from this book it drew me in instantly. Regardless of my interest or previous knowledge of the subject I really wanted to experience it through HST. He really was a writer unlike any other. In our current world of “listicle”, click economy writing that covers current and popular events, the comparison really shows just how great HST was. His writing was of a different caliber and his style shook the world of journalism. Even reading this today the irreverence of HST still hits in full shock and awe.
The Great Shark Hunt is the first of a collection of essays entitled the “Gonzo Papers”. First published in 1979, this collection holds over 600 pages of Hunter S Thompson essays, primarily from the 1970s, although some date back to the late 1950s.
The 1970s really were HST at his peak, back when he was raging against Nixon and the counterculture was a prominent force in American society. These essays were the works that made a name for HST. Published in newspapers and magazines, most famously in Rolling Stone.
This collection really has everything that is essential to the HST library. While I had never actually read many of these stories I had heard about them and was aware of their legacy, both in popular culture and HST’s own bibliography. His time crossing the border back from Mexico high and hiding a stash of illicit substances, his time at the Kentucky Derby, his time running for sheriff of Aspen, CO.
You get everything you could want from this collection, especially considering the samplings of excerpts from Las Vegas and Campaign Trail ‘72. While not chronological you get a real sense of the gonzo style and how it develops. You get to follow the cultural events of the 1960s and 1970s through HST’s eyes, which are eyes unlike any other.
The way that HST covers reality in an otherworldly way is something to admire. The way he flips from describing the course of events as they play out to the absurd or surreal scenarios, making you wonder what really is truth. In our current world more and more of our society has come to reflect the world of HST. While that is an amazing thing to reflect on reading in this collection, it is a horrifying realization to come to when it comes to closing the book and returning to reality.
I read this on and off over the last 4 months and it was always some of the best writing I was reading at any given time. HST is often seen as a very introductory author. Someone who young males in their teen years read and move on from but each time I read something from him I find a stronger appreciation for his work. Early on readers are drawn in by the irreverent debauchery but it really is the political and cultural analysis, as well as the writing style that offers a reading experience at a higher level. If you have written off HST as only introductory writing I would suggest that you revisit him.
This is the work I would suggest as an introduction to HST. The only downside being the length. You get a real understanding of the gonzo style and the snapshots of life in the 1970s offers a more bitesize experience than a full novel. Considering many readers back in the 1970s were probably first introduced to HST through his Rolling Stone articles this feels like a better starting point than Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which is where most 21st Century readers start.
I felt like I got a much better understanding of the man himself reading this collection than I have in any other previous work I’ve read. You get more of his opinions and views in a more tangible way and the variety of subjects really helps build out this picture of HST.
In the last year I’ve seen many exhaustive discussions on the decline of male readership in the modern world and many lists of authors to suggest men read. I don’t think I’ve ever seen HST featured on these lists, maybe it's too obvious but I think he really fits the criteria in a way that is apt. HST has long been seen as an archetype of masculinity, for better or worse. In many ways he was a man of his time but he also offers a staying power reading 50 years past publication. The coverage of sports, politics, and the life of excess and excitement. While stereotypical in a sense these subjects do appeal to readers of this demographic.
For how long this collection is it hardly feels exhaustive. Each time I would read from this book it drew me in instantly. Regardless of my interest or previous knowledge of the subject I really wanted to experience it through HST. He really was a writer unlike any other. In our current world of “listicle”, click economy writing that covers current and popular events, the comparison really shows just how great HST was. His writing was of a different caliber and his style shook the world of journalism. Even reading this today the irreverence of HST still hits in full shock and awe.
April 26, 2025
This book is interesting at a number of levels. It is such a great record of how it was. We can now look back at these events and listen to HSTs splenetic personal reviewing of them in a gonzo stylee. What does that mean? Well it is ESSENTIALLY personal and HST is the centre of all the writing. Which then takes us on to looking at what and who HST was at the same time as what he was writing about. Somone who the 'stars' and glitterati-who-felt-themselves-on-the-edge could hang out with and get ripped together without any of the s**t backsplashing on them. A libertarian right wing anarchist as proud of his standing up for gun law as defending anti-racists and seeing tokenism for what it is..
At times it is insightful and of course it all needs to be taken with a pinch of crank in that what he was writing was to get HIM out there so that he could get paid and go and fuel up for further monster raids. A man who could call out the cant in others whilst failing to see the cant and contradictions of his own fucked up drug 'n' booze filled life. What a waste.
At times it is insightful and of course it all needs to be taken with a pinch of crank in that what he was writing was to get HIM out there so that he could get paid and go and fuel up for further monster raids. A man who could call out the cant in others whilst failing to see the cant and contradictions of his own fucked up drug 'n' booze filled life. What a waste.
October 21, 2023
Finally finished this mammoth collection of HST essays and excerpts. Every story is funnier than the last, the gonzo style journalism just tickles some part of my brain, I find it so so easy and entertaining to read. Loved revisiting a couple of chapters from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the Campaign Trail 72, but my favourite pieces were the ones following the Chicano lawyer Acosta and the Miami Superbowl.
This book really had me giggling on the train, breaking my mysterious aura. 5 🌟.
This book really had me giggling on the train, breaking my mysterious aura. 5 🌟.
July 18, 2025
some problematic language
June 23, 2014
This is a must-read collection of Thompson's work from his prime in the mid-60s through late 70s. It collects, as no other volume does, his writing about the Brown Power movement that his friend Oscar Acosta was part of, his trials and tribulations with Richard Nixon (outside of the campaign in '72 and including Watergate), and the various fragments, features, and figments that came together to be Gonzo journalism.
Unlike Generation of Swine, Kingdom of Fear, Songs of the Doomed, and Hey Rube, this volume collects the work that Thompson did BEFORE his style was canonized and blessed by the popular press. This means that it is mostly very fresh, and that it is written with a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment that what being a writer in America is all about is creating your own legend. You can feel the fact that he is aware that this is one way to be remembered like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, London, Mencken, or Twain, but that he also remembers what happened to those writers. The uneasy pieces of introspection here, such as Thompson's internal view of Mohammed Ali's promotional machine, remind us that he knew what he was doing, and he knew what it would ultimately cost.
The later, less satisfying books are so because of this cost. The Great Shark Hunt, however, is the moment of choice--the moment when we can feel him choosing whether to upend the applecart or to allow himself to go along with the hustle, knowing that it will leave him set for life. It's almost enough to excuse...
Nah, nevermind. Just know that while this is perhaps the best look at the way in which the American romance with literature intersects with the legend we allow ourselves to believe when we don't want to admit that we're all a bunch of sleazy grifters who are looking for our own simple way to become rentiers. Thompson connects those dots for us, showing how the self-made man who was a drifter, the used car salesman, the firebrand politico, and the sensation-driven, oppression-reinforcing 'mainstream' journalist are all just different brands of the same desperate attempt to avoid relegated to a life of labor.
He rides this hustle well, too, even if he cons us into believing that he's doing it because he's disgusted with the grift and not because he's benefitting from it.
I won't ignore the racist language in here, though. It's clear from some of Thompson's earlier pieces that he wants an equal and just society, but some of the ways he casually tosses slurs around will make you uneasy. Sometimes, it's clear he's using the language of white trash to address white trash, and his sarcasm shows that he doesn't mean it. Other times...
Thompson's work is about riding a thin line between absolute virtue mocking the degenerate and actual degenerate behavior. Riding that line means crossing it on occasion, whether by mistake or on purpose. That's not to minimize or defend his choices when he does, it is just to acknowledge that it happens. Read it to criticize it or pass it by because of the fact, but don't say that you weren't warned.
It's ugly. It's brutish. It's a pretty thorough depiction of white America's cultural id during the back half of the twentieth century. Use it as you see fit.
Unlike Generation of Swine, Kingdom of Fear, Songs of the Doomed, and Hey Rube, this volume collects the work that Thompson did BEFORE his style was canonized and blessed by the popular press. This means that it is mostly very fresh, and that it is written with a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment that what being a writer in America is all about is creating your own legend. You can feel the fact that he is aware that this is one way to be remembered like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, London, Mencken, or Twain, but that he also remembers what happened to those writers. The uneasy pieces of introspection here, such as Thompson's internal view of Mohammed Ali's promotional machine, remind us that he knew what he was doing, and he knew what it would ultimately cost.
The later, less satisfying books are so because of this cost. The Great Shark Hunt, however, is the moment of choice--the moment when we can feel him choosing whether to upend the applecart or to allow himself to go along with the hustle, knowing that it will leave him set for life. It's almost enough to excuse...
Nah, nevermind. Just know that while this is perhaps the best look at the way in which the American romance with literature intersects with the legend we allow ourselves to believe when we don't want to admit that we're all a bunch of sleazy grifters who are looking for our own simple way to become rentiers. Thompson connects those dots for us, showing how the self-made man who was a drifter, the used car salesman, the firebrand politico, and the sensation-driven, oppression-reinforcing 'mainstream' journalist are all just different brands of the same desperate attempt to avoid relegated to a life of labor.
He rides this hustle well, too, even if he cons us into believing that he's doing it because he's disgusted with the grift and not because he's benefitting from it.
I won't ignore the racist language in here, though. It's clear from some of Thompson's earlier pieces that he wants an equal and just society, but some of the ways he casually tosses slurs around will make you uneasy. Sometimes, it's clear he's using the language of white trash to address white trash, and his sarcasm shows that he doesn't mean it. Other times...
Thompson's work is about riding a thin line between absolute virtue mocking the degenerate and actual degenerate behavior. Riding that line means crossing it on occasion, whether by mistake or on purpose. That's not to minimize or defend his choices when he does, it is just to acknowledge that it happens. Read it to criticize it or pass it by because of the fact, but don't say that you weren't warned.
It's ugly. It's brutish. It's a pretty thorough depiction of white America's cultural id during the back half of the twentieth century. Use it as you see fit.
June 7, 2010
THE GREAT SHARK HUNT: Gonzo Papers, Volume 1, Strange Tales from a Strange Time by Hunter S. Thompson
One of the best. An absolute must for every American, let alone Thompson fan - or journalist for that matter.
The following are a list of the articles from it that I have read, along with commentary and favorite quotes.
ARTICLES
The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved
A Southern City with Northern Problems
Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl
Jacket Copy for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
Freak Power in the Rockies
“Most of us are living here because we like the idea of being able to walk out our front doors and smile at what we see. On my own front porch I have a palm tree growing in a blue toilet bowl . . . and on occasion I like to wander outside, stark naked, and fire my .44 magnum at various gongs I’ve mounted on the nearby hillside. I like to load up on mescaline and turn my amplifier up to 110 decibels for a taste of “White Rabbit” while the sun comes up on the snow-speaks along the Continental Divide.”
“This sense of “reality” is a hallmark of the Drug Culture, which values the Instant Reward – a pleasant four-hour high – over anything involving a time lag between the Effort and the End.”
“For me, that week in Chicago was for worse than the worst bad acid trip I’ve even heard rumors about. It permanently altered my brain chemistry, and my first new idea – when I finally calmed down – was an absolute conviction there was no possibility for any personal truce, for me, in a nation that could hatch and be proud of a malignant monster like Chicago.”
“The liberals simply can’t get it up . . .”
Traveler Hearts Mountain Music Where It's Sung
The "Hashbury" Is the Capital of the Hippies
“A cap of good acid costs $5, and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony, with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums.”
“In normal circumstances, the mushrooming popularity of psychedelics would be a main factor in any article on hippies. But the vicious excesses of our drug laws make it impossible, or at least inhuman, to document the larger story. A journalist dealing with heads is caught in a strange dilemma. The only way to write honestly about the scene is to be part of it. If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without firsthand experience is a fool and a fraud.”
When the Beatniks Were Social Lions
The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat
“When you get into bear baiting on that level, paranoia is just another word for ignorance . . . They really are out to get you.”
One of the best. An absolute must for every American, let alone Thompson fan - or journalist for that matter.
The following are a list of the articles from it that I have read, along with commentary and favorite quotes.
ARTICLES
The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved
A Southern City with Northern Problems
Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl
Jacket Copy for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
Freak Power in the Rockies
“Most of us are living here because we like the idea of being able to walk out our front doors and smile at what we see. On my own front porch I have a palm tree growing in a blue toilet bowl . . . and on occasion I like to wander outside, stark naked, and fire my .44 magnum at various gongs I’ve mounted on the nearby hillside. I like to load up on mescaline and turn my amplifier up to 110 decibels for a taste of “White Rabbit” while the sun comes up on the snow-speaks along the Continental Divide.”
“This sense of “reality” is a hallmark of the Drug Culture, which values the Instant Reward – a pleasant four-hour high – over anything involving a time lag between the Effort and the End.”
“For me, that week in Chicago was for worse than the worst bad acid trip I’ve even heard rumors about. It permanently altered my brain chemistry, and my first new idea – when I finally calmed down – was an absolute conviction there was no possibility for any personal truce, for me, in a nation that could hatch and be proud of a malignant monster like Chicago.”
“The liberals simply can’t get it up . . .”
Traveler Hearts Mountain Music Where It's Sung
The "Hashbury" Is the Capital of the Hippies
“A cap of good acid costs $5, and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony, with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums.”
“In normal circumstances, the mushrooming popularity of psychedelics would be a main factor in any article on hippies. But the vicious excesses of our drug laws make it impossible, or at least inhuman, to document the larger story. A journalist dealing with heads is caught in a strange dilemma. The only way to write honestly about the scene is to be part of it. If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without firsthand experience is a fool and a fraud.”
When the Beatniks Were Social Lions
The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat
“When you get into bear baiting on that level, paranoia is just another word for ignorance . . . They really are out to get you.”
January 3, 2019
Hunter S. Thompsonin "Suuri hainmetsästys" (Sammakko, 2010) sisältää valikoiman gonzo-journalismin isän kirjallisia trippejä 1960- ja 1970-luvulta. Thompsonin persoonallisia tekstejä julkaistiin mm. Rolling Stonessa ja Playboyssa, ja niiden aiheet käsittelevät mm. ammattilaisurheilua, Yhdysvaltain poliittista kuohuntaa, hippiliikettä ja erilaisia päihteitä. Presidentti Richard Nixon joutuu erityisesti Dr. Gonzon hampaisiin, ja Watergate-skandaalin käsittely kattaakin "Suuren hainmetsästyksen" seitsemästäsadasta sivusta melkoisen osan.
Thompsonin nykymaineen taustalla lienee pitkälti Johnny Deppin tähdittämä "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" -elokuva, jota vasten peilattuna kokoelmaan valitut tekstit tuntuvat paikoitellen hyvinkin selväpäiseltä perusjournalismilta. Happoistakin revittelyä kokoelmaan toki mahtuu, josta erityisen hyvänä esimerkkinä toimivat tietyt Nixonia käsittelevät osuudet sekä Oscar Zeta Acostan, Thompsonin ystävän ja "150-kiloisen samoalaisen asianajajan" vaiheita käsittelevät tekstit.
Thompsonin nykymaineen taustalla lienee pitkälti Johnny Deppin tähdittämä "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" -elokuva, jota vasten peilattuna kokoelmaan valitut tekstit tuntuvat paikoitellen hyvinkin selväpäiseltä perusjournalismilta. Happoistakin revittelyä kokoelmaan toki mahtuu, josta erityisen hyvänä esimerkkinä toimivat tietyt Nixonia käsittelevät osuudet sekä Oscar Zeta Acostan, Thompsonin ystävän ja "150-kiloisen samoalaisen asianajajan" vaiheita käsittelevät tekstit.
August 3, 2019
the essays themselves are generally very good, and interesting as cultural time capsules if nothing else. my main frustration with this book is its organization: it badly needs an editor. not so much to chop anything down, but rather to organize. the sports essays (on boxing, football, horse racing, sport fishing, etc) should all be together, the counter-culture essays (including a fabulously well-timed one on “hashbury” written just before the summer of love) should be together, and the political ones should be together (and ordered! why the hell aren’t the voluminous entries on watergate in chronological order???). reordered this would be a very good collection.
January 18, 2021
This was the first HST collection that I read. Despite the fact that he was usually discussing people and situations which I had only the dimmest idea of, I was hooked. Brilliant writing.
Re-read the chapters on Watergate. There's a sense of immediacy in gonzo, a sense that one is there. For example, HST found it was easier to follow the hearings on the TV in a bar nearby than it was to be in the actual committee room in the Capitol. And I can imagine that was the case.
Re-read the chapters on Watergate. There's a sense of immediacy in gonzo, a sense that one is there. For example, HST found it was easier to follow the hearings on the TV in a bar nearby than it was to be in the actual committee room in the Capitol. And I can imagine that was the case.
June 5, 2020
This is one for the fans only. Rambling essays on topics no one could possibly care about now. And Nixon, Nixon, Nixon. We get it Thompson, he was your nemesis. I got to about page 250 and couldn't take any more. His style may have been revolutionary and new in the 60s and 70s but now it's just irritating, and unnecessarily long-winded. The tangents he goes off on! Mentions of stories but no actual story. And more than anything, it was just tedious. Yawn.
June 16, 2020
Just as powerful as when I first read it over thirty years ago. My overwhelming thought as I read one insane and insightful piece after another is that we sure could use his voice in this insane moment of history we are caught in now. Would love to see HST in his prime take on the Orange Clown and his enablers.
February 16, 2020
"Oscar was one of God's own prototypes-- a high-powered mutant of some kind who was never even considered for mass production. He was too weird to live and too rare to die-- and as far as I'm concerned, that's just about all that needs to be said about him right now." -pg 515
No matter what trip HST is on I thoroughly enjoy the experience of him taking me along. This frenzy was a pleasure to read & envisage regardless of what percentage mixture Gonzo to Degenerate we get. Many famous characters grace these pages juxtaposed against HST and that makes this collection all the more vibrant as well. It was a pleasure to be able to read articles that he wrote long before I was born. It's a testament to HST's ability that his writings have aged so well even with someone who lived through none of it; I can only imagine what a trip (acidic flashback) down memory lane these must be for the hip papas & mamas that were there.
As fas as the selection goes I also give kudos to whoever decided upon it. The reader gets a variety of HST writing that I, at least, previously never even knew existed such as his extensive sports coverage. This and his political journalism are yet another proof positive to me that I hold this man in high regard as a writer considering my apathy for sports and outright disdain for politics, yet I enjoyed most (if not all) of his Nixon tangental ranting. Choice snippets that I recognized from previous stand alone works are also included and these were as delightful to read through as they always are.
HST's writings are my spirit animal. If I could occupy one fictional world of literature assuming the role of one character I would be hard pressed not to select a HST work and become Raoul Duke... or his attorney. And the fact that these stories are not completely fictional makes my fantasy all the more real & resplendent. I'm thankful Hunter existed and that he wrote.
*****
Unrelated to the book article about HST follows:
The classic 1974 Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire attracted, among other things, famous writers like Norman Mailer and George Plimpton and even ol’ Hunter Thompson. But while Mailer and Plimpton and the rest of the world marveled at Ali’s command performance, Thompson, well, he experienced the fight as only he could. Plimpton wrote about it in “Shadow Box”—one of seven Plimpton sports participation books just reissued by Little Brown. Dig in.
I had a number of people to see the next day. I dropped in to see Hunter Thompson.
I found him in his room. “I got everything stashed behind the pipes,” he said, after he had peeked out a crack in the door to make sure who I was. “The authorities could search the room and unless they had one of those sniffing dogs this place’d check out clean.” He prowled around, three steps taking him the room’s length; he turned and bumped into the bed. He was wearing his aviator glasses. I perched upon a chair to keep out of the way. “This is a bad town for the drug scene,” he was saying. “In Nevada you can shoot anything into your body you want. You can get stark naked and lie in the backseat of a Pontiac with the accelerator wired down, and touch the steering wheel from time to time with a toe, and if you lose control at a hundred twenty m.p.h. going along Route Ninety-nine, all that happens is that you spin out into the desert and kill a lizard. But Kinshasa… it’s a bad scene.”
I asked him about the fight.
“What fight? Oh, I didn’t go to the fight. I stayed in the hotel swimming pool. I lay on my back looking at the moon coming up and the only person in the hotel came and stared at me a long time before he went away. Maybe he thought I was a corpse. I floated there naked. I’d thrown a pound and a half of marijuana into the pool—it was what I had left and I am not trying to smuggle it out of this country—and it stuck together there in a sort of clot, and then it began to spread out in a green slick. It was very luxurious floating naked in that stuff, though it’s not the best way to obtain a high.”
“No,” I said.
“But a very luxurious feeling nonetheless.”
Thompson began mixing himself a drink. “I don’t know the time, but it feels like the evening—cocktail hour, isn’t it? Do you know what I paid for these two bottles of bottled water? Five-twenty! Every day here I get this hideous whipping. I need human contact… preferably nine nipples.”
I blinked and asked him how he had found out about the result of the fight.
“I went to bed after my swim,” Thompson said. “So I got the news this morning. Somebody slipped the hotel newspaper under the door.”
“So you didn’t try to see the fight with President Mobutu.”
“Who?”
“The president. You said you had some idea about being with him and watching the fight on TV.”
“On TV? Frankly, I’ve had my mind on something else. My big concern is how to get these two enormous elephant tusks I bought in the ivory market out of the country.” They stood in the corner, reaching halfway to the ceiling.
He told me that the day before, bringing the elephant tusks back to the Inter-Continental, he had almost been thrown into a Kinshasa jail.
“Are the tusks illegal?” I asked. I’d given up asking him about the fight.
“Frankly, I don’t know. I bought the tusks off a street person—probably an informer of some sort—but they are in some sort of raw state which attracted a great deal of attention. I mean, the elephant wasn’t still attached to them, but he might just as well have been.” Hunter went on to tell me that riding around Kinshasa with those tusks was like running through an airport with two large plastic bags of heroin, or perhaps a bazooka under each arm. But apparently the problem was not only the tusks but that he had been going a hundred miles an hour in that strange automobile of his around a traffic circle. The car had “got away” from him. He had been flagged down by a military car and a soldier carrying a machine gun had climbed in alongside him and the tusks in the front seat. Hunter sensed that the soldier was trying to get him to drive to the jail down by the river waterfront but yelling at the soldier that he didn’t understand—“Quien sabe? Quien sabe?”—he started heading for the Hotel Inter-Continental at a rattling speed, the soldier hanging on, the gun barrel waving back and forth by Thompson’s ear, as he finally made the ramp and roared up to the entrance. He stepped out and told the concierge to explain to the soldier that Bill Cardoza, down in the Memling Hotel, was the person to see if there was any complaint to be lodged—an important foreign police chief—and with that he turned and sailed into the lobby with his tusks. He had a feeling that the soldier had impounded his car, but there was a certain amount of smug satisfaction in knowing what sort of a monster car—all those weird electrical connections—the authorities had a hold of. “Unless they know how to work that dimmer,” Thompson said, “a lot of innocent people are going to get killed out in the streets of Kinshasa.”
I remarked that he certainly lived right on the edge. Hunter nodded and said that he’d feel himself lucky if he got back into the U.S. alive. As he paced up and down, turning like a caged mink, I was reminded of Norman Mailer’s death fantasy—being taken by an African lion—and Thompson laughed when I described it and he said that such a thing wouldn’t be bad for Norman at all, would it, and he wished him luck.
I couldn’t resist asking him what his would be.
“Well, vehicular, of course—something in a very fine car.” He sat on the edge of the bed and with surprising calm went on to say, “Back in the U.S. there was a mountain I used to drive over in the sixties on the way down from Louisville past Birmingham to the Elgin Air Force Base—Iron Mountain, I guess they call it: a lot of big houses upon it and rich people from Birmingham and the road is sort of scenic, with big entranceways and fine views, and there’s one place where you come around a sharp curve to the left, and straight ahead, down beyond the cliff, is the city, acres of steel mills and Bessemer furnaces and smelting yards below—and my concept of death for a long time was to come down that mountain road at a hundred twenty and just keep going straight right there, burst out through the barrier and hang out above all that in… well, it was important that it was the right sort of car, the Jaguar XK120, though later on I began to connect the XK140 with the fantasy, painted white, though sometimes I vacillated between white and British racing green, which is very nice too, and it had to be a convertible, of course, because you’d want to feel the air against you… and there I’d be, sitting in the front seat, stark naked, with a case of whiskey next to me, and a case of dynamite in the trunk, or boot, it would be in a Jaguar, honking the horn, and the lights on, and just sit out there in space for an instant, a human bomb, and then fall on down into that mess of steel mills. It’d be a tremendous goddamn explosion. No pain. No one would get hurt. I’m pretty sure, unless they’ve changed the highway, that launching place is still there. As soon as I get home, I ought to take the drive and just check it out.”
No matter what trip HST is on I thoroughly enjoy the experience of him taking me along. This frenzy was a pleasure to read & envisage regardless of what percentage mixture Gonzo to Degenerate we get. Many famous characters grace these pages juxtaposed against HST and that makes this collection all the more vibrant as well. It was a pleasure to be able to read articles that he wrote long before I was born. It's a testament to HST's ability that his writings have aged so well even with someone who lived through none of it; I can only imagine what a trip (acidic flashback) down memory lane these must be for the hip papas & mamas that were there.
As fas as the selection goes I also give kudos to whoever decided upon it. The reader gets a variety of HST writing that I, at least, previously never even knew existed such as his extensive sports coverage. This and his political journalism are yet another proof positive to me that I hold this man in high regard as a writer considering my apathy for sports and outright disdain for politics, yet I enjoyed most (if not all) of his Nixon tangental ranting. Choice snippets that I recognized from previous stand alone works are also included and these were as delightful to read through as they always are.
HST's writings are my spirit animal. If I could occupy one fictional world of literature assuming the role of one character I would be hard pressed not to select a HST work and become Raoul Duke... or his attorney. And the fact that these stories are not completely fictional makes my fantasy all the more real & resplendent. I'm thankful Hunter existed and that he wrote.
*****
Unrelated to the book article about HST follows:
The classic 1974 Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire attracted, among other things, famous writers like Norman Mailer and George Plimpton and even ol’ Hunter Thompson. But while Mailer and Plimpton and the rest of the world marveled at Ali’s command performance, Thompson, well, he experienced the fight as only he could. Plimpton wrote about it in “Shadow Box”—one of seven Plimpton sports participation books just reissued by Little Brown. Dig in.
I had a number of people to see the next day. I dropped in to see Hunter Thompson.
I found him in his room. “I got everything stashed behind the pipes,” he said, after he had peeked out a crack in the door to make sure who I was. “The authorities could search the room and unless they had one of those sniffing dogs this place’d check out clean.” He prowled around, three steps taking him the room’s length; he turned and bumped into the bed. He was wearing his aviator glasses. I perched upon a chair to keep out of the way. “This is a bad town for the drug scene,” he was saying. “In Nevada you can shoot anything into your body you want. You can get stark naked and lie in the backseat of a Pontiac with the accelerator wired down, and touch the steering wheel from time to time with a toe, and if you lose control at a hundred twenty m.p.h. going along Route Ninety-nine, all that happens is that you spin out into the desert and kill a lizard. But Kinshasa… it’s a bad scene.”
I asked him about the fight.
“What fight? Oh, I didn’t go to the fight. I stayed in the hotel swimming pool. I lay on my back looking at the moon coming up and the only person in the hotel came and stared at me a long time before he went away. Maybe he thought I was a corpse. I floated there naked. I’d thrown a pound and a half of marijuana into the pool—it was what I had left and I am not trying to smuggle it out of this country—and it stuck together there in a sort of clot, and then it began to spread out in a green slick. It was very luxurious floating naked in that stuff, though it’s not the best way to obtain a high.”
“No,” I said.
“But a very luxurious feeling nonetheless.”
Thompson began mixing himself a drink. “I don’t know the time, but it feels like the evening—cocktail hour, isn’t it? Do you know what I paid for these two bottles of bottled water? Five-twenty! Every day here I get this hideous whipping. I need human contact… preferably nine nipples.”
I blinked and asked him how he had found out about the result of the fight.
“I went to bed after my swim,” Thompson said. “So I got the news this morning. Somebody slipped the hotel newspaper under the door.”
“So you didn’t try to see the fight with President Mobutu.”
“Who?”
“The president. You said you had some idea about being with him and watching the fight on TV.”
“On TV? Frankly, I’ve had my mind on something else. My big concern is how to get these two enormous elephant tusks I bought in the ivory market out of the country.” They stood in the corner, reaching halfway to the ceiling.
He told me that the day before, bringing the elephant tusks back to the Inter-Continental, he had almost been thrown into a Kinshasa jail.
“Are the tusks illegal?” I asked. I’d given up asking him about the fight.
“Frankly, I don’t know. I bought the tusks off a street person—probably an informer of some sort—but they are in some sort of raw state which attracted a great deal of attention. I mean, the elephant wasn’t still attached to them, but he might just as well have been.” Hunter went on to tell me that riding around Kinshasa with those tusks was like running through an airport with two large plastic bags of heroin, or perhaps a bazooka under each arm. But apparently the problem was not only the tusks but that he had been going a hundred miles an hour in that strange automobile of his around a traffic circle. The car had “got away” from him. He had been flagged down by a military car and a soldier carrying a machine gun had climbed in alongside him and the tusks in the front seat. Hunter sensed that the soldier was trying to get him to drive to the jail down by the river waterfront but yelling at the soldier that he didn’t understand—“Quien sabe? Quien sabe?”—he started heading for the Hotel Inter-Continental at a rattling speed, the soldier hanging on, the gun barrel waving back and forth by Thompson’s ear, as he finally made the ramp and roared up to the entrance. He stepped out and told the concierge to explain to the soldier that Bill Cardoza, down in the Memling Hotel, was the person to see if there was any complaint to be lodged—an important foreign police chief—and with that he turned and sailed into the lobby with his tusks. He had a feeling that the soldier had impounded his car, but there was a certain amount of smug satisfaction in knowing what sort of a monster car—all those weird electrical connections—the authorities had a hold of. “Unless they know how to work that dimmer,” Thompson said, “a lot of innocent people are going to get killed out in the streets of Kinshasa.”
I remarked that he certainly lived right on the edge. Hunter nodded and said that he’d feel himself lucky if he got back into the U.S. alive. As he paced up and down, turning like a caged mink, I was reminded of Norman Mailer’s death fantasy—being taken by an African lion—and Thompson laughed when I described it and he said that such a thing wouldn’t be bad for Norman at all, would it, and he wished him luck.
I couldn’t resist asking him what his would be.
“Well, vehicular, of course—something in a very fine car.” He sat on the edge of the bed and with surprising calm went on to say, “Back in the U.S. there was a mountain I used to drive over in the sixties on the way down from Louisville past Birmingham to the Elgin Air Force Base—Iron Mountain, I guess they call it: a lot of big houses upon it and rich people from Birmingham and the road is sort of scenic, with big entranceways and fine views, and there’s one place where you come around a sharp curve to the left, and straight ahead, down beyond the cliff, is the city, acres of steel mills and Bessemer furnaces and smelting yards below—and my concept of death for a long time was to come down that mountain road at a hundred twenty and just keep going straight right there, burst out through the barrier and hang out above all that in… well, it was important that it was the right sort of car, the Jaguar XK120, though later on I began to connect the XK140 with the fantasy, painted white, though sometimes I vacillated between white and British racing green, which is very nice too, and it had to be a convertible, of course, because you’d want to feel the air against you… and there I’d be, sitting in the front seat, stark naked, with a case of whiskey next to me, and a case of dynamite in the trunk, or boot, it would be in a Jaguar, honking the horn, and the lights on, and just sit out there in space for an instant, a human bomb, and then fall on down into that mess of steel mills. It’d be a tremendous goddamn explosion. No pain. No one would get hurt. I’m pretty sure, unless they’ve changed the highway, that launching place is still there. As soon as I get home, I ought to take the drive and just check it out.”
July 26, 2025
Now, of the eighth published books I’ve read from Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt ranks downward at the bottom. Thompson is one of my favorite authors. In fact, he’s my most read author of my adult life; all of this to say, The Great Shark Hunt was loaded with flub. Running in at 600-plus pages, there were more sluggish parts than I would’ve liked.
Granted, it’s supposed to serve as a recap of Thompson’s journalistic endeavors from the 1960s and 1970s through excerpts of published works. However, there was a lot of recycled material that bogged down the book. Previously published books, Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and ‘72 Campaign Trail, made up about 75 pages of the book—all of which I skipped because I’ve read all of those books. In addition to a never-ending cycle of mumbling hatred for Richard Nixon and a word-for-word transcription of a Jimmy Carter speech taking up nearly 10 pages.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that there were some memorable moments in the book. For example, Thompson covered Muhammad Ali’s fights, the Kentucky Derby, and the Super Bowl. In addition to Thompson writing about growing up, his experiences in the Air Force, and escaping the Hell’s Angels. Not a great book. If I return to it someday, I would only read sections of it because it’s too bloated.
P. S. I hate Goodreads, this isn’t even the right edition because they don’t have it registered.
Granted, it’s supposed to serve as a recap of Thompson’s journalistic endeavors from the 1960s and 1970s through excerpts of published works. However, there was a lot of recycled material that bogged down the book. Previously published books, Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and ‘72 Campaign Trail, made up about 75 pages of the book—all of which I skipped because I’ve read all of those books. In addition to a never-ending cycle of mumbling hatred for Richard Nixon and a word-for-word transcription of a Jimmy Carter speech taking up nearly 10 pages.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that there were some memorable moments in the book. For example, Thompson covered Muhammad Ali’s fights, the Kentucky Derby, and the Super Bowl. In addition to Thompson writing about growing up, his experiences in the Air Force, and escaping the Hell’s Angels. Not a great book. If I return to it someday, I would only read sections of it because it’s too bloated.
P. S. I hate Goodreads, this isn’t even the right edition because they don’t have it registered.
July 18, 2022
I came into this book with only Terry Gilliam's brilliantly surreal film adaption of Thompson's most famous book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a reference point. Sure, I kind of knew what Gonzo Journalism was, but had never read any.
Beneath Thompson's drink, drug and occasional firearm-fuelled antics there lurks a brilliant observational mind, even if it only decides to skulk into the sunlight at noon after a breakfast of Bloody Marys. There's a reason why he was a Rolling Stone journalist for so long, and it's interesting to see his style evolve across these pages.
From a wet-behind-the-ears rookie discovering the darker side of the South American economy, to the high-flier sharing cars and planes with presidents and hanging with Ali, Thompson's writing is always informative and entertaining. There's some exceptional fly-on-the-wall stuff featuring Nixon and Carter as well as a fair old smattering of drug-addled antics along the way.
Strap in, drop out and enjoy the ride!
Beneath Thompson's drink, drug and occasional firearm-fuelled antics there lurks a brilliant observational mind, even if it only decides to skulk into the sunlight at noon after a breakfast of Bloody Marys. There's a reason why he was a Rolling Stone journalist for so long, and it's interesting to see his style evolve across these pages.
From a wet-behind-the-ears rookie discovering the darker side of the South American economy, to the high-flier sharing cars and planes with presidents and hanging with Ali, Thompson's writing is always informative and entertaining. There's some exceptional fly-on-the-wall stuff featuring Nixon and Carter as well as a fair old smattering of drug-addled antics along the way.
Strap in, drop out and enjoy the ride!
June 14, 2023
The Great Shark Hunt is a fantastic selection of Hunter's articles spanning 20 years from the 60s and 70s. From his time covering the rise and fall of Richard Nixon to extracts from his decadent and wicked coverage of The Kentucky Derby and many topics in between.
We get a sense of his style, his personality, and his experiences, which are all fantastic offerings from a drug-addled author who wrote with venom in every word.
The real thrill is to ride on his incomparably odd and manic wavelength, to experience all of the bizarre, furious, and frantic energy he could channel into most of his writing. His insane demeanour and outrageous behaviour never fail to make me laugh.
Res ipsa loquitur
We get a sense of his style, his personality, and his experiences, which are all fantastic offerings from a drug-addled author who wrote with venom in every word.
The real thrill is to ride on his incomparably odd and manic wavelength, to experience all of the bizarre, furious, and frantic energy he could channel into most of his writing. His insane demeanour and outrageous behaviour never fail to make me laugh.
Res ipsa loquitur
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