Outlaw Journalist

Sep 26, 2011 Brian R. Mcdonald added it

Shelves: obliterati

Okay, one of the book groups in which I participate has developed a tendency of late to pick an author each month rather than a single book. Each participant reads what she or he chooses by the writer selected and we gather the compare and contrast, This being HST month, I inteneded to reread F&L on the Campaign Trail, in keeping with my past tendencies to pick political or electioneering books when possible, but this critical analysis of the Doctor's writings had been sitting on my dresser...more Okay, one of the book groups in which I participate has developed a tendency of late to pick an author each month rather than a single book. Each participant reads what she or he chooses by the writer selected and we gather the compare and contrast, This being HST month, I inteneded to reread F&L on the Campaign Trail, in keeping with my past tendencies to pick political or electioneering books when possible, but this critical analysis of the Doctor's writings had been sitting on my dresser for a while; it was a lot easier to just pick it up and start than to actually go out and buy on of HST's own works. As it turns out, my other book group, which has always previously done the traditional thing and read one book, broke down this month because too many members had personal pet non-fiction works they just had to read and about which they just had to comment. As a result, this appears about to become a sort of generic and disorganized non-fiction discussion month. This this volume may well do double duty.

McKeen's long friendship, or at least close acquaintanceship, with Thompson gave him an inside track with all of the latter's friends. He was able to get great interviews with HST associates who have otherwise guarded his privacy in life and his image postumously. Combined with years of research, over a period long enough to do homage to his famously deadline-averse subject, this access leads to a detailed and readable tome, more about the writings than the life. Oh there is plenty about the life as well, both the legend and the reality behind it, but this is mostly a literary study. A damned good one too. It is marred by odd contradictions in chronology and paragraphs which refute others on the same page. It's as if the proofreader decided to pay tribute to the gonzo spirit with what appeared to be Wild Turkey-influenced fact-checking.

Meanwhile, the book group doing the HST month is planning a Mission District pub crawl this coming Sunday, dressed as the good doctor. Assembling an HST costume turns out to be more complicated than expected, a fact that would undoubtedly please the subject. Cigarette holders, especially the shorter kinds suitable for Dr. T or almost any male other than FDR, are difficult to obtain. Knowing nothing at all of smoking and smokers' culture, I assumed that a few people still used such holders and that they would be found in cigarette stores or the like. No such luck; not only are they not to be found there, most smoke shop employees younger than myself, even those in shops still focussing on tobacco, had no idea what the hell I was talking about. Vintage clothing sources were a little more promising [in fact I still have hopes for a couple of such sources] but nothing so far. I figured the internet generally, and Ebay more specifically, are the default answer to finding anything, but even there it is an uphill struggle. I actually ordered one from what appeared to be the main Ebay dealer in suchlike items; only after placing the order did I realize that it is being shipped from the Ukraine and is unlikely to arrive in time. Checking further, I found that a substantial majority of all the cigarette holders available are from two Ukrainian dealers. Even the used vintage holders seemed to come from Canada or Europe with estimated shipping times out of range.

Luckily, some of the other essentials of a gonzo costume are easier to assemble. His trademark Hawaiian shirts are similar enough to my trademark Hawaiian shirts that I can pass. My dad is deeply afraid of sunlight an always wears Gilliganesque hats which can be adapted to the Thompson look. Over the years I've often been out without my sunnies and have bought dodgy ones I'll never wear again just because they were readily available. There are a bunch around the house somewhere, and one ought to pass for aviator style. Now if I can get the [bad word omitted] cigarette holder.

Of course one more indispensible prop is the ever present bottle of Wild Turkey. However, I'll be doing all of my advance research in the spirit [and spirits] of his only novel. The Rum Diaries.(less)

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Sep 30, 2012 Diann Blakely added it

"Night of The Hunter"

Artists, consciously or unconsciously, tend to choose one of two paths after finding, through years of apprenticeship, a signature style: continue pursuing that style, attempting to hone and improve it with each new effort; or make their vocation one of varying, even destroying, that initial means of self-presentation through words, music, paint, or performance, and embark on another fork in the road.

Examples of the latter include Faulkner, Picasso, and Bob Dylan. Examples...more

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Mar 18, 2009 arterialturns rated it 4 of 5 stars

It seems the Hunter Thompson gravy train is rolling strong, but hell-vultures need to eat, too. This tome, however, at least seems to be examining HST from a different angle: that of his actual writing. While it would be next to impossible to delve into any aspect of the man without in some way referencing his larger-than-life image, exploits and personality, this book does so only to illustrate how his writing was affected by those things. This is somewhat of a relief. As much as I've grown to...more

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Jan 01, 2009 Brendan rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Sep 21, 2010 John McNeilly rated it 4 of 5 stars

There was a lot I didn't know about HST.

He hit many women, as just one loathsome example. He took his reputation as an influential American writer deadly serious. In OUTLAW JOURNALIST, well written by a friend and University of Florida journalism professor, Thompson consistently comes across as an unlikable person. And, despite the biographer's willingness to (mostly) overlook Gonzo Hunter's lifelong drug and alcohol abuse (both developed into raging addictions as he aged), it ultimately, inevit...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Gail Katz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Gomzo Journalism....bringing the reporter into the story. Often making the reporter's experience the key to the story. We all owe it to Hunter S Thompson. Again. I got this as a 13 cd's to pop in my little Sion as I drove the mountains from Eugene,a Oregon past MountShasta and down the central california valley to East Bay and San Francisco. lOVED IT. STARTED WITH NTER AS AN OTRGEOUS CHILD IN lOUISVILLE, ky> THEN ON TO HIS TIME AT eGGLESTON afb NEAR WHERE i LIVED FOR 4 YEARS,,,THEB IBWARD ABD...more

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Dec 20, 2009 Ken rated it 3 of 5 stars

Picked this up at City Lights during my every-couple-years visit to that San Francisco institution. I don't know why I got it; I've read the other biographies of Hunter Thompson, years ago, and didn't have any unanswered questions.

Anyway, it reads like rehash from those other books, including a lot of the same quotes. Maybe a lot of it is new research, but it's hard to tell when the well-told story is told again.

Only real revelations are in the final chapters. I did not realize HST was such a p...more

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Oct 21, 2011 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Like Jim Morrison of The Doors, Hunter S. Thompson pushed the limits of reality via drugs and alcohol to make art...and he destroyed himself and others around him in the process. Thompson devised a new and interesting mode of journalism, but I do not see that as justification for glorifying this guy. Excellent book, and it will lead me to a study of Hunter S. Thompson's writings (Hells Angels, etc). I just saw a movie version (Johnny Depp) of Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and it is...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Kahn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hunter was many things to many people - not all of them good. So it is fitting - and a measure of McKeen's biography - that Hunter's life is covered here warts n all.
Yes, he shot at his neighbours, yes lived a life that would have killed most of us, but that was Hunter. Uncompromising.
Outlaw Journalist captures all that, bringing to life the inner struggles of a man many of us only know through Johnny Depp and Doonesbury.
The pace of the book also manages to mirror Hunter's life - frantic at firs...more

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Dec 20, 2008 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars

An excellent unvarnished biography of Hunter S. Thompson. Surprisingly there have been quite a few rushed to the market but this one by William McKeen, a professor of journalism at the University of Florida, is very complete -- and has great footnotes and citations.

McKeen starts the book by suggesting an epitaph for the Gonzo journalist: "He had a problem with authority." But he chronicles Thompson's life in detail, in part thanks to the access to Thompson's extensive collection of letters, unfi...more

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May 20, 2011 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Like Wild Turkey into the Good Doc’s mouth, so too go volumes on the shelf about him. While most books about Hunter S. Thompson are good because they are about Hunter S. Thompson, William McKeen’s “Outlaw Journalist” is good on its own accord, revealing the allure and talent of Thompson to an audience beyond his indoctrinated disciples. For all his presence and popularity, a Hunter S. Thompson biography could be accomplished with the literary equivalent of connect-the-dots or paint by number. Co...more Like Wild Turkey into the Good Doc’s mouth, so too go volumes on the shelf about him. While most books about Hunter S. Thompson are good because they are about Hunter S. Thompson, William McKeen’s “Outlaw Journalist” is good on its own accord, revealing the allure and talent of Thompson to an audience beyond his indoctrinated disciples. For all his presence and popularity, a Hunter S. Thompson biography could be accomplished with the literary equivalent of connect-the-dots or paint by number. Connect Hunter’s rebellious childhood with his breakout book about the outlaw motorcycle gang Hell’s Angels. Color in Hunter’s hyperbolic writing style with black blotter acid. In the parlance of Gonzo: load and shoot. Don’t aim.
So much has been written about Hunter S. Thompson, and his story is so mythic in its sweep, that it is difficult to summarize his career without restating stereotypes that have already been digested like so much mescaline by tens of thousands, if not millions, of his fans. With careful aim, McKeen avoids these trappings with “Outlaw Journalist.” There is very little of the hero worship and simple recounting of drugs and carousing that typify a story about Hunter S. Thompson. An acquaintance of Thompson’s and a professor of journalism at the University of Florida Gainesville, McKeen is uniquely situated to provide an atypical contribution to the growing cannon of criticism and analysis on such an outrageous and singular subject that is refreshingly divergent and illuminating in its academic classicism and straightforward tradition. In the David McCullough sense. In the Doris Kearns Goodwin sense. Which I felt was a fairly appropriate comparison for “Outlaw Journalist,” and then I got to page 216 and learned that Hunter once ran off with the Goodwin’s babysitter. It’s one amusing tale of many in “Outlaw Journalist,” a biography that is as good, fulfilling, and devoted to its topic as anything by McCullough or Goodwin, never shying away from the realities of its famous subject, but also moderating such antics with an academic examination of craft.
McKeen’s achievement resides in his balance and restraint. He tempers the excessive and unconventional biographical information that all readers will find fascinating in the life and times of Hunter S. Thompson with literary analysis that seems to be so lacking in other works about him, and so important for why Thompson is a relevant writer who demands to be read. It is McKeen’s focus on Thompson’s writing that make “Outlaw Journalist” an impressive and worthwhile read. McKeen methodically interweaves historical enlightenment with Thompson’s development as a writer, including both contextual influences and progression in his literary style.
Though McKeen provides plenty of anecdotes teeming with recreational hubris, the majority of the stories he shares pointedly illuminate who Hunter was as a person instead of merely indulging in clichés, hero worship, and perverse fascination with the glamour of substance abuse that only reinforce the stale theme of Thompson as some kind of mere cultural jester. We learn that while Hunter was indeed a difficult child growing up and a budding delinquent with an early disdain for authority, he was an aspiring scholar as well; starting a newspaper, reading Thucydide’s account of the Peloponnesian wars, and leading his friends to the library for bouts of reading between rounds of raising hell. We learn that Thompson broke into a morgue as an adult and stole his recently still-born daughter in order to bury her at home after the doctors had informed him that they would “dispose of” it. These are remarkable instances that McKeen shares, ones far removed from the madness and myths that so commonly surround Hunter S. Thompson’s reputation and tradition.
Writing about a man with a searing, vicious wit, McKeen proves himself to be a capable biographer of such an individual by being quite funny as well. In a biography’s pursuit in separating fact from fiction, McKeen deals with the legends surrounding Thompson’s firing from Time magazine early in his career. Did he just leave? Was he fired for insubordination and the destruction of a vending machine? Or did he create such a story to enhance his reputation as a rebel? McKeen settles the matter, telling us, “The truth is probably somewhere in between. One certainty is that Hunter and vending machines never got along.” That clears it up. Especially as a chronicler of Hunter S. Thompson, someone notorious for his exaggeration and paranoid drama, one is smart to ironically understate things as McKeen does in “Outlaw Journalist.” Even though McKeen insists that Thompson’s landmark work, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” was a heightened version of reality, that Hunter and Acosta talked about the murder of Ruben Salazar and the merits of Acosta’s case against the city of Los Angeles while they were in Las Vegas, McKeen does quickly remind us that, “They also took a lot of drugs and ran amuck.” And that confirms things.
McKeen’s is an all-encompassing, enthusiastic biography, taking the reader with Hunter through the struggles, the poverty, the rejection, the antics, the jobs, and traveling with him from Louisville, Florida, New York, Puerto Rico, Big Sur, South America, San Francisco, and Colorado. “Outlaw Journalist” paddles through the mandatory rapids of Thompson’s life: the rebellious childhood, the time in the Air Force and early struggles, the breakout of “Hell’s Angels,” the success of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72” and onto the waterfall of his later life with its struggle to cope with the myth he created and the reputation that enveloped him while his writing deconstructed into self-imitation and desperate regurgitation.
McKeen is a dutiful docent through this sprawling, unruly life, taking us to Thompson’s experience at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and showing how it galvanized and politically radicalized him, even peeping into his life for a rare moment of tears from the stoic man as a result of the violence he witnessed in Chicago. We observe the beginning of Thompson’s relationship with illustrator Ralph Steadman and their infamous coverage of the Kentucky Derby. We see Thompson react to Watergate, his rising notoriety and celebrity, and the incessant struggles with money and finances that colored his entire life. McKeen tells us when productive-and-prolific Hunter stopped and cocaine-snorting Hunter took over, all the while detailing the marital deterioration, mediocre speaking engagements, and infidelities that were a part of his private and professional life. The reader sees Thompson’s appearance as the character Uncle Duke in the Doonesbury comic strip and his slow devolution into a prisoner of his own cult. We have front row seats for the great political writing that made Thompson so popular and become almost immediately impossible as his own fame became too unwieldy to be a true reporter. We witness Thompson’s legendary relationship with Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone magazine. We follow him through his divorce, his time spent in Key West and his extended relationship with Laila Nabulsi, who would go on to produce the film adaptation of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
McKeen’s research and capabilities in fully realizing his subject’s environment and influences is splendid. As McKeen is certain to inform us about the idiosyncrasies of Hunter’s neighborhood growing up as well as the day-to-day activities of Eglin Air Force Base, so too does he provide an appropriate history of journalism, such as the Wall Street Journal’s little-person/big-picture approach to explanatory journalism that was becoming increasingly popular as Hunter started in the industry. McKeen also traces the rise of New Journalism with the growing prominence of writers like Tom Wolf and Gay Talese using the techniques of fiction in journalism. In order to place Thompson in the tradition of other writers and journalists, as well as the larger socio-economic puzzle that he was a piece of, McKeen also brushes up the reader on changes in TV journalism and politics, briefly noting the changes television brought to campaign coverage, the increasing grandiosity and theatrical nature of conventions, and the influence of writers like Theodore H. White.
One major appeal of Hunter S. Thompson in our current society of celebrity-worship, a fixation Thompson himself was subjected to, is that his story is a name-dropping extravaganza. He was friends with famous people. Not only was he friends with famous people, he did shocking and hilarious things with famous people that anyone could be jealous of doing with their humble “nobody” friends. Even Jackie Onassis called to check on her kids when she learned Hunter was staying in the same house as them. Such anecdotes of fear and adoration for Thompson, while serving a biographical purpose, are even more ironic and fascinating as McKeen posits them inside a larger survey of journalism, chronicling its rise in the 1970s into a pulpit for celebrity worship.
McKeen puts us with Hunter as events unfolded in subtle and effective ways that ground and illuminate Hunter’s work historically, such as McKeen’s note that Hunter’s article on Ruben Salazar in Rolling Stone appeared alongside a profile of the young singer Michael Jackson. These tidbits make “Outlaw Journalist” an exemplary biography, one that doesn’t extol and isolate its subject as a detached and god-like idol, but as a talented and unique man who worked hard and contributed to the culture he was a part of.
Beyond the lively biographical chronology, placed within larger industrial and historical trends and changes, however compulsory, absorbing, and compellingly told, it is “Outlaw Journalist’s” focus on Thompson’s craft that elevates it beyond mere portraiture and profile. McKeen roots Thompson in the lofty, storied lineage of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, and Jack Kerouac, deferring to an old friend from Louisville to summarize Thompson with, “Philosophically, I always felt that he was firmly based in the stoicism of Hemingway and the hedonism of Fitzgerald.” But McKeen does not stop there, going so far as quoting directly from Hemingway so as to compare the two wordsmith’s similar sparse, straightforward styles. McKeen does a fine job of analyzing Thompson’s writing itself, deconstructing and examining it as metajournalism, journalism about journalism, and “getting the story.”
McKeen’s work insists that despite Hunter’s decadent reputation as an avowed drug user and vicious social critic given to belligerent ranting and raving, he was a very meticulous writer and cared about every word. McKeen relates a story in which a friend described Hunter sitting on a seawall in Cozumel, “reading a $1.25 newspaper that would have cost a more sober man 25 cents.” Hunter saw that and said, “No. No…it is better if we make it 24 cents.” Such scrutiny is what made Hunter great and such detail and inclusion inside of the larger chronological narrative of his life is what makes “Outlaw Journalist” such a superb profile of Hunter S. Thompson. It reveals a man, however eccentric and overshadowed by entertaining flaws, who was admirably committed to his craft.
McKeen illuminates and examines unpublished and lesser known manuscripts and articles that reveal Thompson’s progression as a writer, such as “The Gun Lobby,” a ‘bridge book’ between “Hell’s Angels” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” that followed Hunter’s shock at the assassination of Robert Kennedy. McKeen notes that it was written in an unusual style: “Rather than use the just-the-facts approach the subject would seem to require, Hunter turned it into a long narrative, with himself as the central figure, as the window through which to view America’s violent character.” Hunter S. Thompson as we know him, was born. From there, McKeen takes us along as we learn about Hunter’s procedures, his writing methods, his work habits, his relationships with editors and assistants, and his writing style as assembly that came in bursts of brilliance. McKeen details Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo Journalism as a process of aggregation that required a large contribution from editors, hand-holders, baby-sitters, and enablers. Despite this coven of crutches hobbling around drinking this man’s twisted brew, McKeen goes to great pains in insisting that Thompson was not the careless, drug-gobbling fiend that so many take him for. “It had never been easy,” McKeen tells us, “but Hunter had the gift of making his work appear so. His legions of stoned admirers probably really thought he took a hundred hits of acid before sitting down to write. But the craftsmanship those close to him saw as he agonized over his words spoke to how much went into making it look like a breeze.”
Analyzing and examining Hunter’s prose, McKeen deconstructs and isolates the writer’s work, detailing his specific themes and styles: the use of a confederate/sidekick, false editor’s notes, himself at the center of stories, “getting the story” as the primary story, and wild flights of fancy. Such basic analysis and identification of elements familiar to any casual Hunter S. Thompson reader seems simple, but as McKeen explains, “His narrative device, in which getting the story became the story, fit his political reporting perfectly. It allowed him to present a scene, then ask the questions readers asked. As he questioned his sources, readers were collaborators piecing together facts. Hunter presented himself as a manic and somewhat inept reporter, a clever way to mask his shrewd style.” Thompson wore a cloak of ineptitude and ignorance that allowed him to say things other journalists could not. Such a device permitted Hunter to contrast himself, the vulnerable hack/drug fiend, to the slimy politicians and establishment stalwarts he was writing about and railing against.
McKeen’s biography paints Hunter S. Thompson as a man who was indeed a special writer with immense talent and without rival, but hardly someone without significant flaws. Further evidence of McKeen’s balanced portrait and refusal to engage in blatant infatuation and praise is his inclusion of Thompson’s most obvious failures and disappointments. The Ali-Foreman fight was one of the biggest stories of the year and Hunter S. Thompson was there to cover it. Instead he sold his tickets and floated in a swimming pool of marijuana during the fight. Norman Mailer grumbled that Hunter’s fans were too easily pleased and would accept anything from their man. McKeen agrees: “Hunter could have given his fans a story about a nightmare assignment in a horrible, uncomfortable city. He could have written about smuggling elephant tusks into Kennedy Airport or his intense paranoia about the Zairean officials and their attitudes about drug use. His fans would have accepted anything, and loved it.” Inside McKeen’s framing of “Outlaw Journalist,” this isn’t so much a condemnation of Hunter’s fans and their lack of taste and sophistication as much as it is a testament to Thompson’s abilities and prowess as a writer and an essential thread, however disappointing, in understanding Hunter S. Thompson. He was good, very good, able to divine a story from any experience, but in many instances, simply didn’t.
With Thompson’s time in Vietnam, McKeen further explores the brash and absurd nature of Thompson. He was no doubt a man controlled by considerable vices, but a man who was aware of his flaws and made such afflictions into a semi-profitable and certainly prosperous career. But in Vietnam, as at the Ali-Foreman fight, Thompson is exposed as a reckless and disappointing hack who he had made a career of admonishing. Beyond McKeen’s recounting of Thompson’s “country-club approach” in Vietnam and his silly escapade to Hong Kong in order to buy gadgets and electronics when Saigon finally fell, McKeen arrives at his most severe criticism near the end of the book. McKeen observes that Thompson had prided himself on “getting away with it” and had turned such an act into a major theme in his writing to great success, but Thompson spent his later years trapped in a mythology he had created and stuck in a rut of self-imitation: “He had worked hard, but too often had taken the easy way out, seeing what he could get away with.”
It would be easy for a biographer to connect the dots left unconnected by Thompson’s late-career waning, obvious failures, and suicide and discern the form of a Cautionary Tale or Obnoxious Farce. McKeen does neither. Instead he colors in several important aspects of Hunter S. Thompson’s life that have only been lightly shaded in by the pencils of blind praise and celebrity worship with the permanent marker of serious literary analysis and balanced, cogent perspective. Thompson would no doubt be miffed by such a reasoned, straightforward telling, but the literary community and fans should be thankful as McKeen’s work on Hunter S. Thompson is a fitting, balanced portrait of a man who is, and has been, too easily caricatured, mythologized, and blindly embraced. Properly loaded, aimed, and fired, “Outlaw Journalist” hits the target.(less)

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Nov 24, 2008 Ken rated it 4 of 5 stars

The best biographies are so successful in painting a time and place that the reader feels like he or she is there with the subject. The best example that I can think of is Peter Guralnick's "Last Train to Memphis," where you feel like you're with Elvis as he begins his rise to fame.

McKeen has achieved a similar thing here with his excellent biography of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Of course Thompson is a relatively easy subject because there are so many stories about him. Many of the stories are fa...more

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Sep 08, 2008 Hood rated it 5 of 5 stars

Bound August 14, 2008 Miami Sun Post

Homage to an Outlaw

Bill McKeen on the Late, Great Hunter S. Thompson

By John Hood

It’s tempting to say that when Hunter S. Thompson blew his brains out with a shotgun in 2005, the event marked the end of an era. The problem is his death didn’t mark the end to anything but his life. See, Thompson belonged to no era, unless you’d care to consider him an era all his own.

You already know the gonzo details: Journeyman reporter breaks big after hanging with — and gett...more

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Aug 26, 2010 E. Thomas rated it 4 of 5 stars

Would-be biographers could do worse than use McKeen's life of Thompson as a template. In short, clear sentences, he narrates the gaps between interviews with the old rogue's friends and generous quotations from the work. The style resembles Hemingway in its dread of adverbs, and has an affectionate tone. His judgment is sound. The early books are praised for their energy and invention while the later ones are dismissed as brand-spinning exercises.

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Mar 16, 2009 DJMikeG rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the best book written about Hunter Thompson. For serious fans of the man and his work, this is a must-read. Much better than "Gonzo", which was tainted by a bit of Jann Wenner's personal beefs with Thompson.

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Feb 04, 2013 Bruce rated it 3 of 5 stars

A solid comprehensive look at the life of H.S.T. Worth the read if you are a fan of his or have an interest in him. It didn't promote or condone his "philosophy" but rather provided insight to his life.

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Oct 24, 2008 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've read a lot about the counter culture in the 60s, including some of Hunter S Thompson's gonzo journalism. I've lost my battered copy of one of his anthologies, but some stories stick in my mind. William Keen is helping me remember stuff I've read and raved about, plus giving loads of insights into the newspaper/ publishing industry. It starts with sad beginning, so I can only wonder where things are heading to.

Updated two weeks later: finished. Helluva engrossing, baring Hunter's tortured b...more

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Feb 25, 2011 furious is currently reading it

Shelves: bio, from_work, gonzo, hardcover

i don't know why i'm even reading this. i've read every HST bio known to man or beast, this cannot possibly tell me anything i don't already know.

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Oct 18, 2008 Autumn Doughton rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked up this book knowing nothing--absolutely nothing--about Hunter S. Thompson. I didn't even see the movie! But my husband knows the author and I like books so I thought I'd give it a whirl.
From the first chapter I got the impression that most of the people who would be picking up a copy of Outlaw Journalist would at least be familiar with Thompson and I felt a little like a fish out of water... But that disappeared quickly and I got into the groove. The book was a smart easy-read--my fav...more

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Oct 19, 2010 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Absolutely fantastic biography of one of the most prolific and misunderstood American writers of the 20th century.

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Feb 07, 2009 Holly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Very interesting. A great book.

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Dec 21, 2010 Michael Greer rated it 5 of 5 stars

It is not so much the writing that earned 5 stars, but instead its the story that it tells.

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Aug 03, 2012 Roelf rated it 4 of 5 stars

Must read for all HST fans

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May 17, 2011 Steve Miller added it

http://bit.ly/k85yfk

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Jul 03, 2012 Nick Storm rated it 5 of 5 stars

Easily the best HST biography on the market.

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Oct 14, 2008 Lynnell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fantastic! I knew Thompson's writing a little (what good citizen of Louisville does not know "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved"?) but knew little more about his life than rumour and fable. McKeen resists the temptation to mythologize or engage in flights of lyric fancy, and instead tells a great story about a great writer. Meticulously researched and documented - a terrific book.

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Nov 21, 2008 Jaime rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great book - I've always been particularly interested in what Thompson must have been like behind his outrageous media persona.

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Dec 31, 2011 Leah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, library-book, nonfiction

Sometimes I don't feel so crazy. Those times often coincide with learning about other people's craziness. Still, it sounds like it was never boring to be Hunter. Now I want to read some of the stuff he's actually written instead of just something written about him.

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May 27, 2009 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Pretty good bio as far as HTS goes. Of course, reading Hunter bios is typically more interesting than reading actual Hunter S. Thompson -- aside from Hell's Angels, of course. The new movie (Gonzo) is pretty lame outside of about 10 minutes of classic archival footage of HST on The Dating Game. Pick this up instead.

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Feb 08, 2010 Riki rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What an amazing insight into a profound figure in the writing world. Absolutely loved this book and got learn of the real Hunter Thompson and not the Roal Duke so many people came to know. His story has inspired me to keep on with my own writing.....a definite must read for all Gonzo fans

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