Eben's review
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72
by Hunter S. Thompson
Eben's review
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson
Eben's review
rating:
recommended for: Anyone interested in American presidential politics
My familiarity with Hunter Thompson's writing to this point has mainly been based off of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and various articles about sports and motorcycles. I always thought of him as a talented if maniacal writer. What engrossed me about campaign trail was his utter fluency in the political world of his time and his almost touching concern, pessimistic as it may be, for the health of the American political system.
A key tension in the book seems to be between Hunters desire to be objective/his belief that in the end all politicians will disappoint and his developing belief that George McGovern would actually make a decent president. It is amazing how much access the McGovern campaign, and george himself gave Hunter for his Bi-Monthly dispatches to Rolling Stone (from which the book is cobbled), and this access seems to have bound Thompson personally to the candidate, and probobly even more personally to the campaign's political director Frank Mankiewicz.
Given to...more
A key tension in the book seems to be between Hunters desire to be objective/his belief that in the end all politicians will disappoint and his developing belief that George McGovern would actually make a decent president. It is amazing how much access the McGovern campaign, and george himself gave Hunter for his Bi-Monthly dispatches to Rolling Stone (from which the book is cobbled), and this access seems to have bound Thompson personally to the candidate, and probobly even more personally to the campaign's political director Frank Mankiewicz.
Given to...more
