The Fear and Loathing Letters, Volume 1: The Proud Highway, Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955 - 1967

Thompson, Hunter S. Foreword by William J. Kennedy. Edited by Douglas Brinkley.

ISBN 10: 0375750207 / ISBN 13: 9780375750205

Published by New York: Villard, [1997]., 1997

About this Item

Uncorrected Proof. Thick octavo, 651pp, publisher s printed wrappers (soiling and wear, pages toned, good or better).

Seller Inventory # 06623

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Fear and Loathing Letters, Volume 1: The Proud Highway, Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman 1955 - 1967
• Publisher: New York: Villard, [1997].
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375750207
• ISBN 13: 9780375750205
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Modern Literature

About this title

Synopsis

Here, for the first time, is the private and most intimate correspondence of one of America's most influential and incisive journalists--Hunter S. Thompson. In letters to a Who's Who of luminaries from Norman Mailer to Charles Kuralt, Tom Wolfe to Lyndon Johnson, William Styron to Joan Baez--not to mention his mother, the NRA, and a chain of newspaper editors--Thompson vividly catches the tenor of the times in 1960s America and channels it all through his own razor-sharp perspective. Passionate in their admiration, merciless in their scorn, and never anything less than fascinating, the dispatches of The Proud Highway offer an unprecedented and penetrating gaze into the evolution of the most outrageous raconteur/provocateur ever to assault a typewriter.

Reviews

"I'm already the new Fitzgerald," Thompson declares gamely at age 19, in 1957, as his cracking lifelong correspondence gets under way. "I just haven't been recognized yet." The original gonzo journalist, who struck the big time with his book on the Hell's Angels ten years later (when this first volume of correspondence terminates), amply displays his talent for bragging?and barking?in these self-consciously irreverent, wordy, and often tender letters he was fond of banging out impulsively to friends like William J. Kennedy (Ironweed); magazine editors from whom he hoped to scare up work; youths who asked for career advice; Lyndon Johnson, when asking for the job of governor of American Samoa; and writers whose work he read with violent pleasure or loathing (Norman Mailer, William Styron, Nelson Algren). Thompson enjoyed messing up wherever he could but he never lost a grip on his desire to become a damn good writer. This is a shot in the liver for struggling writers and a searing testimony to an important moment in American journalism. Highly recommended.
-?Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.