Welcome to Fear and Loathing!

The Fear and Loathing Page! More than book reviews!












Catchy title isn't it? I thought so, but the natural responses are two questions: 


          1) Why am I lifting Hunter S. Thompson's 
           famous description of his times?
          2) What gives me the temerity to do so?


The second question is easier to answer. The answer to the first is much more interesting. So let's save the best for last.


The Temerity Question: I was a huge fan of Hunter S. Thompson's. The odds are good that if you're reading this, you were too. It's even debatable to use the past tense. Hunter's work has survived past the five years since he blew his brains out in his kitchen/office at Owl Farm. To this day I claim that Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 is the best book ever written about the business of political campaigns.  I did work in politics for a time so I'll claim some expertise - no one captured the madness that truly does live in the midst of the playing field better than Hunter. The book is a reference guide. 


But this is not a book review page.


The point is, the work lives on but there is no new work to be found. It speaks well of the man that Hunter and Hunter's style were as unique as Hemingway's prose. But while there are heirs to Hemingway to be found, where are the journalistic sons of Hunter S. Thompson? I know they must be out there. In your comments, please share names if you have them. But the number is not strong and I want to add to it. Simple as that.


The Fear and Loathing Question: Yeah, I wonder about that one too. To be frank, I wanted a title that would compel a reader of one of the reviews to be curious as to what this Fear and Loathing page was all about. And you're here, so it must be working.


More than that though, I want these blogs or columns or short essays or whatever it is they become to be fearless in nature, just as Hunter was fearless in both his writing and his life. I'm not going to try and imitate the style, only the soul.


And these words will be about anything. I love writing my book reviews - We are living in a Golden Age of really amazing talent in novelists without recognizing it. But the book reviews need to be about the book and also have to be mindful of the expected broad range of audience tastes. You can never, ever say to someone they should not buy a book. There is an audience out there for virtually anything. As I've always said, the author and the author's family liked it, so surely there must be like-minded individuals out there? As to whether that audience is big or not is the publisher's problem, not mine.


Point being, I can't really cut loose in the book reviews. The substance must lead the style. And it is style that transforms substance to fiction, by the way and it was on that edge point between factually reporting and bizarre, drug-soaked fantasy where Hunter lived - the historical fantasy novel. 


So I'm going to give it a try. In the words of sportswriter and novelist Mike Lupica as taught to him by the late, great sportswriter Dick Young, a good column should do three things: "Inform, Entertain, and it should Piss Someone Off." We'll do our best. Hopefully it won't be you that I piss off. 


But I can't end a column on those last two words. Not very inviting, is it? So instead I'll use the sign-off I borrowed from the original series of The Prisoner that I use as the sign-off for my weekly newspaper TV column. Be seeing you.

Buy Hunter S. Thompson at the Buy the Book Store. Help this site!