Generation of Swine (1988)

I read a lot of Hunter Thompson in the '70s but that changed in the '80s. He never seemed as effective after the ascent of Ronald Reagan. In fact, a critical turning point is even documented here. As far as the "Gonzo Papers" go, Generation of Swine is not as ambitious or strong as The Great Shark Hunt, but I have a lot of regard for it anyway. It's a collection of syndicated op-ed columns he wrote for the San Francisco Examiner during Reagan's second term. As such, the pieces are of a uniform length, and pretty short—I'd guess a little short of 1,000 words each. What I like is how he manages to compress his persona down to size, preserving his maniac shtick (I know I know, everyone says it was real), but sometimes working almost poetically with the form itself of the newspaper op-ed. The first piece, for example, is covering his assistant ("Maria") getting a tattoo, obviously an exotic activity in the mid-'80s. Even in its short space you're not sure where it's going, until you do, and then it's over, though the headlong momentum lingers. Mostly Thompson is covering politics in these pieces and unfortunately for all of us he's somewhat less than prescient. At one point he predicts the Reagan Revolution would be a dim memory in 2000. Instead it was more virulent than ever—still is, in the demented Bizarro orange form. So some of Thompson's projections, 30 years later, look more like wishing. The usual vocabulary is in place—"savage," "bull fruit" (a prison term I had forgotten), "depravity," "pimps," etc.—as well as the gray area between his joking and reality. He drops Ed Bradley's name quite frequently, but I'm sure Bradley never said most of those things. I feel sad when I read Thompson nowadays. Everything has gotten so much worse than even he seemed able to imagine. The period covered here is a funny little backwater, though it contains at least one key moment, as Thompson charts it, and that is the overnight conversion of Oliver North in 1987. First he was a skulking criminal (there's another Thompson term) about to take the Reagan administration down in scandal and then he became a hero of popular culture, simply by using his testimony to Congress to throw the now-familiar entitled white guy tantrum. See also Brett Kavanaugh. (North and everybody also had some strategic help in the ultimate cover-up of Iran-Contra by none other than Bill Barr, but I digress.) It's even possible to say North invented the tactic in a way. Fox News was not even around then. Better days, better days. But rapidly going bad. Thompson's account of hanging around in a bar watching TV news, as was his wont, seems poignant now when he realizes the yahoo salt-of-the-earths he's sousing with are on North's side. Generation of Swine has about 100 individual bursts of rapid-fire typing and some solid numbers and analysis about the period. But it certainly comes from another time than the one we live in now, and last time through I thought nostalgia was mostly what this book had to offer.

In case it's not at the library.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

I think there's still plenty to love in Hunter S. Thompson's epic—what? Novel? Tall tale? It's so Nonfiction Novel Creative Nonfiction New Journalism that we don't even know what to call it. But every time through, I have to say, makes it seem just a little more dated, a little more self-indulgent, quaint, and time-bound, a little more inconsequential. Echoes of another time (sing now: "the way we were"). Certainly the gender politics are dated and all wrong, and the Samoan business is tricky on race. This also happened to be my first time through since Thompson's death, incredibly already more than a decade ago. I couldn't help but notice certain words and terms he favors like tics: "hunker down," "brutal," "lash together," and of course "fear and loathing" (though not exactly pro forma in that case). The drug use is still quite comical. Ralph Steadman's art remains perhaps the best part of all—even my July 1989 trade paperback has pages with those wonderful ink blots sprayed across them like blood from backsplash. There's a kind of innocence to the faith shown in hallucinogenic drugs, to an implicit belief that the behavior reported is desperate and outrageous in some noble way, and to the idea that "the American dream" (as featured in the subtitle, "A Savage Journey to the Heart of  ...") is an abstraction worth pursuing. Or, perhaps, worth pretending to pursue. But Thompson was never a phony if he was anything. He was problematic. My reflexive hero-worship of him in the '70s was nonetheless put off and disappointed by his fascinations with firearms and other ordnance as well as some of the behavior, which even with all the high-spirited reporting often seems merely loutish. All that notwithstanding and not to be minimized, it was still a pleasure to spend a little time again with the good doctor of journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, aka Raoul Duke, Doctor Gonzo, etc. The Johnny Depp phase embarrassed me for all concerned and Thompson's death saddened me. If I was uncritically adoring in the '70s perhaps I have reached a point of equilibrium now. He was good at what he did, though what he did was weird—sailed off on drug-fueled madcap adventures with some big media backdrop, while keeping his head enough about himself to look long and hard at our very depressing world, analyzing it to the fine points. This is the purest distillation of the cartoon character he made of himself and one of the most fun books to read I know. I keep meaning to look into Campaign Trail '72 again, because I wonder how it stands up across all this time. I know there's a good book of newspaper columns too, at least one, and scattered other good stuff. But this is the classic vintage and pretty much the good stuff straight, such as it is.

In case it's not at the library.