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Another Portland Blog

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

 

Kingdom of Fear

I finished Hunter S. Thompson's latest a few days ago. I found a copy of it for $10.00 on a close out table at Powell's. This thing is a long way from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

To say that Thompson's work has faltered over the last couple of decades would be understatement. In recent years, the journalist's main gig has been writing a little read, randomly published sports column for ESPN's Page 2. What has appeared in other publications like Rolling Stone, such as an article titled Fear and Loathing at the Taco Stand has been a bizarre mishmash of a tiny bit of truth and a whole lot of wild lies. Some might say this is exactly what his uber-weird brand of gonzo journalism is all about but most of the old stuff was somewhat grounded in reality.

Kingdom of Fear, published in late 2003, was billed as an autobiography but it's more of a compendium of old memories and previously published articles. It opens with 30 pages of apocalyptic ramblings on the state of the US in the wake of 9/11 before jumping into a chapter about the time when a Thompson, as a kid, was allegedly questioned by FBI agents after tipping over a mailbox in front of a bus. The rest bops from anecdote to anecdote such as the authors stint as the night manager of a porn house in San Francisco and a late-night encounter with a fan that almost lead to several felony convictions.

I can't say the book is worth reading from cover to cover but, at the very least, it's worth cracking open for two bits in particular. In one, Hunter takes on a cougar that somehow managed to crawl in the backseat of his Cadillac. In a more recent anecdote, the journalist duck authorities after a midnight raid on Jack Nicholson's house outside of Aspen. An excerpt, not for the faint of heart:

"I drove the Jeep all the way up to the front door and left the motor running as I fetched the bleeding elk heart out of the backseat and carried it up to the house. I rang the doorbell a few times before I gave up and left the heart...propped against the door in a way that would cause it to tumble into the house whenever the door was opened. It seemed like the right thing to do in light of the rudeness I had experienced, and panic was setting in. On my way back to the truck I made sure the gun was clear by cranking off the rest of the clip straight up in the air... I was sure I'd seen somebody watching me from inside the darkened kitchen window, which angered me even further, because I felt I was being snubbed."

I'm not sure if either is more fiction than fact but both are sort of thing that might be incredibly fun to read aloud in a stuck elevator (yup, joke). Thompson has a new book set to be released in August along with a film version of The Rum Diary supposedly scheduled to begin filming later this year in San Juan. Benecio del Toro is set to direct.

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