The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (Fear and Loathing Letters)

This first volume of the correspondence of Hunter S. Thompson begins with a high school essay and runs up through the publication of Thompson's breakout book, Hell's Angels. Thompson apparently never threw a letter away, so the reader has the treat of experiencing the full evolution of his pyrotechnic writing style, rant by rant. The letters--to girlfriends, to bill collectors, to placers of "Help Wanted" ads, to editors and publishers--are usually spiced with political commentary. The style and the political animus always seem to drive each other. For instance, an 11/22/63 letter to novelist and friend William J. Kennedy about the day's cataclysm is apparently the birthplace of the signal phrase "fear and loathing." (Thompson summed up the Kennedy assassination thus: "The savage nuts have shattered the great myth of American decency.") And the willingness to write strangers is stunning: this collection includes Thompson's letter to LBJ seeking appointment to the governorship of American Samoa. You might have thought Garry Trudeau was exaggerating in his Doonesbury characterization of the Thompson-based character Duke. He was not.

• Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library (Hardcover))
• Fear And Loathing In America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist (Gonzo Letters)
• Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
• Kingdom of Fear : Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century
• Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream Gonzo Papers, Vol. 3
• The Rum Diary: The Long Lost Novel
• Fear and Loathing in America : The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist
• Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness--Modern History from the Sports Desk
• Better Than Sex:: Confessions of a Political Junkie (Gonzo Papers)
• Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s (Gonzo Letters)