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.


From Library Journal
"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.


Entertainment Weekly, Megan Harlan
Proud Highway proves as meaty as most bios on Thompson--and way more fun.


The New York Times Book Review, Charles Kaiser
Occasionally we see flashes of humor or intelligence, but.... Most of the more than 200 letters ... are neither particularly interesting nor particularly well written. There is not enough here to sustain the interest of a Hunter S. Thompson fan--only a fanatic would want to plow through all the way to the end.


From Booklist
William Kennedy (Ironweed) writes an evocative foreword to this collection of letters that lays out Thompson's early struggle to become a writer, and, in the process, Kennedy defines "gonzo journalism" as it relates to HST's brand of fiction. Of course, it is easy to write so evocatively when one's subject is an arrogant but talented writer. And no one will ever doubt the arrogance of HST after reading this book: he corresponded wildly and, according to the editor of the collection, always made carbon copies, "hoping they would be published . . . as a testament to his life and times." And directly from HST: "These were the pre-Xerox days, and I was anal retentive in my desire to save everything." The earliest letters in his 20,000-letter collection are dated 1947 (HST at 10 years old). The 200 letters of this published collection will include those written from 1955 to 1967. But self-assurance does not make a book, and this is quite a book. In these times of e-mail, letters like Hunter's are a reminder of what a letter can be--our own personal literature that is, indeed, a testament to our life and times. And the insights into U.S. cultural and political history offered in his letters are deliciously voyeuristic--his responses to being "stomped" by the Hell's Angels just prior to publication of his book about them; the crazy scenes of people invading Big Sur, seeking orgies with Henry Miller; the little pas de deux between HST and Philip Graham and between . . . This collection rivals any Thompson biography. Bonnie Smothers

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This first volume of the Fear and Loathing Letters begins with a high school essay written in 1955 - when Hunter S. Thompson was a wise (perhaps too wise) teenager in Louisville - and takes us through 1967, when the publication of Hell's Angels made the author an international celebrity (and nearly resulted in his death). In the intervening years, Thompson's prolific and often profound correspondence gives us an unforgettable vista of the America of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years as well as an authoritative introduction to the cultural revolution of the sixties. With a vicious eye for detail, a rude wit, and a brutal take on any and all pretenders, Thompson's missiles pierce pomposity and rattle the soul. Whether written to his mother, Virginia, or to such luminaries as Charles Kuralt, Philip Graham, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Carey McWilliams, Lyndon Johnson, and Joan Baez, the letters represent the evolution of an American original, a singular voice defying an era of banality.

FROM THE CRITICS

Charles Taylor

In his introduction to the The Proud Highway -- the first in what apparently will be several volumes of Hunter Thompson's letters -- editor Douglas Brinkley informs us that, from the time he was a boy, Thompson made carbon copies of his letters, "hoping they would be published someday as a testament to his life and times." And if that doesn't suggest someone in need of an editor, I don't know what does. This first volume of The Fear and Loathing Letters covers the years from 1955 to 1967 -- that's roughly from the time Thompson joined the Air Force until just after the publication of his book Hell's Angels and before the beginning of his Rolling Stone tenure.

These letters show that the mind-set that burst fully formed upon the world in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was present in Thompson from a very early age. The talent for violent invective and hipster put-on, the snarlingly self-righteous threats, the taste for all manner of chemical debauchery, is owned up to again and again in letters to friends and lovers, editors and Air Force superiors, creditors, landlords and any poor bastard who had the bad luck to run afoul of him. What hasn't been seen before is the young writer's ambition, the worship he lauded upon certain authors or books (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nelson Algren, the William Styron of Lie Down in Darkness -- "This man is a Writer," proclaims Thompson -- but not of Set This House on Fire). He desperately desired to join their company, and he had confidence that he would.

Thompson is a writer who needs rage. He's best when he finds a target worthy of the venom he can incubate. That's why he was always the most murderous and accurate of all Nixon haters. And why the only work in the last few years that matched his glory days was his Rolling Stone obit for Nixon. In the midst of the sentimental lies that accompanied Tricky's demise (and by the way, did anyone actually see the body?), Thompson's poison felt like a drink of clear water. That rage is best seen here in the letters written after JFK's assassination, with Thompson's mourning translating itself into disgust and fear of what lay ahead. It's less impressive when it's being snottily leveled at a woman friend who had the temerity to suggest Thompson read Jack Kerouac.

It's hard to reject the young romantic who -- writing about women, his own ambitions, his beloved Doberman -- makes himself unexpectedly felt here. It's also hard to deny the tediousness of this collection. There are plenty of reminders, though, of why this drug-addled coyote has been taken to readers', and not a few writers', hearts. "Too many people in this gutless world," he writes to one editor, "have come under the impression that writers are a race of finks, queers and candy asses to be bilked, cheated and mocked as a form of commercial sport. It should be noted, therefore ... that some writers possess .44 Magnums and can puncture beer cans with ... that weapon at a distance of 150 yards." Sometimes, as Blanche DuBois said, there's God so suddenly. -- Salon

Publishers Weekly

Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), according to editor Brinkley, has written more than 20,000 letters. For bile and outrageousness, this first volume in a collection of those letters to friends, editors, agents and others is peerless. When literary agent Sterling Lord declined to represent him, Thompson threatened to "cave in your face and scatter your teeth all over Fifth Avenue." Struggling to earn a living by freelancing, the author wrote President Johnson (addressed as "Dear Lyndon"), requesting he appoint Thompson governor of American Samoa to afford him a "pacific place" in which to write a novel "of overwhelming importance." Railing against corruption and stupidity, temperamentally unable to suffer the authority of fools, Thompson cannot keep regular jobs and roams the world, forever struggling for money and desperate for recognition of his considerable talent. But he doesn't hesitate to address the few writers and editors he admires with requests for help, comments on their work or generous praise. By turns exasperating and entertaining, this is also a devastating portrait of the writer as an incorrigible outsider. (June)

Library Journal