Kingdom of Fear is billed as a memoir, but in essence, all of Hunter S. Thompson's books could fit into this category since his life and work have always been tightly bound together by a mythology largely of his own making. (After all, this is the man who, before earning a single dollar as a writer, began meticulously saving a copy of every letter he ever sent.) Still, this is certainly an unconventional memoir, but then what would you expect from the father of gonzo journalism? In these pages Thompson manages to dig deep and reveal a few "loathsome secrets" without offering the kind of personal details he has always avoided. His childhood, for instance, is basically summed up in a sentence: "I look back on my youth with great fondness, but I would not recommend it as a working model to others." He does, however, reflect upon his considerable legacy, including his well-known, and admittedly exaggerated, use of controlled substances ("The brutal reality of politics alone would probably be intolerable without drugs"), as well as offer assessments of his own work, such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ("It's as good as The Great Gatsby and better than The Sun Also Rises").
In this collection of twisted parables and outlaw adventures, Thompson writes about his early run-ins with agents of authority and the lessons learned; his stint in the Air Force and the beginning of his journalism career; his unsuccessful, though illuminating, bid for Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado in 1970 as the Freak Power candidate; the casualties and unintended consequences thus far in the War on Terror; and numerous examples of present-day injustice and hypocrisy--all with his characteristic mix of brutal frankness laced with humor. He also offers his own take on state of the Union: "The prevailing quality of life in America--by any accepted methods of measuring--was inarguably freer and more politically open under Nixon than it is today in this evil year of Our Lord 2002." Thompson continues to make even the most deadly serious subject matter endlessly entertaining. --Shawn Carkonen
From Publishers Weekly
Hunter Thompson, author of such classics as Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and other journalistic endeavors, has finally penned a memoir. Well, sort of. Just as Thompson paved his own way in writing about politics, sports, news and culture throughout the 1960s and '70s, he now offers an autobiography that is typically unorthodox in style but still revealing previously unknown facts about its subject. Wavering between the uproarious and the lunatic, it's vintage Thompson through and through. Chapter one opens traditionally enough, with Thompson's mantra "When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro" setting the stage for the author's first brush with the law, in Louisville, 1946, when he was nine-he pushed a post office mailbox into the path of a speeding bus. He then flashes forward to the present, ranting about the absurdity of the government's post-September 11 "heightened state of alert." This mix of hilarious anecdotes and current-events tirades is the book's mainstay. Thompson shares details about being night manager of San Francisco's renowned O'Farrell Theater, covering the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago ("Random House had agreed, more or less, to finance my education") and running for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, all the while inserting views on terrorism, Bush and the American justice system. Characteristically incoherent at times, yet rollickingly funny throughout, Thompson's latest proves that the father of gonzo journalism is alive and well. Photos.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Who better to write about gonzo journalist Thompson than Thompson himself? Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Judging from the photos besprinkling these, uh, memoirs, gonzo journalist Thompson is morphing into Daddy Warbucks with moments of Dean Jagger (1950 supporting-actor Oscar winner) and Guy Kibbee ('30s star character actor) along the way. Hasn't lost his edge, though. He still seems to be at the vortex of panting babes, (potentially) heavy firepower, fountains of whiskey, mother lodes of mind-altering pharmaceuticals, and blizzards of legal papers--all while threading a Caddy 120 mph through some tree-lined suburb. Check out "Fear and Loathing in Elko" for Thompson at his gonzo-est; this masterful illustration of what it means to be over the top and out of control (Jim Carrey knows from nothing) seemingly purports to be the record of a run-in with a pre-Supreme Court Clarence Thomas--ask no more: read! Occasionally, Thompson lets the gravity underlying his ongoing mania show through. "The Witness," "Witness II," and "Witness III" trade in some of his pedal-to-the-metal outrageousness for genuine outrage over a 1990 attempted steamrolling of his Fourth Amendment rights. Outraged and outrageous, Thompson remains, in this hodgepodge of pieces spanning most of his life (the opening story about his first great prank, pulled at age 9, is priceless), a larger-than-life middle-American humorist whose only peers are Mark Twain and William Burroughs. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
The Washington Post Thompson's voice still jumps right off the page, as wild, vital and gonzo as ever.
Publishers Weekly Rollickingly funny throughout, Thompson's latest proves that the father of gonzo journalism is alive and well.
The Washington Post He amuses; he frightens; he flirts with doom. His achievement is substantial.
Review
The Washington Post He amuses; he frightens; he flirts with doom. His achievement is substantial.
Review
The Washington Post He amuses; he frightens; he flirts with doom. His achievement is substantial.
Book Description
Brilliant, provocative, outrageous, and brazen, Hunter S. Thompson's infamous rule breaking -- in his journalism, in his life, and of the law -- changed the shape of American letters and the face of American icons. Kingdom of Fear traces the course of Thompson's life as a rebel -- from a smart-mouthed Kentucky kid flouting all authority to a convention-defying journalist who came to personify a wild fusion of fact, fiction, and mind-altering substances. Call it the evolution of an outlaw. Here are the formative experiences that comprise Thompson's legendary trajectory alongside the weird and the ugly. Whether detailing his exploits as a foreign correspondent in Rio, his job as night manager of the notorious O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, his epic run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, or the sensational legal maneuvering that led to his full acquittal in the famous 99 Days trial, Thompson is at the peak of his narrative powers in Kingdom of Fear. And this boisterous, blistering ride illuminates as never before the professional and ideological risk taking of a literary genius and transgressive icon.
About the Author
Hunter S. Thompson's books include Fear and Loathing in America, Screwjack, Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Proud Highway, Better Than Sex, Songs of the Doomed, and The Rum Diary. A contributor to various national and international publications, including a weekly sports column for espn.com, Thompson lives in a fortified compound near Aspen, Colorado.
Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Brilliant, provacative, outrageous, and brazen, Hunter S. Thomspon's infamous rule breaking - in his journalism, in his life, and under the law - changed the shape of American letters and the face of American icons. Kingdom of Fear traces the course of Thompson's life as a rebel - from a smart-mouthed Kentucky kid flaunting all authority to a convention-defying journalist who came to personify a wild fusion of fact, fiction, and mind-altering substances." Call it the evolution of an outlaw. Here are the formative experiences that comprise Thompson's legendary trajectory alongside the weird and the ugly. Whether detailing his exploits as a foreign correspondent in Rio, his job as night manager of the notorious O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, his epic run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, or the sensational legal maneuvering that led to his full acquittal in the famous 99 Days trial, Thompson is at the peak of his narrative powers in Kingdom of Fear. And this boisterous, blistering ride illuminates as never before the professional and ideological risk taking of a literary genius and transgressive icon.
FROM THE CRITICS
The Los Angeles Times
The great satirist Terry Southern once stated that the writer's duty is to astonish the reader. Hunter S. Thompson reliably fulfills this mandate with audacious and finely crafted storytelling, and one simply marvels in astonishment. Inhabiting a one-man's-land that blurs journalism and fiction and precludes nothing, Thompson creates no finer collections of written word. Such is his latest random memoir, Kingdom of Fear. — Michael Simmons
Book Magazine - Don McLeese
Times like these inspire the best in Thompson, as this subversively surreal memoir (the back cover features a bare-assed Thompson firing a rifle attests. Though recent decades have found the good Doctor of Gonzology spinning his journalistic wheels, he's back in high gear with this book, his best since Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. Thompson here confronts a confluence of circumstancesﾽthe ascent of a president he considers more dangerous than Nixon, the 2002 arson committed by a park ranger that set ablaze his home state of Coloradoﾽthat bring a renewed sense of purpose to his writing. The book makes a strong case for Thompson as both a social prophet (his day-after analysis of the 9/11 tragedy proves particularly prescient and a patriot. As he admits of his public image, "It hasn't helped a lot to be a savage comic-book character for the last fifteen years, " though he insists that "I haven't found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as sitting at a desk writing." One of the photos illustrating the memoir pairs him with Bob Dylan. If Dylan didn't have Thompson in mind when writing the line "To live outside the law you must be honest," he should have.
Publishers Weekly
Hunter Thompson, author of such classics as Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and other journalistic endeavors, has finally penned a memoir. Well, sort of. Just as Thompson paved his own way in writing about politics, sports, news and culture throughout the 1960s and '70s, he now offers an autobiography that is typically unorthodox in style but still revealing previously unknown facts about its subject. Wavering between the uproarious and the lunatic, it's vintage Thompson through and through. Chapter one opens traditionally enough, with Thompson's mantra "When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro" setting the stage for the author's first brush with the law, in Louisville, 1946, when he was nine-he pushed a post office mailbox into the path of a speeding bus. He then flashes forward to the present, ranting about the absurdity of the government's post-September 11 "heightened state of alert." This mix of hilarious anecdotes and current-events tirades is the book's mainstay. Thompson shares details about being night manager of San Francisco's renowned O'Farrell Theater, covering the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago ("Random House had agreed, more or less, to finance my education") and running for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, all the while inserting views on terrorism, Bush and the American justice system. Characteristically incoherent at times, yet rollickingly funny throughout, Thompson's latest proves that the father of gonzo journalism is alive and well. Photos. Agent, Andrew Wylie. (Jan. 21)
Library Journal
What makes a gonzo journalist? Cult writer Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), the subject of adulatory Hollywood fare, offers some insights in this somewhat jumbled, occasionally funny, but more often tedious book of writings, many of them previously published. Thompson's much-imitated writing is fueled by a heavy dose of fear (always capitalized and not only in casino towns) for his safety and sanity, an unshakable addiction to politics, a red-blooded love of America and its best ambitions, drugs and booze, and a magnetic attraction to those living on the edge. There are some canny observations on the difference between outlaws and lawbreakers, insights into the corruption of politics by politicians' lust for power, and instructive pieces on voter rebellion. But Thompson is so obviously charmed by his status as an icon of the counterculture that his writing becomes lazy. He has found his gonzo groove, but it traps his exigent political and social irreverence in a humdrum style, replete with hot cars, guns, girls, and expensive liquor but without packing the heat of earlier work. Recommended for large public libraries only.-Ulrich Baer, NYU
Kirkus Reviews
One of "the last unrepentant public dope fiends" (Fear and Loathing in America, 2000, etc.) is still armed and dangerous after these many years, whether fingering typewriter or pistol. "Hell, I don't miss those whispers, those soft groans of fear when I enter a civilized room," Thompson writes in this collection of political and personal dispatches, attributing the mutterings to the failed understanding that he's a teenage girl trapped in the body of a 65-year-old doper and career criminal. Maybe, but anybody might quail before someone whose day begins: "I finished my ham and eggs and knocked back some whiskey and picked up my Weatherby Mark V .300 Magnum and a ball of black Opium for dessert and went outside with a fierce kind of joy in my heart." Thompson is too outrageous ever to grow stale, his storytelling too rockingly mad to ignore: "I had stopped for the moment beside the road to put out a newspaper fire in the backseat. . . ." Put it out with a can of beer, that is, while a mountain lion takes a leap at him from a cliff above. There are vengeful tangents, Old Testament fury, acts of retribution, accidents not waiting to happen but proceeding nonstop. And choice bons mots: "Texas is not the only state full of wealthy freaks with sinister agendas," or the personally apt but nonetheless scary, "morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent." The Thompson wisdom on political protest: "A Willingness to Argue, however violently, implies a faith of some basic kind in the antagonist." On the invasion of Grenada: "low-risk, high-gain, cost-plus." And more-the whole with enough bile to make a really big custard. "I warped a few things," says Thompson of his writing. When you're a radioactiveforce field of one, what do you expect? Candent prose that still screws and buckles all it touches.
Art & Photography
Book Info
