Was Hunter S. Thompson a good writer in your eyes? Is his most

>>9720767
Yes and yes.

>>9720767
Fear and Loathing is extremely poignant and captures that otherwise ineffable something of the hippy movement. It has great power, for a book essentially about nothing.

I can't speak for his other works however.

No and No

Its so short it can be read in an afternoon, and yes its worth it.

Does anyone recommend Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 or Hell's Angels? They've both been on my list for a while.

>>9720931
Absolutely on Hell's Angels - it's his best work IMO, but it's also told basically entirely straight; there's no gonzo in it.

'72 is alright, but it drags in a number of places, and eventually Thompson's style can get grating.

Yeah, excellent writing with cutting moments of clarity. I also completely fell in love with Ralph Steadman's illustration. He's the only artist I've ever been sincerely jealous of.

The article he wrote the day after 9/11 is genuinely chilling

>>9721215
>The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

> http://proxy.espn.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751

Oof. He called it.

9/11 was a crazy time. I left home to begin undergrad on 9/13. Went from a super conservative small town to one of the most far-left campuses in the USA. It was.... quite a change, and with the world changing the way it did.... well, yeah. What a time to be alive. :/

Can an oldfag explain how is it that Thompson was initially recognized? Was it the Hell's Angels ordeal?

>>9721267
Fear and Loathing was written under an alias because he was afraid of losing his job, but people immediately recognized the talent.

yes, F&L in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels are great fun

>>9720767
poor mans naked lunch

>>9721260
Dang how old are you

>>9721274
so you haven't read either book?

>>9721345
Just turned 34. Have a happy and (relatively) successful life, but still here shitposting away (though desu senpai, /lit/ and /diy/ are still decent enough every now and then to allow the habit to not be entirely without merit).

>>9720931
FaLotCT72 is good just for being a complete narration of a US election year, IMO. but don't fall for assuming Better Than Sex is the same thing, it's mostly just transcriptions of faxes.

>>9720931
Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72 is a great snapshot of American politics in an election year. When you get right down to it, not much has changed since the days of Nixon. You can learn a lot reading it.

File: Jean Cocteau.jpg (114KB, 625x882px) Image search: [Google]

114KB, 625x882px

>>9720767
It's ok. It's 200 pages of my drug diary desu, but there are a couple of great passages eulogizing the 60s that put everything in context, and make it look like there was a point to the rambling. It's not boring.

>>9721503

I've become interested in Cocteau because a performance of a work of his is sampled in a piece of music that I like.

What do you know about Cocteau anon?

>>9721523
I've read Les Enfants Terribles and thoroughly enjoyed it, very enchanting.

>>9720767

I bought a copy of the book after the movie came out. You know, one of those copies of the source text that comes out /after/ the movie's been released, featuring a blatant image of the film-content (Depp's squeezed head).

I got about halfway through the book, and got bored with it. I was about at the point where the attorney was in the tub and daring the protagonist-Johnny Depp character to throw a toaster in, or something. I never finished the book, altogether stopped caring about it, and I want to say that it went away in some family garage sale. Either way I never cared to finish. I also never saw the film.

I was a young teenager at the time, but even without "getting" all of the adult narrative and references, I can still vaguely remember being bored with it all. It's been a long time and perhaps my disinterest was misplaced, but Hunter S. Thompson had a good, clear shot to impact my receptive teenage brain, and he failed utterly.

He /bored/ me.

>>9721536
Ugh. The movie was shit, while the book was actually pretty good desu senpai.