In honor of what would have been Hunter S. Thompson's 89th birthday, I suggest delving into the following books. Assuming you've already read the foundational texts of FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS and FEAR & LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL, I recommend checking out the first volume of Thompson's letters, THE PROUD HIGHWAY: SAGA OF A DESPERATE SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN, 1955-1967, as well as his underrated novel, THE RUM DIARY (cited by horror novelist Brian Keene as one of his top five favorite novels). Speaking of Keene... for some time now THE DAMNED HIGHWAY by Brian Keene and Nick Mamatas has been high on my personal Top Ten List of Lovecraft-inspired novels, right alongside Fritz Leiber's OUR LADY OF DARKNESS and Victor LaValle's THE BALLAD OF BLACK TOM. If you've ever yearned to read a political novel that combines the cosmic horror of "The Call of Cthulhu" with the amphetamine-fueled, psychedelic mindfuck that is FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, this is your ticket. A sympathetic high school History teacher gave me a copy of FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS when I was seventeen, and I haven't been quite the same since. I've been teaching FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (off and on) to my Composition students at CSU Long Beach since 2002; I now know that book better than myself. In THE DAMNED HIGHWAY, Keene and Mamatas pull off the impossible task of mimicking Thompson's persona without degrading it into a base cartoon caricature. By the time one reaches the final chapter, a great deal of emotional resonance rises unexpectedly off the page. I've been thinking of pairing THE DAMNED HIGHWAY with FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS in my Composition and Creative Writing classes, but I'm not certain the acolytes of Cthulhu would allow me to get away with such a brazen act.
On a related note, if you want to see HST's personal reading list, check out this previous CryptoPost.
Other HST related CryptoPosts can be found HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.
“Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube.”
—Hunter S. Thompson, KINGDOM OF FEAR, 2003
—Hunter S. Thompson, KINGDOM OF FEAR, 2003
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