The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, July 28, 1993, Page 7, Image 7
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J. JLVlXLiVX* X X L V> C/ V
By ERIC GLENN
Photo Editor
A few weeks back, I was sitting in my
office, well maybe not mine, but an office
never the less, and rifling through a mountain
of press releases on obscure bands, dull
movies, and too-long-running theatre productions.
I was looking for something to review,
but all the good ones were gone. Such is life.
But down at the bottom towards the back
was a book and a folder labeled "Hunter." On
the cover was an ominous man wearing missmatched
clothes and toting an equally ominous
shotgun.
So naturally I flipped through it.
It seems we had been granted an interview
with the lovely Miss E. Jean Carroll, and I,
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someone other than myself, decided this was
a task demanding my unique talents. Little
did I know that within the confines of that
biography of Hunter S. Thompson, a gonzo
journalist in the early '70s, was debauchery
galore, emotional devastation, hilarious
escapades, numerous sex tools and more than
a few moments that would bring me to love,
hate, revere and loathe its subject.
It seemed like a simple enough assignment
Read the book, talk to the
writer, write the review.
Idealism is grand. J t *J
So I started in on it. Ffljgp
THE REVIEW L 4
"He was god, he was W
everything, he was Hunter," JP^.- was
the author's opinion of T*
who he was, but I think that
it is more adept to say he is 9j9
a man shrouded in a myth.
And this book has helped to 9
riisnel a little of it.
The thing that kept pop- IP
ping into my head as I
went deeper into the book Author EJes
was the way Thompson
would do things that no one else would.
He was the guy who would dare to do the
unthinkable and stand in awe when he succeeded
time and time again. But these were
acts we wanted to perpetuate. He would say
the things that we wanted to say and could
only say in our deepest nightmares.
He was such a gifted liar that he was able
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range and Savag
to tell the truth, without benefit of source or <
fact, for the sheer reason that it was true or :
maybe it just needed to be said. I
To the generation born at the end of i
Vietnam, Hunter S. Thompson is only a foot- t
note in American history, but to the genera
uon that came before us, he was one 01 the j
most widely read and listened to writers of his I
time, writing for a small underground publi- I
cation called Rolling Stone. His freedom to <
state the obvious and to say the things that I
John Chancellor couldn't, or wouldn't, had 1
made him attractive to many and a target for i
some. ]
His rise in the '70s after a stint with .
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his credit, such as "Fear and Loathing in Las i
Vegas," "Hell's Angels," and "Fear and '
Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," 1
Thompson was bound to eventually be writ- ]
ten about. i
The book itself is written in a strange, but
intriguing way, switching between chapters
from biographical interviews to account <
Thompson's life to fictionalistic accounts I
from Hunter s Colorado farm. j
Instead of a boring two hundred page essay i
tracking his life day to day and year to year,
E. Jean Carroll opted for a more
I stylish and more honest view of
her subject. A friend of
Thompson's for a few years,
Carroll had access in a way that
allowed for an in-depth interview
with the man of today and
several dozen interviews with
the people who knew him best.
Through these interviews she
has created a tapestry of rich
Hhues using Hunter himself as the
pattern and his friends, loves,
enemies and family as the fabCarroll
creates a fictional
character in Leatia Snap, Ph.D.,
in Carroll an expert on birds, who journeys
to Hunters ranch in Colorado to
examine his prized peacocks not knowing that
ultimately she would have clothes hacked of
with a rather large knife in a hot tub and
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It is through this character that the author
chose to weave her tale. At first, the use of a
third party to tell a story was a little hard to
get used to, but after chapter 3 I stopped won$^OFF
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1
e Life of Huntei
iering if she was real, and I
stopped caring. The character,
if not the person, was T"1
real and that was good ?? '
enough. " |
I asked the author why p / *
she chose to show all these " wX / k
things, the guns, the drugs,
the indulgence, through the
syes of a fictional charac- W ~ ' 1
ter, (in reality Leatia Snap K , k if
was the girl friend of the H J) I
most famous murderer in arf
pre-1800's England, E^kee 1
lohnathan Wilde). "I a/lf" '
promised Hunter I wouldn't |jjj?W<P >\
send him to jail," she said. IHMKjgg-ri
'The man commits felonies
from the time he gets up till J3A
he goes to bed. This way HpPC.
it's inadmissable in court." *
In Snap, Carroll invested
virtues and chastity and a jPP^Er?~?
certain amount of conservativeness
that is hilarious
and startling when it comes
11 r% onainct thp HpnlnraKIp To tllG 26H6rdti
creature that calls itself ?yie n}08*
Hunter. The author pur- writin
posely made her a tame per- called The Rollit
son, passive in every sense
of the word, and into this world of sex, drugs, I
guns, and creativity she is thrown.
The results are varied to say the least. But 1
through the interactions of host and guest, we 1
start to get a picture of Hunter that he doesn't :
want to be seen, the real side that is inside the
myth. i
"The myth has taken over. I'm really in the i
way as a person." Hunter said. i
The persona that he projected for thirty i
years is that of a misfit, a weirdo, an anarchist I
and an egomaniac. And at the start of the j
book this is reinforced. But as we switch back i
and forth between the biographical sections of 1
the book that look at his early life, we see the
things that shaped his life. We are witness to i
the quiet impact of his father's death on him, I
and we see his relationships with family, ]
friends and eventually the law. We are privy I
to the beginnings.
We see how the people around him adore
him and his neglect of that love. We watch as i
his marriage breaks up and, through the interviews
with his ex-wife, we see the torment of i
fmg d>h?ars flair
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r S. Thompson
I:
?^Jm
ion that came before us Thompson was
widely read and listened to writers of
g for a small underground publication
ig Stone."
ost love.
The ironic thing is that through the entire
xx)k the only people that really had a probem
with Hunter were authorities and the
society that he disassociated himself with.
E. Jean Carroll has created a brilliant biogaphy
that could have been filled with judgnent
and sarcasm but isn't. Through the
interviews with the people that knew him, we
tre given an honest picture, both good and
sad. From the writer we have no decree of
ludgement, no commentary. She just sits back
and lets us make up our mind as to who he is.
[ liked that.
The format is what endeared the book to
me. The fact that she didn't tell me what to
Lhink as so many other bio's do. Through the
length of the book, we get millisecond revelations
as to who he really is, the generosity as
well as the cruelty.
Some people go through life and are misunderstood,
mislabeled, and misquoted.
Hopefully this biography will clear up a little
Df the myth and show more of the man.
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