Kingdom of Fear

January 13, 2003
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.