Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone – Old Paper & Cats, Reviews by S. Hargrave

Scary Basement Time

We were in the very scary zone of red tornado warning a little while ago and, wow, it was frightening. We were very lucky to not get very much rain and have the wind pretty much pass us by, but in the moment we were spending time in the basement and in the dark waiting for the warnings to end. My lovely spouse managed to wrangle all of our precious fur babies into the basement with us and was rewarded for her pains by having the skin of her collar eviscerated by Rusalka, who managed to be even more frightened than we were .

I am so glad everything is okay — though any kind of rain in the forecast is now extra frightening. We also have to reevaluate our emergency plans to include some wrappings for spicy purritos.

On a worn porch, a calico tabby lies in bright sunshine and lines of shadows. beside her is a thick paperback with a black-and-white picture of a sinewy pale man wearing T-bar sunglasses and smoking a cigarette.

The Essential Writing

Hunter S Thompson is one of my favourite writers and while I have reviewed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is without a doubt his most famous work, he is so much more than that novel. Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone collects his essential articles for the magazine which were published between the early 1970s and the mid-2000s. It’s a great survey of his work and all of its strangeness and glory.

A calico tabby lies on a worn porch with a thick paperback book.

Intersections with True Crime

When you start reading this very thick book it becomes rapidly clear that Rolling Stone threw Thompson at anything and everything in the hopes that his style would turn whatever reportage he gave them into an instant hit and eventually an instant classic. They were so hungry for his writing that they put up with so many blown deadlines and outrageous expenses.

Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential writing of Hunter S Thompson is a thick paperback book with a picture of Thompson smoking a cigarette on the cover.

While these articles aren’t true crime in the traditional sense, Thompson relentlessly reports on some watershed criminal events such as Richard Nixon and company and the Watergate constellation of criminal acts. He also wrote a very good article on the murder of civil rights activist Ruben Salazar entitled ‘Strange Rumblings in Aztlan’ which covers not only the crime, but its greater implications for the political climate in Los Angeles, especially in the Chicano community.

Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone is a thick paperback book collecting the essential writing of Hunter S Thompson.

A Note on the Art of Gonzo

From his articles on the Kentucky Derby to a divorce trial in Florida to his obituary on Nixon, Thompson brings Gonzo to everything he touches, and it’s brilliant. What I love about his writing is his stretching of reality in so many chaotic directions and his absolute willingness to be completely self-deprecating. He puts himself in the story but never in a way that outshines the actual people he’s writing about. Plus in the middle of all of this outrageous mess there are kernels of unvarnished truth and the kind of inside information that makes you feel a part of the story too.

A calico tabby licks her nose in front of a thick paperback book.

Packed Schedules

I’ve had to do something that only ever happens at this truly lovely time of year. I had to make a calendar for October and map out a month almost four weeks in advance. The good news is that our spooky season is packed with some great spooky stuff. The bad news is that looking at the careful jigsaw puzzle of events and appointment can be more than overwhelming right now. Also? I hope that there won’t be any reschedules because, wow, that would make one hell of a butterfly effect.