Thompson - Kingdom of fear: loathsome secrets of a star-crossed child in the final days of the American dream

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Praise for Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson should be recognized for contributing some of the clearest, most bracing, and fearless analysis of the possibilities and failures of American democracy in the past century.

Chicago Tribune

Thompsons voice still jumps right off the page, as wild, vital, and gonzo as ever.

The Washington Post

[R]ollickingly funny throughout, Thompsons latest proves that the father of gonzo journalism is alive and well.

Publishers Weekly

Thompson gives another side to every story, another wall to cast your view of reality against. In doing so, he adds something often lacking or poorly executed in modern journalism. He makes it fun.

South Bend Tribune

Thompsons wicked humor, mixed with characteristic hubris, offers leaps of insight that it seems only he could unleash. He writes what others would fear to think, let alone lay down in such an unbridled manner.

Denver Rocky Mountain News

Hunter Thompson is the most creatively crazy and vulnerable of the New Journalists. His ideas are brilliant and honorable and valuablethe literary equivalent of Cubism: all rules are broken.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

His hallucinated vision strikes one as having been, after all, the sanest.

Nelson Algren

He amuses; he frightens; he flirts with doom. His achievement is substantial.

Garry Wills

There are only two adjectives writers care about anymorebrilliant and outrageousand Hunter Thompson has a freehold on both of them.

Tom Wolfe

What we have here is vintage Hunter S. Thompson, a literary orgy of wicked irreverence.

The Boston Globe

Thompson is a spirited, witty, observant, and original writer.

The New York Times

Obscene, horrid, repellent... driving, urgent, candid, searing... a fascinating, compelling book!

New York Post

No one can ever match Thompson in the vitriol department, and virtually nobody escapes his wrath.

The Flint Journal

While Tom Wolfe mastered the technique of being a fly on the wall, Thompson mastered the art of being a fly in the ointment. He made himself a part of every story, made no apologies for it, and thus produced far more honest reporting than any crusading member of the Fourth Estate.... Thompson isnt afraid to take the hard medicine, nor is he bashful about dishing it out.... He is still king of beasts, and his apocalyptic prophecies seldom miss their target.

Tulsa World

Also by Hunter S. Thompson

Hells Angels
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail 72
The Great Shark Hunt
The Curse of Lono
Generation of Swine
Songs of the Doomed
Better Than Sex
Screwjack
The Proud Highway
The Rum Diary
Fear and Loathing in America

The author gratefully acknowledges permission from the following sources

to reprint matierial in their control:

: Lyrics for One Time One Night written by David Hidalgo and Louis Perez 1988 DAVINCE MUSIC (BMI/NO K.O. MUSIC (BMI)/Administered by Bug. All Rights Reserved.

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Copyright 2003 by Gonzo International Corp.
All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Simon & Schuster paperback edition 2003

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS and colophon are
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DESIGNED BY LAUREN SIMONETTI

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Thompson, Hunter S.
Kingdom of fear: loathsome secrets of a star-crossed child in the final days of
the American century / Hunter S. Thompson.
p. cm.
1. Thompson, Hunter S. 2. JournalistsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.
PN4874.T444 A3 2003
070.92dc21 [B] 2002191228

ISBN-13: 978-0-684-87323-7
ISBN-10: 0-684-87323-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-684-87324-4 (Pbk)
ISBN-10: 0-684-87324-9 (Pbk)
eISBN-13: 978-1-439-12654-7

To Anita

Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

When the Going Gets Weird,
the Weird Turn Pro

Politics Is the Art of Controlling
Your Environment

If, as Paul Valry put it, the true poet is the one who inspires, Hunter Thompson is a true poet. His writing has inspired countless imitators (all of whom fail hideously, of course; nobody writes like Hunter) while opening glittering veins of savage wit and searing indignation to journalists sensible enough to benefit from his example without trying to copy his style. His notoriously vivid lifestylechronicled in his own works and, more fragmentarily, by scores of others who managed to hang on for part of the ridehas inspired plenty of imitators, too, although most have prudently avoided flying too close to that particular dark star. Most everybody who knows anything about Hunter is fascinated by him, and the concatenation of his work and his persona has made him a figure of uncommon fame. Five biographies of him have been published, two Hollywood feature films have been made from his books, and his name turns up on half a million Internet web pagesmore than William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, and Tom Wolfe combined.

But, given that he is also the onstage protagonist of most of his works, the question arises as to who is primarily responsible for all this inspiration and intrigue: Hunter the writer, or Hunter the written-about? This turns out to be a timely issue, insomuch as Kingdom of Fear constitutes a memoir, and as such represents an authors confrontation with himself. The answers are not easy to come byespecially since Kingdom of Fear, like Einsteins Autobiographical Notes, quickly veers from reflections on who the author is to demonstrations of what he does. Nor, once arrived at, do they give us anything like the whole picture. Every man is many menWhitman was stating the facts when he said that he contained multitudesand no simple scheme of an artist as creator versus the same artist as subject can produce more than a flash photo of reality. Still, an examination of the relationship between Hunter the writer and his first-person protagonist may cast at least a thin beam of torchlight into the cavernous darkness of his abundant creativity.