Thompson Hunter S - Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

both for his vibrant prose style and his career-long autopsy on the death of the American dream.

San Francisco Examiner

Extraordinary. Thompson was burning with a lovely light that seared these letters with wit, wonder, and insight These letters could serve as mileposts along the way of where weve been and where we are

Atlanta Journal & Constitution

A careening, chaotic, rollercoaster ride through time Crackling electrical charged fused from the Fires of Hell Direction Purpose Energy.

William S. Burroughs

Another insightful masterpiece from the finest southern gentleman since Colonel Harland Sanders. Read these letters, but do not, under any circumstances, give this man your number.

Johnny Depp

HST takes the air out of airmail and replaces it with pure, compressed, explosive hydrogen (plus laughing gas). Youve never gotten any letters like theseunless youre Abelard and Heloise, in which case youre castrated and dead.

P.J ORourke

Some of the finest political and social writing of our times.

The Seattle Times

Astonishing We get overdosed with surprises.

Newsweek

Perhaps the most honest writer we have. His letters make clear that he doesnt liehe simply tells outsized truths that most people are so used to screening out that we have to laugh or shrug them off as exaggeration.

Time Out

Hunter S. Thompson again proves himself a great American writer The Proud Highway is something of an adventure story, the tale of a man who insisted, in the early 60s, that it was still feasible to drink unto blindness, jump smugglers boats and, indeed, move from home to home with the frequency of a Mayflower truck.

The Virginian Pilot

Fast, furious, loaded with incident, and utterly fearless [Thompson] may be the best letter writer since Flaubert.

Mens Journal

Lurking beneath the aggressive energy and ferocious will that powers these letters is a wistful, doom-haunted melancholy that finds its true release not in rage and excess, but in the act of writing.

Newsday

Bracing, often hilarious epistles.

New Orleans Times-Picayune

Fear and Loathing, aphorism and malediction, mischief and indigence, fill this galvanically gonzo collection of Thompsons early letters.

Kirkus Reviews

Peerless in its outrageousness By turns exasperating and entertaining, this is also a devastating portrait of the writer as an incorrigible outsider.

Publishers Weekly

a savage and highly personal history of the late 1960s that will remind readers that Hunter Thompson is a twisted American treasure.

The Orlando Sentinel

Irresistible The letters and other fragments in this collection are invested with the same rugged, outspoken individualism as his more public writings, which makes them just as difficult to put down.

Richard Berstem
The New York Times

This is a surprising and entertaining book, simply for what it claims to be the electrified musings of a young man, starving and wild, determined to succeed as a writer.

Austin American-Statesman

These Thompsonesque burlesques are hilariously splenetic, shocking and frequently insightful.

Lexington Kentucky Herald-Leader

A shot in the liver for struggling writers and a searing testimony to an important moment in American journalism. Highly recommended.

Library Journal

Vastly entertaining and a crash course in good writing an amazingly good read and a reminder that behind the image lies a tremendous talent.

Boulder Planet

Roaring at perceived injustice This is the story that Hunter S. Thompson fans would never get from Doctor Thompson himself if he sat down to write an autobiography: loyalty, insanity, angst, altruism, and even streaks of tenderness.

Houston Chronicle

The Proud Highway gives Thompson fans a fresh dose of the past. Here is the old Harley hog of a writer revving up, firing on all cylinders and riding away into the sunset.

News & Record (Greensboro, NC)

Thompson wrote great, entertaining letters even when he was apologizing for his behavior or haggling with editors over money.

The Arizona Republic

Monumental Thompson conveys his sense of purpose with equal measures of fire and clarity, reminding us that, all myths aside, Thompsons literary prowess is real.

Louisville Courier Journal

Razor sharp and relevant today.

The Denver Post

Through his letters you see the path he took to becoming the god of gonzo journalism

Kansas City Star

Vintage Thompson, alive with vicious wit, brutal comic savagery, and vitality Strongly recommended.

Express Books (Berkeley, CA)

Rabidly funny.

Mirabella

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright 1997 by Hunter S. Thompson

All rights reserved

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc, New York and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material

L IVERIGHT P UBLISHING C ORPORATION Excerpt from A Poets Advice to Students from A Miscellany Revised by E E Cummings edited by George J Firmage Copyright 1955, 1965 by the Trustees for the E E Cummings Trust Copyright 1958 1965 by George J Firmage Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Company

The Nation The Nonstudent Left by Hunter S. Thompson (The Nation, September 27, 1965) Copyright 1965 by The Nation Reprinted by permission of The Nation magazine

S PECIAL R IDER M USIC Excerpt from Ballad of a Thin Man by Bob Dylan Copyright 1965 by Warner Bros Inc Copyright renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music Reprinted by permission of Special Rider Music

Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 97-94231

eISBN: 978-0-307-82662-6

This edition published by arrangement with Villard Books a division of Random House Inc Villard Books is a registered trademark of Random House Inc.

v3.1

Arms, my only ornamentmy only rest, the fight

Cervantes, Don Quixote

Foreword: The Curse of the Bronze Plaque
by William J. Kennedy