Book Excerpt: The Great Shark Hunt

By Hunter S Thompson

4 February 2005

I was midway through this book and marvelling at Thompson when I heard he'd shot himself. This was just over a week ago. I wrote an impromptu obit, which you can read if you go to my blog (the link is on the home page). There's absolutely no connection between Thompson and badminton -- although he mentioned it once somewhere among his enormous collection of writings. But he was a well-known sportswriter, particularly at boxing and football. Apart from that, no reason his book should be featured here...

Still, why restrict our topics to badminton, especially when it comes to books? I don't have the energy to do a review, so I've typed in some excerpts from the book. Many of you might find the language shocking -- but that's the way Hunter writes.

Some information about Hunter before I proceed: He began his career as a freelance journalist in the mid-60's... covered South American politics... made his name with an astonishing book called Hell's Angels, in which he describes his experiences with the Hell's Angels motorcyle gang, who are anything but civil and easy people to interview... then wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which created a sensation and was made into a movie starring Johnny Depp... As far as I'm concerned, Hunter's best writing is his political coverage, his savage criticism of Richard Nixon and the other political 'thugs and fixers' who ran the country (it isn't very different now)... with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail being a monumental work.

Hunter's style was a brazen first-person approach, wherein he walks into a story and makes it revolve around him. Every story is a Confrontation betweeen him and his subject... he called this style "Gonzo"... I find his writings strangely humanistic, despite their excesses...

Freak Power in the Rockies
"The people who had reason to fear the Edwards campaign were the sub-dividers, ski-pimps and city-based land-developers who ahd come like a plague of poison roaches to buy and sell the whole valley out from under the people who still valued it as a good place to live, not just a good investment.

Our program, basically, was to drive the real estate goons completely out of the valley: to prevent the State Highway Department from bringing a four-lane highway into the town and in fact to ban all auto traffic from every downtown street. Turn them all into grassy malls where everybody, even freaks, could do whatever's right. No more huge, space-killing apartment buildings to block the view, from any downtown street, of anybody who might want to look up and see the mountains. No more land-rapes, no more busts for "flute-playing" or "blocking the sidewalk"… fuck the tourists, dead-end the highway, zone the greedheads out of existence, and in general create a town where people could live like human beings, instead of slaves to some bogus sense of Progress that is driving us all mad."

The Temptations of Jean-Claude Killy
"Jean-Claude had been there -- to that rare high place where only the snow leopards live; and now, 26-years-old with more dollars thanhe can use or count, there is nothing else to match those peaks he has already beaten. Now it is all downhill for hte world's richest ski bum. He was good enought -- and lucky -- for a while, to live in that Win-Lose, Black-White, Do-or-Die world of the international super TV athlete. It aws a beautiful show while it lasted, and Killy did his thing better than anyone else has ever done it before.
But now, with nothing else to win, he is down on the killing floor with the rest of us -- sucked into strange and senseless wars on unfamiliar terms; haunted by a sense of loss that no amount of money can ever replace; mocked by the cotton-candy rules of a mean game that still awes him..."

The Funeral of Mother Miles (from Hell's Angels)
"When I heard he'd been killed I called Sonny to ask about the funeral... The word went out on Monday and Tuesday by telephone. This was not going to be any Jay Gatsby funeral; the Angles wanted a full-dress rally. Miles' status was not hte point; the death of any Angel requires a show of strength by the others. It is a form of affirmation -- not for the dead, but the living. There are no set penalties for not showing up, because none are necessary. In the cheap loneliness that is the overriding fact of every outlaw's life, a funeral is a bleak reminder that the tribe is smaller by one. The circle is one line shorter, the enemy jacks up the odds just a little bit more, and defenders of the faith need something to take off the chill. A funeral is a time for counting the loyal, for seeing how many are left. There is no question about skipping work, going without sleep or riding hours in a cold win to be there on time."

Living in the Time of Alger, Greeley, Debs
"I picked up a young, happy-go-lucky type from Pennysylvania. He had just quit a hay-hauling job in North Dakota and was on his way to Los Angeles, where he felt sure of getting a job.
Maybe so, I thought, but I hope I don' thave to pick you up in 10 years when they've really tightened the screws, because the day of the boomer is rapidly coming to an end. In the age of automation and job security, a touch of the wanderlust is the kiss of death.
I returned to the Holiday Inn -- where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms -- to consider the paradox of a nationa that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged indiviualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to taht diminishing band of yesterday's refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from."

The McGovern Juggernaut Rolls On
(Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail)
"It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie doll President, with his Barbie doll wife and his box-full of Barbie doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts, on nights when the moon comes too close…

McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the thigns Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"