Kingdom of Fear
Authors: Hunter S. Thompson
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
“Thompson’s voice still jumps right off the page, as wild, vital, and gonzo as ever.”
—The Washington Post
“[R]ollickingly funny throughout, Thompson’s 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
“Thompson’s 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 valuable—the 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 anymore—‘brilliant’ and ‘outrageous’—and 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 isn’t 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
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Also by Hunter S. Thompson
Hell’s 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:
Page 56
: “Guilt by Association at Heart of Auman Case” by Karen Abbott, from the
Rocky Mountain News,
April 29, 2002;
page 92
: “The Battle of Aspen” from
Rolling Stone #67,
October 1,1970;
Page 112
: Lyrics for “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed © lou Reed/EMI, All Rights Reserved;
Page 117
: “Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and the Last Battle of Aspen” by Loren Jenkins, from
SMART
magazine, Jan/Feb 1990;
Page 194
: Lyrics for “American Pie” by Don McLean © Songs of Universal/BMI, All Rights Reserved;
Page 242
: “Knock, Knock—Who’s There” by Edward T. Cross, from the
Aspen Times Daily,
June 18, 1990;
Page 245
: “D.A. Snags Thompson in Sex Case” by David Matthews-Price, from the
Aspen Times Daily,
Page 251
: “Gonzo’s Last Stand?” from
The Village Voice,
May 15,1990;
Page 253
: “D.A. May File Case Against Aspen Writer” by Eve O’Brien, from
The Denver Post,
March 14, 1990;
Page 258
: “Thompson Bound Over For Trial” by David Matthews-Price, from the
Aspen Times Daily,
Page 262
: “Thompson Rejects Plea Bargain; Takes Delivery of Convertible” by David Matthews-Price, from the
Aspen Times Daily,
Page 266
: “The Sinister Sex and Drugs Case of Hunter S. Thompson” by Richard Stratton, from
High Times
magazine;
Page 292
: 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
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First Simon & Schuster paperback edition 2003
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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. Journalists—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PN4874.T444 A3 2003
070.92—dc21 [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
The Mailbox: Louisville, Summer of 1946
There Is No Such Thing as Paranoia
Strange Lusts and Terrifying Memories
God Might Forgive You, but I Won’t
The Felony Murder Law—Don’t Let This Happen to You
Politics Is the Art of Controlling
Your Environment
Running for Sheriff: Aspen 1970
Sunday Night at the Fontainebleau
Dealing with the D.A.—Before and After
Where Were You When the Fun Stopped?
Geerlings & the War Minister’s Son
Yesterday’s Weirdness Is Tomorrow’s Reason Why
May You Live in Interesting Times
It Never Got Weird Enough for Me
Fear and Loathing at the Taco Stand
If, as Paul Valéry 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 lifestyle—chronicled in his own works and, more fragmentarily, by scores of others who managed to hang on for part of the ride—has 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 pages—more 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 author’s confrontation with himself. The answers are not easy to come by—especially since
Kingdom of Fear,
like Einstein’s
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 men—Whitman was stating the facts when he said that he contained multitudes—and 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.