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Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 (Paperback)
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Having not read Thompson previously, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but this was an incredible read. Being just old enough to barely remember all of these events, it was a bit of a refresher, but nothing like this ever made the evening news. There are, to me, striking similarities to the 2008 election. I just hope that there is not the backlash in 2012 that we saw in 1980...if so, the Mayans might have been right.
The good doctor on the campaign trail in 1972. What could be better than having Hunter use his caustic wit and gonzo journalistic attack on the likes of Nixon, Muskie, and Humphrey? Beyond the humor is some of the most insightful political reporting ever. Thompson is a character in his own books, but here the non-fiction aspect shines brightly as well. I would recommend it to any fan/detractor of politics and would consider it must reading for any advanced political science class.
One of the most under appreciated Thompson books in his long literary history. Whereas Fear and Loathing was short on facts and filled with fantasy, Campaign Trail '72 captures the spirit of the time but tells it through the lens of somebody who really wanted McGovern to crush Nixon but knew he was too idealistic to get voted into office. Filled with just enough Thompson insanity to make it unique, but don't read this if your sole interest in Thompson was the absurdity in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
This was all about the ‘72 Democratic campaign trail because as the heavily favored incumbent Nixon had little campaigning needing to be done. I was in the military overseas at the time, but do remember much of this. Another excellent reason to read this is we are coming into an election year with almost identical chronology and a similar villain....Trump is Nixon 2.0 (or 5.0 if the other republican presidents are included). Finished 20.12.19.
So much of HST's comments on politics in 1972 still hold good nearly 40 years later. Have things changed since then? Yes, of course they have. The Internet has enabled the spread of political memes much faster than was possible then. Public image is even more important now than then, with 24-hour TV, faster news cycles, and the like. But these are quantitative, not qualitative, changes. Basically, politics in the USA today seems to rest on the same foundations as when the good Doctor explored the belly of the best in 1972. I have found this to be one of the best books around to explain the American political psyche to a non-American.
Other reporters often fed Thompson stories they would never get published in their own papers. Thompson was a GREAT writer. He started off as a sports writer, and covers politics as well as Angell covered baseball. He does get in the way of his writing, and at times that is humorous, at other times it really reduces the level of work. But the man is...was great.
HST is a hell of a writer, not just for his drugs. Few others make journalism so venomous, and political squabbles so interesting. It's rather fitting that this is the 40th anniversary edition, re-released in one of the most spectacular train wrecks in years. One wonders, if HST lived, what he would have had to say about this pack of loonies. HST, as cynical as he wants to be, still has a bit of idealism buried in him somewhere, that a Democrat lesser evil will prevail over the tyranny of Nixon. But his coverage of the convention and the November trouncing is an exercise in despair. Not dated at all, except for a fee slurs. His style is his own. Makes you feel rage instead of cynicism.
Fascinating how much of this book resonates with what's happening in current politics. Nixon = Bush? Slows down near the end, and there's an endless section on parliamentary tactics at the convention. One note: since it was originally written as weekly commentary for Rolling Stone, it assumes some familiarity with the news of the day. So the beginning of each section may be confusing, but HST usually fills you in if you persist.
A decent bit of political reportage on the US Presidential election of 1972. There are times when the book is too narrative heavy and you wish there was more analysis but overall the ratio isn't too bad. I'm not sure HST brings something different to political coverage in the way that David Foster Wallace did to his piece "Up Simba / McCain's Promise" on McCain's bid in 2000 for the Republican party nomination. But there are still plenty of good insights in this book, some accurate, some not so accurate predictions for the future, and plenty of crazy stories too.
I turned nine during 1972, living in the English Midlands, so my recollections of the American Presidential campaign of that year are conspicuous by their paucity. If anyone had asked me during the summer of that year who Richard Nixon was, I might well have replied that I thought he was king of America. Endearingly misguided, perhaps, though it become evident from this collection of Hunter S Thompson's contemporaneous columns for 'Rolling Stone' that he believed that Nixon himself would have agreed with me. [For any regular viewers of Fox News, please note that Richard Nixon was NEVER King of America!]. These pieces are among Thompson's finest - resonant with his rage and increasing disbelief at the vagaries and hypocrisies of politicians and the huge sums of money thrown at the campaigns. It is not clear whom he despised more - President Nixon himself or Hubert Humphrey, for whom his most vitriolic diatribes are reserved. George McGovern, who would eventually secure the Democratic nomination, emerges as a figure worthy of respect. Thompson clearly didn't endorse the whole of his campaign but, let's be honest, it is unlikely that any candidate for any public office who could tick every box in Thompson's manifesto requests could secure backing from the more orthodox political cognoscenti. More than forty years on these pieces still bring the salient issues to life, and offer a sharp insight into American social history, and the already gaping chasm between 'normal' people's lives and those of the politicians professing to represent them.