We are in the middle of a very long road with my son's health. We have good insurance but still have laid out thousands in copays and non-covered costs. Without health care, we would be homeless and our son may not be in the relatively good position he is in today. If one of us becomes unemployed, we are screwed! We will not be able to pay for the copays etc. and afford the house and food. Worst of all...under the old law, my son would never be able to get health insurance when he is an adult...why? Because he had the nerve to get cancer as a child...is that how a nation looks after it's people?
We are in the middle of a very long road with my son's health. We have good insurance but still have laid out thousands in copays and non-covered costs. Without health care, we would be homeless and our son may not be in the relatively good position he is in today. If one of us becomes unemployed, we are screwed! We will not be able to pay for the copays etc. and afford the house and food. Worst of all...under the old law, my son would never be able to get health insurance when he is an adult...why? Because he had the nerve to get cancer as a child...is that how a nation looks after it's people?
i hope you child gets well soon
to answer your question
yes, that IS how this nation looks after its people
and it's disgusting
and we keep playing their game and voting to support this corrupt system
The whole world will be different soon... - EV
RED ROCKS 6-19-95
AUGUSTA 9-26-96
MANSFIELD 9-15-98
BOSTON 9-29-04
BOSTON 5-25-06
MANSFIELD 6-30-08
EV SOLO BOSTON 8-01-08
BOSTON 5-17-10
EV SOLO BOSTON 6-16-11
PJ20 9-3-11
PJ20 9-4-11
WRIGLEY 7-19-13
WORCESTER 10-15-13
WORCESTER 10-16-13
HARTFORD 10-25-13
We are in the middle of a very long road with my son's health. We have good insurance but still have laid out thousands in copays and non-covered costs. Without health care, we would be homeless and our son may not be in the relatively good position he is in today. If one of us becomes unemployed, we are screwed! We will not be able to pay for the copays etc. and afford the house and food. Worst of all...under the old law, my son would never be able to get health insurance when he is an adult...why? Because he had the nerve to get cancer as a child...is that how a nation looks after it's people?
i hope you child gets well soon
to answer your question
yes, that IS how this nation looks after its people
and it's disgusting
and we keep playing their game and voting to support this corrupt system
Thank you...and you are right...we just let it happen. Not sure what it is going to take for us to do more? Seems these days we just sit and moan alot. I think we have too much at our fingertips in the digital age and we have forgotten what it is like to have to take action....perhaps action has such a scary "possible" outcome, that is what is holding us back?
'So is there a difference between Democrats and Republicans? Sure. The Democrats say one thing ("Save the planet!") and then do another--quietly holding hands behind the scenes with the bastards who make this world a dirtier, meaner place. The Republicans just come right out and give the bastards a corner office in the West Wing. That's the difference.'
"Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous 'trickle-down' theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow 'trickle down' to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote."
"Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous 'trickle-down' theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow 'trickle down' to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote."
- Hunter S. Thompson
Thompson is awesome. He is true.
Shows: 6.27.08 Hartford, CT/5.15.10 Hartford, CT/6.18.2011 Hartford, CT (EV Solo)/10.19.13 Brooklyn/10.25.13 Hartford
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
"Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous 'trickle-down' theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow 'trickle down' to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote."
- Hunter S. Thompson
Very profound from the guy who wrote "Fear and Loathing."
"Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous 'trickle-down' theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow 'trickle down' to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote."
- Hunter S. Thompson
Very profound from the guy who wrote "Fear and Loathing."
Fear & Loathing is arguably the greatest American novel of the second half of the 20th century. Not that he didn't write anything else. He's not just considered perhaps the greatest American journalist of the 20th century but is widely regarded as one of the greatest prose stylists in literature per se.
But then the fact that he wasn't a flag sucking Republican means he can be dismissed, right?
"Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous 'trickle-down' theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow 'trickle down' to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote."
- Hunter S. Thompson
Very profound from the guy who wrote "Fear and Loathing."
Fear & Loathing is arguably the greatest American novel of the second half of the 20th century. Not that he didn't write anything else. He's not just considered perhaps the greatest American journalist of the 20th century but is widely regarded as one of the greatest prose stylists in literature per se.
But then the fact that he wasn't a flag sucking Republican means he can be dismissed, right?
Exactly.
By the way, if you think "Fear and Loathing" was a great novel, you should read more novels.
Fear & Loathing is arguably the greatest American novel of the second half of the 20th century. Not that he didn't write anything else. He's not just considered perhaps the greatest American journalist of the 20th century but is widely regarded as one of the greatest prose stylists in literature per se.
But then the fact that he wasn't a flag sucking Republican means he can be dismissed, right?
Exactly.
By the way, if you think "Fear and Loathing" was a great novel, you should read more novels.
Exactly what?
And I'm pretty sure I've read more novels than you've had hot dinners.
Fear & Loathing is arguably the greatest American novel of the second half of the 20th century. Not that he didn't write anything else. He's not just considered perhaps the greatest American journalist of the 20th century but is widely regarded as one of the greatest prose stylists in literature per se.
But then the fact that he wasn't a flag sucking Republican means he can be dismissed, right?
Exactly.
By the way, if you think "Fear and Loathing" was a great novel, you should read more novels.
Exactly what?
And I'm pretty sure I've read more novels than you've had hot dinners.
I'm not going to debate literature with you, but that book is drug-culture dross. Read something with substance. I could take mescaline while driving through the desert and write something as equally 'riveting.'
By the way, I doubt you're more well-read than me, but it doesn't matter in the least.
Forced the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery to remove a video from an art exhibit (because Christians found it icky) by threatening to withhold funding if they didn't...
Denied a director tax breaks he was expected to receive for filming his movie in a certain state, because they felt his movie portrayed that state in a negative light...
And compared Obama's support of a bill that would give unemployment benefits to unemployed people to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
I can't wait to see what's coming next. Maybe they'll try and ban chihuahuas because they find Mexican dogs offensive. They might try to ban Kwanzaa because some WMAs don't like it. They might compare Chanukah to the Holocaust, just for the hell of it.
They've invented a war on Christmas, it seems, to hide the fact that they're waging a war on common sense and perspective.
The war on Christmas is unfortunately real.
I don't think there's a war on Christmas at all - there's simply an acknowledgment that there are other holidays being celebrated at that time of year. "Happy Holidays" is just a catch-all statement. My father-in-law tried telling me that people are being arrested for wishing people "Merry Christmas" now - I have no idea where he gets his horseshit from, but it's ridiculous. If I see someone I know to be christian, I'll wish them a Merry Christmas. If I see someone I know to be jewish, I'll wish them a Happy Chanukah. If I have no idea, I'll play it safe and say "Happy Holidays." It's not a war as much as it's an acknowledgment that white christians aren't the only people in America.
And I listen for the voice inside my head... nothing. I'll do this one myself.
Forced the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery to remove a video from an art exhibit (because Christians found it icky) by threatening to withhold funding if they didn't...
Denied a director tax breaks he was expected to receive for filming his movie in a certain state, because they felt his movie portrayed that state in a negative light...
And compared Obama's support of a bill that would give unemployment benefits to unemployed people to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
I can't wait to see what's coming next. Maybe they'll try and ban chihuahuas because they find Mexican dogs offensive. They might try to ban Kwanzaa because some WMAs don't like it. They might compare Chanukah to the Holocaust, just for the hell of it.
They've invented a war on Christmas, it seems, to hide the fact that they're waging a war on common sense and perspective.
The war on Christmas is unfortunately real.
I don't think there's a war on Christmas at all - there's simply an acknowledgment that there are other holidays being celebrated at that time of year. "Happy Holidays" is just a catch-all statement. My father-in-law tried telling me that people are being arrested for wishing people "Merry Christmas" now - I have no idea where he gets his horseshit from, but it's ridiculous. If I see someone I know to be christian, I'll wish them a Merry Christmas. If I see someone I know to be jewish, I'll wish them a Happy Chanukah. If I have no idea, I'll play it safe and say "Happy Holidays." It's not a war as much as it's an acknowledgment that white christians aren't the only people in America.
What does WHITE have to do w/ anything except your bigotry?
What, and no "Happy Ramadan" for Muslims? This is the kind of disgusting racism, bigotry that is destroying our country from the left....
I don't think there's a war on Christmas at all - there's simply an acknowledgment that there are other holidays being celebrated at that time of year. "Happy Holidays" is just a catch-all statement. My father-in-law tried telling me that people are being arrested for wishing people "Merry Christmas" now - I have no idea where he gets his horseshit from, but it's ridiculous. If I see someone I know to be christian, I'll wish them a Merry Christmas. If I see someone I know to be jewish, I'll wish them a Happy Chanukah. If I have no idea, I'll play it safe and say "Happy Holidays." It's not a war as much as it's an acknowledgment that white christians aren't the only people in America.
What does WHITE have to do w/ anything except your bigotry?
What, and no "Happy Ramadan" for Muslims? This is the kind of disgusting racism, bigotry that is destroying our country from the left.... [/quote]
I also left out Kwanzaa, but only because I wasn't aware I had to provide examples for every single celebration taking place at the end of each calendar year in a post on AMT. I'll make sure I'm more thorough next time
Happy Santa Lucia Day (sorry I'm a day late)
And I listen for the voice inside my head... nothing. I'll do this one myself.
'So is there a difference between Democrats and Republicans? Sure. The Democrats say one thing ("Save the planet!") and then do another--quietly holding hands behind the scenes with the bastards who make this world a dirtier, meaner place. The Republicans just come right out and give the bastards a corner office in the West Wing. That's the difference.'
MICHAEL MOORE, Stupid White Men
Hypothetical Roadtrip
You have to choose one of two candidates and drive with them from the Santa Monica pier all the way to Miami, Florida ... who do you choose between Glen Beck and Michael Moore???
'So is there a difference between Democrats and Republicans? Sure. The Democrats say one thing ("Save the planet!") and then do another--quietly holding hands behind the scenes with the bastards who make this world a dirtier, meaner place. The Republicans just come right out and give the bastards a corner office in the West Wing. That's the difference.'
MICHAEL MOORE, Stupid White Men
Hypothetical Roadtrip
You have to choose one of two candidates and drive with them from the Santa Monica pier all the way to Miami, Florida ... who do you choose between Glen Beck and Michael Moore???
Michael Moore - say what you will about his documentaries, but the dude made Canadian Bacon and that movie is awesome
And I listen for the voice inside my head... nothing. I'll do this one myself.
I'm not going to debate literature with you, but that book is drug-culture dross. Read something with substance.
Drug culture dross? Righteo!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_L ... _the_novel
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas became a benchmark in American literature about U.S. society in the early 1970s. In Billboard magazine, Chris Morris said, "through Duke and Gonzo's drug-addled shenanigans amid the seediness of the desert pleasure palaces, it perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the post–'60s era".[15] In Rolling Stone magazine, Mikal Gilmore wrote that the novel "peers into the best and worst mysteries of the American heart" and that Thompson "sought to understand how the American dream had turned a gun on itself". Gilmore believes that "the fear and loathing Thompson was writing about — a dread of both interior demons and the psychic landscape of the nation around him — wasn't merely his own; he was also giving voice to the mind-set of a generation that had held high ideals and was now crashing hard against the walls of American reality".[16]
Although the drug use and its degree of autobiography remain tepidly controversial, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971) is often required reading for students of American literature.
Hunter S. Thompson - The Last Outlaw by Mikal Gilmore
'Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas' is a landmark, defining work. Like Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick', Mark Twain's 'The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn', or F.Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby', it peers into the best and worst mysteries of the American heart...In a dark time, he sought to understand how the American Dream had turned a gun on itself. Nobody in American literature has come closer to answering that question, and in the end, perhaps Thompson came closer than anybody should.'
'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'
Reviewed by CRAWFORD WOODS
Published: July 23, 1972
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." The hold deepens for two days, and the language keeps pace for 200 pages, in what is by far the best book yet written on the decade of dope gone by.
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is a number of things, most of them elusive on first reading and illusory thereafter. A solid second act by the author of "Hell's Angels," it is an apposite gloss on the more history-laden rock lyrics ("to live outside the law you must be honest") and-- Don Quixote in a Chevy--a trendy English teacher's dream, a text for the type who teaches Emily Dickinson and Paul Simon from the same mimeograph sheet. It is, as well, a custom-crafted study of paranoia, a spew from the 1960's and--in all its hysteria, insolence, insult, and rot--a desperate and important book, a wired nightmare, the funniest piece of American prose since "Naked Lunch."
...Like Mailer's, Thompson's American dream is a fanfare of baroque fantasy. It should not, despite its preemptive title, be mistaken for a synopsis of the American experience (even though the narrator comes to think of himself as a "monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger"). But its limits are no narrower than the limits of lunacy, and its method is as adventurous as any to be found in all the free-fire-zone writing of the past dozen years.
"Writing" is as exact a label as the book will carry. Neither novel nor nonfiction, it arrives with fashion's special sanction. Its roots are in the particular sense of the nineteen-sixties that a new voice was demanded--by the way people's public and private lives were coming together in a sensual panic stew, with murder its meat and potatoes, grass and acid its spice. How to tell the story of a time when all fiction was science fiction, all facts lies? The New Journalism was born.
But who taps fashion for wisdom gets poison in the sap, and "Fear and Loathing" is the quick assassin of the form it follows. Not the least of Thompson's accomplishments is to suggest that, by now, the New Journalism is to the world what the New Criticism was to the word: seductive, commanding--and, finally, inadequate. The form that reached apotheosis in "Armies of the Night" reaches the end of its rope in "Fear and Loathing," a chronicle of addiction and dismemberment so vicious that it requires a lot of resilience to sense that the author's purpose is more moralizing than sadistic. He is moving in a country where only a few cranky survivors-- Jonathan Swift for one--have gone before. And he moves with the cool integrity of an artist indifferent to his reception.
For the things the book mocks--hippies, Leary, Lennon, journalism, drugs themselves--are calculated to throw Thompson to the wolves of his own subculture. And the language in which it mocks them is designed to look celebratory to the stolid reader, and debased to established critics. This book is such a mind storm that we may need a little time to know that it is also, ting! literature.
Much the same thing happened with Henry Miller--with whom Thompson has perhaps even more kinship than with Burroughs. Hero of all his books, drowning in sex and drink, Miller makes holy what Thompson makes fundamental: appetite. In both writers, the world is celebrated/excoriated through the senses. But the taste of the one is for rebellion, of the other for apocalypse writ small.
Apart from the artistry, it is a modestly eschatological vision that lifts "Fear and Loathing" from the category of mere funky reminiscence. It unfolds a parable of the nineteen-sixties palatable to those of us who lived them in a mood--perhaps more melodramatic than astute--of social strife, surreal politics and the chemical feast. And it does so in language that retires neither into the watery sociology of the news weeklies nor the zoo-Zen of the more verbally hip. Far out. Thompson trusts the authority of his senses, and the clarity of a brain poised between brilliance and burnout.
"We are all wired into a survival trip now," he notes, "No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. . . a generation of permanent cripples who never understood the essential fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody. . . is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel."
The book's highest art is to be the drug it is about, whether chemical or political. To read it is to swim through the highs and lows of the smokes and fluids that shatter the mind, to survive again the terror of the politics of unreason. Since plot has been scrapped, the whole thing must be done in the details, in cameo sketches and weird encounters that flare and fade into the backdrop of the reader's imagination. These details are technically accurate, which is a contemporary form of literary precision, with all ambiguity intact.
The same accuracy is preserved in the use of drugs as metaphor. The suggestion is that to drop acid in 1966 was to seek the flower at the heart of the cosmos, but to shoot heroin in 1972 is to hide from the pain of the President's face. ("It is worth noting, historically, that downers came in with Nixon. . .") Dope--once mystic, private and ecstatic--has become just another way to kiss goodbye.
Are going to pick up seats in the house and senate, cementing Team Trump Treason’s control and ensure is re-election in 2020. Well, according to BS anyway.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Comments
http://www.supermansammyz.blogspot.com
i hope you child gets well soon
to answer your question
yes, that IS how this nation looks after its people
and it's disgusting
and we keep playing their game and voting to support this corrupt system
RED ROCKS 6-19-95
AUGUSTA 9-26-96
MANSFIELD 9-15-98
BOSTON 9-29-04
BOSTON 5-25-06
MANSFIELD 6-30-08
EV SOLO BOSTON 8-01-08
BOSTON 5-17-10
EV SOLO BOSTON 6-16-11
PJ20 9-3-11
PJ20 9-4-11
WRIGLEY 7-19-13
WORCESTER 10-15-13
WORCESTER 10-16-13
HARTFORD 10-25-13
Thank you...and you are right...we just let it happen. Not sure what it is going to take for us to do more? Seems these days we just sit and moan alot. I think we have too much at our fingertips in the digital age and we have forgotten what it is like to have to take action....perhaps action has such a scary "possible" outcome, that is what is holding us back?
http://www.supermansammyz.blogspot.com
MICHAEL MOORE, Stupid White Men
- Hunter S. Thompson
"Becoming a Bruce fan is like hitting puberty as a musical fan. It's inevitable." - dcfaithful
Very profound from the guy who wrote "Fear and Loathing."
Fear & Loathing is arguably the greatest American novel of the second half of the 20th century. Not that he didn't write anything else. He's not just considered perhaps the greatest American journalist of the 20th century but is widely regarded as one of the greatest prose stylists in literature per se.
But then the fact that he wasn't a flag sucking Republican means he can be dismissed, right?
Exactly.
By the way, if you think "Fear and Loathing" was a great novel, you should read more novels.
Exactly what?
And I'm pretty sure I've read more novels than you've had hot dinners.
I'm not going to debate literature with you, but that book is drug-culture dross. Read something with substance. I could take mescaline while driving through the desert and write something as equally 'riveting.'
By the way, I doubt you're more well-read than me, but it doesn't matter in the least.
I don't think there's a war on Christmas at all - there's simply an acknowledgment that there are other holidays being celebrated at that time of year. "Happy Holidays" is just a catch-all statement. My father-in-law tried telling me that people are being arrested for wishing people "Merry Christmas" now - I have no idea where he gets his horseshit from, but it's ridiculous. If I see someone I know to be christian, I'll wish them a Merry Christmas. If I see someone I know to be jewish, I'll wish them a Happy Chanukah. If I have no idea, I'll play it safe and say "Happy Holidays." It's not a war as much as it's an acknowledgment that white christians aren't the only people in America.
What does WHITE have to do w/ anything except your bigotry?
What, and no "Happy Ramadan" for Muslims? This is the kind of disgusting racism, bigotry that is destroying our country from the left....
What does WHITE have to do w/ anything except your bigotry?
What, and no "Happy Ramadan" for Muslims? This is the kind of disgusting racism, bigotry that is destroying our country from the left....
I also left out Kwanzaa, but only because I wasn't aware I had to provide examples for every single celebration taking place at the end of each calendar year in a post on AMT. I'll make sure I'm more thorough next time
Happy Santa Lucia Day (sorry I'm a day late)
ahhhh, but seriously.
WTF did you mean when you used the word WHITE? Nobody was talking about it, YOU threw it out there.
Why would COLOR enter into a discussion regarding different faiths?
Do you harbor bigoted feelings towards white-christians? Why would you just inject it there?
Very suspicious...
You have to choose one of two candidates and drive with them from the Santa Monica pier all the way to Miami, Florida ... who do you choose between Glen Beck and Michael Moore???
Michael Moore - say what you will about his documentaries, but the dude made Canadian Bacon and that movie is awesome
Drug culture dross? Righteo!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_L ... _the_novel
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas became a benchmark in American literature about U.S. society in the early 1970s. In Billboard magazine, Chris Morris said, "through Duke and Gonzo's drug-addled shenanigans amid the seediness of the desert pleasure palaces, it perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the post–'60s era".[15] In Rolling Stone magazine, Mikal Gilmore wrote that the novel "peers into the best and worst mysteries of the American heart" and that Thompson "sought to understand how the American dream had turned a gun on itself". Gilmore believes that "the fear and loathing Thompson was writing about — a dread of both interior demons and the psychic landscape of the nation around him — wasn't merely his own; he was also giving voice to the mind-set of a generation that had held high ideals and was now crashing hard against the walls of American reality".[16]
Although the drug use and its degree of autobiography remain tepidly controversial, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971) is often required reading for students of American literature.
No you couldn't.
Hunter S. Thompson - The Last Outlaw by Mikal Gilmore
'Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas' is a landmark, defining work. Like Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick', Mark Twain's 'The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn', or F.Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby', it peers into the best and worst mysteries of the American heart...In a dark time, he sought to understand how the American Dream had turned a gun on itself. Nobody in American literature has come closer to answering that question, and in the end, perhaps Thompson came closer than anybody should.'
'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'
Reviewed by CRAWFORD WOODS
Published: July 23, 1972
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." The hold deepens for two days, and the language keeps pace for 200 pages, in what is by far the best book yet written on the decade of dope gone by.
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is a number of things, most of them elusive on first reading and illusory thereafter. A solid second act by the author of "Hell's Angels," it is an apposite gloss on the more history-laden rock lyrics ("to live outside the law you must be honest") and-- Don Quixote in a Chevy--a trendy English teacher's dream, a text for the type who teaches Emily Dickinson and Paul Simon from the same mimeograph sheet. It is, as well, a custom-crafted study of paranoia, a spew from the 1960's and--in all its hysteria, insolence, insult, and rot--a desperate and important book, a wired nightmare, the funniest piece of American prose since "Naked Lunch."
...Like Mailer's, Thompson's American dream is a fanfare of baroque fantasy. It should not, despite its preemptive title, be mistaken for a synopsis of the American experience (even though the narrator comes to think of himself as a "monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger"). But its limits are no narrower than the limits of lunacy, and its method is as adventurous as any to be found in all the free-fire-zone writing of the past dozen years.
"Writing" is as exact a label as the book will carry. Neither novel nor nonfiction, it arrives with fashion's special sanction. Its roots are in the particular sense of the nineteen-sixties that a new voice was demanded--by the way people's public and private lives were coming together in a sensual panic stew, with murder its meat and potatoes, grass and acid its spice. How to tell the story of a time when all fiction was science fiction, all facts lies? The New Journalism was born.
But who taps fashion for wisdom gets poison in the sap, and "Fear and Loathing" is the quick assassin of the form it follows. Not the least of Thompson's accomplishments is to suggest that, by now, the New Journalism is to the world what the New Criticism was to the word: seductive, commanding--and, finally, inadequate. The form that reached apotheosis in "Armies of the Night" reaches the end of its rope in "Fear and Loathing," a chronicle of addiction and dismemberment so vicious that it requires a lot of resilience to sense that the author's purpose is more moralizing than sadistic. He is moving in a country where only a few cranky survivors-- Jonathan Swift for one--have gone before. And he moves with the cool integrity of an artist indifferent to his reception.
For the things the book mocks--hippies, Leary, Lennon, journalism, drugs themselves--are calculated to throw Thompson to the wolves of his own subculture. And the language in which it mocks them is designed to look celebratory to the stolid reader, and debased to established critics. This book is such a mind storm that we may need a little time to know that it is also, ting! literature.
Much the same thing happened with Henry Miller--with whom Thompson has perhaps even more kinship than with Burroughs. Hero of all his books, drowning in sex and drink, Miller makes holy what Thompson makes fundamental: appetite. In both writers, the world is celebrated/excoriated through the senses. But the taste of the one is for rebellion, of the other for apocalypse writ small.
Apart from the artistry, it is a modestly eschatological vision that lifts "Fear and Loathing" from the category of mere funky reminiscence. It unfolds a parable of the nineteen-sixties palatable to those of us who lived them in a mood--perhaps more melodramatic than astute--of social strife, surreal politics and the chemical feast. And it does so in language that retires neither into the watery sociology of the news weeklies nor the zoo-Zen of the more verbally hip. Far out. Thompson trusts the authority of his senses, and the clarity of a brain poised between brilliance and burnout.
"We are all wired into a survival trip now," he notes, "No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. . . a generation of permanent cripples who never understood the essential fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody. . . is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel."
The book's highest art is to be the drug it is about, whether chemical or political. To read it is to swim through the highs and lows of the smokes and fluids that shatter the mind, to survive again the terror of the politics of unreason. Since plot has been scrapped, the whole thing must be done in the details, in cameo sketches and weird encounters that flare and fade into the backdrop of the reader's imagination. These details are technically accurate, which is a contemporary form of literary precision, with all ambiguity intact.
The same accuracy is preserved in the use of drugs as metaphor. The suggestion is that to drop acid in 1966 was to seek the flower at the heart of the cosmos, but to shoot heroin in 1972 is to hide from the pain of the President's face. ("It is worth noting, historically, that downers came in with Nixon. . .") Dope--once mystic, private and ecstatic--has become just another way to kiss goodbye.
i've read fear and loathing in america and i'm hooked on his writing style.
"some say drugs are more powerful than truth, but i've survived all that and got the evidence you asked for..." HST
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
1) How do people even think of these things seeing a stage setup?
2) But since people do...is this on purpose by the CPAC???
gotta signal the base.....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
More people are going to die.