David Foster Wallace on Hunter S. Thompson 

I think he's missing the point. Mid-20th century saw a revolution in rhetoric, with works by Burke, Olbrechts-Tyteca, and Perelman which re-focused the entire paradigm around the audience rather than the speaker. So while it's ostensibly from Hunter S. Thompson's perspective, the intention is that he's the "everyman" giving a perspective that's so close to the action that it begins to move internally toward psychology and dreamlike fantasy. All the people Wallace listed are firmly Aristotelian; that's probably also why he preferred "Hell's Angels" as it's the most traditional of Thompson's journalistic work. The New Journalists, while arguably "narcissistic" (which I think is rich coming from someone like DFW who makes their reader spend inordinate amount of time on dense prolixy prose) is instead "subjective" with the intention of revealing more through narrative storytelling rather than traditional methods of non-fiction. It's somewhat ironic he prefers Swift, when Thompson is firmly entrenched in that tradition from Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, to Twain, of comic writers who exposed societal ills through the use of grotesque exaggeration, picaresque satire, and experimentation with 1st-person unreliable narrators (Pantagruel, Gulliver, Tristram etc).

Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is most entertaining book ever written

HST is to literature as Bill Hicks is to comedy.

Thompson also expressed regrets about his fame. He stated that his public persona had become too big and he'd either have to start over or kill off the persona. The difference between Thompson and Wolfe was the Thompson lived his stories. He embedded with the Hell's Angels. He ran for political office and went on a myriad of drug fueled adventures. Wolfe, on the other wrote about other people's adventures. In the case of Electric Kool-aid, he wrote about another famous author Ken Kesey. Kesey, a friend of Thompson had basically given up writing, so that like Hunter and his Beat predecessors, he could live his art.

as a psychedelic myself Thompson in "Las Vegas" looking back to The High Water Mark of 1967 San Francisco is my my favorite passage ive ever read, Johnny Depp does a reading of it... Wallace looks like a Lesbian Pro Wrestler... LSD & Marijuana, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, & Pink Floyd were all rockin' & rollin' making the world a better place... fax!!!

When I discovered HST did heroin it explained everything for me. Before I could not understand why he acted like the outcaste. You can compare him to the guitarist of the Rolling Stones. He is a dinosaur. He survived the purity of a slew of narcotics and was still able to come back to life. Not many drug users can tell their story and be successful. I think that is what draws new readers to him. It is miraculous what he has survived.

He got me fucked up on that one. I love Hunter Thompson and Fear and Loathing

HST was a rock&roll, tongue-in-check journalist, not a fiction writer. He barely finished his only novel during his drug fueled lifetime. TW was a journalist-fiction blending style trending writer. HST was better at doing crazy things while TW was better at writing about other people doing crazy things. Both were fine writers.

I feel Thompson is more of an everyman than people are led to believe. His behavior and persona really are emblematic of the times and culture that working class men lived. This was enticing reading for the literate class looking to get a glimpse of this last gasp of heroic masculinity. They were whooping it up and cutting loose as a rebellion to the prospect of pointless death that the war God demands of young men. Thompson spent much energy railing against the Nixon regime. He was an activist in his own way, running for the position of Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado. You had to beat the swine at their own game! I've listened to firsthand stories of the bar scenes in western oilfield towns. The cowboy boots and regular fist fights with anyone who needed a good thumping. Riding around with the baddest fastest bikes of the day!Thompsons stories were wild but my man, the shit that went down outside of the narrow view of journalism and Hollywood would boggle many minds. I admit I tired of his sensationalized political writings. He wanted to wake people the fuck up and if it took scaring the shit out of people by firing a revolver into the air well thats what it took. I take issue with the accusation of creating a cult of personality. Thats feel thats lazy and you can accuse anyone of it just by pointing out their personal habits, dress, and mannerisms. You can't accuse someone of that when they booze, smoke, and snort that lifestyle as readily as most breath air, are bipedal and require water. The man wanted to live!

I was an editor in San Francisco when Thompson wrote (briefly) for our newspaper. He was completely unprofessional. He continually missed deadline, didn't give a damn, and it got so bad we had to dispatch an editor to Colorado to massage his ego and get him to file his copy. Narcissist? Self-promoter? Big time. Good writer? An acquired taste, I guess.

Tom Wolfe? Bonfire of the Vanities might be the novel of the 80's. And A Man in Full is equally extraordinary. Give them a try.

what's your take on the Joan Didion school, and Brett Easton Ellis.. the Noir folks, Harry Crews and Capote.. (next four pods..).. ; )

I don't agree with David Foster Wallace here. To begin with Wallace was a novelist and his view of Thompson who was primarily a journalist and non-fiction writer strikes me as literary criticism that has no bearing on journalism. Wolfe was a journalist who became a novelist so Wallace could make a valid critique of this work. The reality is that Thompson and Wolfe were writers w h o were distinctive a n d writing digressive and anti-conventional prose in their magazine articles. In essence they were doing pieces that were a transgression of journalistic form and structure. Wallace doesn't want to seem to deal with this other than to dismiss them.

“You are truly not in Dasein unless you subscribe to this channel!” Well I have to at least give you points for creativity, LOL

Not a big Wolfe fan (too many !!!!), but I still give early Hunter a pass. Some of his nonfiction and coverage of Nixon's downfall are still pungent and entertaining. And he never bored me...as long as he stayed with politics.

Dang. im liking this Wallace fellow more and more.

There is that old truism that one should always ignore the man or woman and concentrate on the writing, the Work. But how do you, as a great fan of David Foster Wallace, get past the bandana? I've always found a bandana, not just on his head, but in his prose.

That first quote was a fucking bombshell. He’s not wrong. F&L:LV was a fun read but when you think about Thompson’s schtick, it becomes very depressing. He wasn’t very good at fiction. What he did well was tell a good story. Poor guy. RIP Tommy Boy

DFW always did like that joke about J. Lewis and the French.

HST is very entertaining, but the self-indulgence is over the top. It leads to nothing whatsoever..."Decadent nihlism", that's perfect.

IMHO ….HST, Kerouac , Bukowski, Kesey etc, are just cult of personality authors…. Wolfe is the real deal!!

Thompson became a victim of his persona-alas.

Just starting. Never managed to read HST, I tried a little. I'm hearing the opening and I totally agree; performative, why might I care about your zany escapades? I feel the same way about Jack Kerouac. It's only cool if you want to identify with the things they're talking about. Tom Waits, same thing. I think Wolfe (more reporter or correspondent than novelist imo) was much better but I haven't read him in years.

Did Hunter S Thompson even write fiction? Thompson was a kind of exhibitionist on the page and the ‘act’ gets tiresome.