Spring Break
Never Stop Questioning Our Leaders
Alex Schaefer
Issue date: 5/6/07 Section: Commentary
My first time through Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" cannot fairly be classified as a reading. It was more like the first time you got a glimpse of pornographic material -- you don't really remember what you saw and you didn't exactly understand what you had just seen but it was pretty damn intoxicating and you couldn't believe something like that existed. For those of you who are a little lost here, you need to know that Hunter Thompson was a journalist and a substance addict whose work combined both. His reports were not merely recants of certain events but rather tales of his exploits trying to cover whatever story he was assigned to. He was a brilliant madman, and that isn't hard to see from his prose.
This is why I had to sit down a second time with the book. I needed to get past all the smoke and mirrors and see what he really had to say, what he really was talking about on all those pages. After all, Frank Mankiewicz, the campaign director for eventual Democratic nominee George McGovern, stated that this book was the "most accurate and least factual account of the campaign." That statement is confusing too, but a prime example of this logic is how Thompson attributed one of the candidate's erratic behavior to a secret drug addiction. When describing the politician's actions he would explain why they were out of sorts and point out where the drug was affecting him. While the addiction part was not true, the questionable decision-making was occurring; Thompson just decided to put his comedic twist on it. That is what distinguished his work from the bland recounts that the regular reporters filed each day in the newspapers.
Now I've explained all this nonsense because I'm trying to get somewhere and the funny part is it isn't even something Thompson wrote. See, due to his questionable lifestyle decisions, he sometimes did not make his writing deadlines. In fact, he was notorious for this but what he did produce was so captivating that the editors would put up with his shenanigans. In one section of the text, he explains that he is just plain exhausted and he lets his fellow correspondent at Rolling Stone (the magazine had sent them to cover the campaign) finish the rehash of that month's events and outcomes. The writer, Tim Crouse, filed a more traditional story. Absent were the absurdities and personal opinions that Thompson littered his pages with and it was definitely less entertaining. It dealt with McGovern's win in the Wisconsin primary and included a section where he had interviewed all the young volunteers that had been vital to the grassroots effort that propelled the candidate to victory.
This is why I had to sit down a second time with the book. I needed to get past all the smoke and mirrors and see what he really had to say, what he really was talking about on all those pages. After all, Frank Mankiewicz, the campaign director for eventual Democratic nominee George McGovern, stated that this book was the "most accurate and least factual account of the campaign." That statement is confusing too, but a prime example of this logic is how Thompson attributed one of the candidate's erratic behavior to a secret drug addiction. When describing the politician's actions he would explain why they were out of sorts and point out where the drug was affecting him. While the addiction part was not true, the questionable decision-making was occurring; Thompson just decided to put his comedic twist on it. That is what distinguished his work from the bland recounts that the regular reporters filed each day in the newspapers.
Now I've explained all this nonsense because I'm trying to get somewhere and the funny part is it isn't even something Thompson wrote. See, due to his questionable lifestyle decisions, he sometimes did not make his writing deadlines. In fact, he was notorious for this but what he did produce was so captivating that the editors would put up with his shenanigans. In one section of the text, he explains that he is just plain exhausted and he lets his fellow correspondent at Rolling Stone (the magazine had sent them to cover the campaign) finish the rehash of that month's events and outcomes. The writer, Tim Crouse, filed a more traditional story. Absent were the absurdities and personal opinions that Thompson littered his pages with and it was definitely less entertaining. It dealt with McGovern's win in the Wisconsin primary and included a section where he had interviewed all the young volunteers that had been vital to the grassroots effort that propelled the candidate to victory.
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