Hunter S. Thompson- The Great Shark Hunt- Strange Tales from a Strange Time

The Great Shark Hunt- Strange Tales from a Strange Time

Picador Press

  Hunter S. Thompson

1979 (Collected)

“I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling.”

“In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely.” 

First of all, Hunter S. Thompson is probably the most quotable author I know, and settling on a quote for this review was really hard, so I went with two. Secondly, this is the fifth installment in my frantic (well, ish) attempt to catch up with the list of books I'd read and not reviewed, which puts me more than half way there. For a lazy writer like me, this is somewhat of an achievement.

Anyway, this brings me to my latest review and it's my second Hunter S. Thompson one, after Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. If you can remember, or just clicked the link and trawled through my rambling nonsense, I wasn't as much of a fan of that book as I'd like to be, though I did gain a positive impression of it overall. Basically the deal with that one is that I frantically admire, adore and worship Thompson's ability to select his vocabulary and manipulate his prose like a true genius, like a modern-day-drug addled Thomas de Quincy (he who wrote the book of which I stole and adjusted the title of for this blog) or Joseph Conrad (Thompson's quest to track down Ricard Nixon reminded my of the hunt for Kurtz in Heart of Darkness)- I like him that much. It's just the topic matter that I don't care enough about; like when Paul Auster inserts an article about baseball in a novel I'm enjoying.

The Great Shark Hunt- Strange Tales from a Strange Time is somewhat like Campaign Trail '72 in that both are collections of Thompson articles and columns from a set period. The latter was a pre-planned series following one topic, but this collection is far more open, collecting the author's most notable work from the late fifties until the end of the seventies, for famous publications such as Rolling Stone, Playboy & The New York Times as well as some very early articles writing for the US air force.

The subjects of these angrily-written, expletive-ridden, extravagant prose filled articles are generally the things that Thompson was most interested in. This means lots of articles about politics, and about the world of politics. Nixon and Jimmy Carter are constant targets of aggressive analysis, as is the Watergate scandal of course. Altogether the politics encompasses around half of the book, which I had mixed feelings about. As in Campaign Trail, I learned a little and enjoyed a little more about the 70's US politics scene, but the aspects that I enjoyed (namely Thompson's ability to portray the world in the way he does) were swamped by a deluge of names of people and societies that I've never heard of before, and so the deep context alienated me as a reader somewhat.

Everything else, though was very entertaining and interesting. The first part of the book is short but intriguing, containing a selection of Thompson's air force work. The character within his writing is totally clear and identifiable, but it's the thought of Thompson writing for the establishment (and failing to meet their standards) which is interesting. Part two of the book is the politics stuff. Some of it is taken directly from Campaign Trail and included as extracts, which is basically just a way of ripping the buying reader off. The third part of the book was the one that appealed to me most, as it avoids politics and instead focuses on travel and culture; looking at the beat generation, at South America. The book concludes with a focus on Thompson's gonzo influence, and the Fear and Loathing name.

This book isn't going to appeal to many people who pluck it randomly from the shelf, and, ironically, it'll never be as recognised as the amazing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but it's definitely the place to go for newer fans of Thompson who've just finished Raoul Duke's story, and also for readers particularly into the post-beat movement. While there are plenty of great full novels from that period, these shorter snippets of encapsulated life offer a manic, ingenious, and unique view into a fascinating artistic world.

Cormac McCarthy- No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men

Picador Press

Cormac McCarthy
2005

“I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I'd have the same opinion about me that he does.”

As I frantically and purposelessly rush to catch up with my surplus of finished but yet-to-be-reviewed books before adding more to them- though I've just started reading George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows and it's about six million pages long- I found myself returning to the polarizing figure of Cormac McCarthy. When I use the word polarizing I'm referring to my varying opinions on the first two McCarthy novels I've read; The Road was a superb modern novel, a slice of thoughtful post-apocalyptic fiction written fairly recently and winner of the Pulitzer prize. Blood Meridian, however, was written twenty years earlier than The Road, back when McCarthy was mainly known for very bloody, and very gritty Western/cowboy fiction.

I did not like Blood Meridian at all, which left me feeling rather apprehensive about starting McCarthy's third very famous book; No Country for Old Men (famously adapted by the Coen brothers two years later into an Academy Award Best Picture winner that I should probably watch some day). I honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy it because it's another Western, albeit a modern one, and I think the combination of typical accented, regional Western dialogue with McCarthy's regular decision to abandon regular speech punctuation can create a frustrating experience for a reader not attuned to it, like me.

With my expectation of enjoyment pretty low, I was still surprised that I ended up liking it. Not a huge amount, but I liked it. In hindsight the key to this was I hadn't realised that No Country was a lot more contemporary than Blood Meridian. Set in the present day, No Country revolves around a small cast of tough, gritty and very western characters all caught up in the aftermath of a drug deal gone badly wrong. Tough, gritty Westerner Llewellyn Moss accidentally stumbles upon the the crime scene, where amongst a collection of bullet-ridden bodies and heroin he discovers a bag containing $2 million dollars. After some internal debate, he takes it (and spends much of the novel re-evaluating and regretting his decision). He also sees and speaks to the only survivor, who is mortally wounded, and Moss later returns with some water for the man. He's already dead though, and his friends have turned up to investigate. Moss barely escapes the scene, and the chase that comprises the rest of the book is on.

Moss has a charismatic and introspective detective on his trail, as well as a psychopathic hit-man, who essentially exist as an angel and a devil both fighting for his soul. Moss is an ambiguous, unpredictable character who certainly isn't evil, but is easily capable of making the wrong decision. The set-up from then on is actually kind of simple and easy to follow, as the reader follows the inevitable fate of each of the three main characters in a standard-length novel. The contemporary nature of the novel, including the writing style, character portrayal and (importantly for me) the dialogue was far more typical than the genre-specific style of Blood Meridian. I'm probably making myself out to seem like an idiot here, but I can't be bothered to mentally invest in a genre and style I get nothing out of, but No Country only takes what it needs from the classic Western genre rather than all of it, which made it far more interesting for me. Recommended to most fans of contemporary fiction, particularly if you like grim, gritty and introspective. I'll have to watch the film next.