In his latest collection of essays Hunter S. Thompson looks at sports and politics in his unique and head-spinning way and comes up with moments of both great insight and great confusion. The essays in Hey Rube are collected from his weekly column for ESPN Magazine over the last three years. They're very short essays, usually 300-500 words, and they're ostensibly about sports. In actuality they're about whatever Thomspon felt like writing about at the time, and basically weave together three threads of narrative, his personal life, his political observations, and his opinions on various aspects of sport.
This is by no means Thompson at his greatest. This isn't Generation of Swine or even Fear and Loathing in America, but it's interesting and unusual and well worth reading. Thompson had his start in journalism as a sports writer before he diverged into mostly politics and surrealistic personal narrative. To some degree these essays take him back to his roots, but heavily filtered through his gonzo style where everything is grist for his mill.
The sports element is handled from an interesting perspective, approaching sports mostly from the vantage point of an inveterate gambler. It's not at all what you usually see in sports journalism. Thompson looks at sport not so much as entertainment in itself, but as a mechanism for the real entertainment of wagering with friends and neighbors on just about anything. He has his prejudices and his loyalties, and he doesn't think an awful lot of sports management which he harangues at periodically, but one point he hits on again and again is that team loyalty is the enemy of the gambler, and then in the next essay he laments about victimizing himself by giving in to the seduction of betting on the Raiders against the odds. He does touch on a lot of different aspects of sports, including quite a bit of discussion of the XFL, some interesting looks at boxing and horse racing and my first view of the phenomenon known as Naked Bowling.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - alienboy
Great post Dave, on one of the more interesting characters in contemporary USA.
I love your writings when you are in this more considered mode, thank you.
2 - RJ
What does everyone call Hunter S. Thompson and his writings "gonzo"?
WTF does "gonzo" mean? I thought it was a muppet...
3 - RJ
Why* does...
4 - Lono
what 'Gonzo' means is a blurred line between fiction and reality... specifically referencing journalism. The term was coined for Hunter (though not by him) and really only applies to Hunter.
hunter is my favorite living American writer. Hunter is a god to me, how fucked up is that? Back in August, I did a piece on Hunter here as well. You can find it here if you are interested.
5 - RJ
"what 'Gonzo' means is a blurred line between fiction and reality..."
Well, no wonder he's a liberal! :)
6 - Dave Nalle
Don't forget Dr. Gonzo.
And where on earth did you get the idea Thompson was a liberal, RJ?
Not just liberals are anti-Bush.
Dave
7 - DrPat
No comment on the oft-aired rumor that "Duke" of Doonesbury comics is based on Hunter S. Thompson? (Even to the dark glasses and cynical "whatever works" prose...)
8 - Dave Nalle
That seems like well-tread ground. The parallels are obvious, though Trudeau has taken the character pretty far from its origins.
Dave
9 - Lono
The character Duke is positively based on Thompson, which still irks Thompson. He is cheesed because Trudeau never asked his permission.
10 - Eric Olsen
excellent review Dave, and as an ardent fan who drifted away over the years, you have convinced me a return is worthwhile.
I've always thought Thompson fundamentally a libertarian at heart, which in a sense is neither right nor left. He seems to hate authority in general and perceives Bush and the hereditary elite to be pillars of authority. He would also be a populist were it not for the fact that he is an outrageous snob.
For me, in the end his political worldview makes very little sense and doesn't hold together, but he can be a brilliant stylist with great energy, and a very keen observer, even if he usually fouls up his interpretation of those observations.
I never got much into this column because I think gambling is antithetical to a "real" appreciation of sport, reducing it immeasurably.
11 - thrasher
Gonzo journalism. Where did it go?
How did we come from Tom Wolfe to HST to to Jeff Gannon/Guckert.
Where have all the good journalists gone...
12 - Eric Olsen
blogs - sorry, couldn't resist
13 - RJ
He's dead now, BTW. Committed suicide.
FYI...
14 - RJ
Link here:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/21thomp.html
15 - Dave Nalle
RJ, are you kidding? When did Hunter S. Thompson kill himself? Or are you referring to someone else?
Dave
16 - RJ
Here
17 - RJ
The irony is rich... :-/
18 - Dave Nalle
Jesus, he did it this afternoon. What the hell. What a tragedy. I'm stunned. It seemed like he had gotten his life on a more positive track recently. I wonder what brought him to this. I sure would like to get more details. There's a very brief piece on it in the Denver Post.
I imagine more details will come out in the next few days. A real loss.
Dave
19 - RJ
More here...
20 - RJ
Mr. Thompson! We came to praise you, not to bury you! :-(
21 - RJ
More...
22 - RJ
EVEN MORE
23 - video louis
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
KILLS SELF-
"Yeah, we rocked the vote all right.
Those little bastards
betrayed us again ."
(hst2004)
-IT'S TRUE
LIBERALISM IS A
MENTAL DISEASE!
L.
24 - Dave Nalle
All of these reports you're citing are just reformulations of the AP wire piece. No new news to be had. Give it a couple of days and we may find out the reasons.
Dave
25 - Bradley Laboe
I will miss him ... BIG HUG for Juan, Jen, Willam and Anita… who never be able to fill the hole left in there lives by the man in spite of the myth and legend attached to his life.