McKeen - Outlaw Journalist - HST - Comment

On my weekly travels, I walk past an old, used bookstore. Outlaw Journalist - The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson sat in the front window for three weeks. It's a hardcover displaying a background of the American Stars and Stripes with an image of Hunter in his signature aviator sunglasses driving in a car with a pistol pointed in the air. The book begged to be purchased. This particular bookstore is open on the weekends. I made a memorable train trip on the 3rd week on a Saturday to hopefully to buy the text. It was there in all its glory. It has turned out to be a first edition.

What a find and what a read. 

The text opens with the news of Hunter's unexpected death. Like his literary hero, Hemingway, Hunter shot himself in the head. McKeen never focuses on the writer's suicide but takes the reader on a narrative ride about the Gonzo journalist and his bizarre life. Hunter became a Rebel with a Cause.

I first became aware of Thompson in college. Hells Angels was my first introduction to his work. I became one of his hardcore fans who would read anything he published, including his grocery list. 

As the book suggests, you either loved him or hated him, and there was no middle way.  

Mckeen takes us through Hunter's life from his beginnings, love of reading and writing, loves/ relationships, and lifelong crack at fiction. 

The irony is Hunter's journalism was a mixture of fact and fiction/drama, with the writer as the main protagonist. 

This loosely defines Gonzo Journalism.

At the start of Hunterr's political journalism, he found his muse: Richard M. Nixon. 

Anyone who has read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 will read the most scathing, creative descriptions of a president that any independent journalist today would ever get away with...and from many perspectives, Nixon represented to Hunter the actual end of the American Dream.  In many ways, he was right. 

It was a nightmare for any editor working with Thompson. He despised deadlines. 

Finally, reaching national and international celebrity didn't work so well for the man. However, the money allowed the writer to write on his own terms.  

Seeing what "journalism" has become today, that is corporate stenographers vying for status in the establishment that is currently filling our minds with BS, reading about a true American who never pulled any punches in the political arena, using a style of writing that captured the American imagination is stunning. (That's why I support independent journalism.) 

Again, our times have changed, where uttering the "wrong" pronoun, for example, will get you drawn and quartered in the public square. We have become a species of self-absorbed wimps. Hunter S. Thompson's work would never have seen the light of day in the present time. This is shameful.

This text is available because most people like the truth with a little entertaining fiction. 

William Mkeen has given us a look into the mind of an alcohol-drenched, drug-induced genius/madman, An old Southern gentleman, who made it a point to shake as many trees as possible, pushing the limits of the Constitution. Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Speech. 

Excellent biography.