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Summary: Some of the funniest reading ever...
Review: ...'course you'll have to work for it. This is a massive book that in my opinion isn't meant to be plowed through, but rather enjoyed from time to time. A complition of his letters written over a decade or so (during his rise from a relatively obscure journalist/writer to cult hero) most every letter is interesting in one way or another, some are so funny that you'll be laughing about them for days. HST's humor is unmatched in my opinion by any writer I've read. This book is an extraordinarily private, very insightful, often hilarious glimpse into one of America's most interesting social figures. Enjoy...
Rating: 
Summary: On Jackets, Hard Work, and Jann
Review: As a big fan of Hunter's I especially enjoyed Volume I in this series, I found this edition much less satisfying. The problems with it lie chiefly in editor Brinkley's selection of material and his approach to assembling it. Thompson's laundry list likely makes more compelling reading than many scribes' magnum opuses (opii? opum?), it's true, but too many of the pieces here drown the reader in the minutae of logistical details involved in putting a book together. The extensive correspondence between Random House Editor Jim Silberman and Hunter, for example, gets awfully repetitive after a while, with Hunter scrambling to find new ways to explain his writer's block. And the letters of complaint about his jacket are not very interesting; and the letters to Wenner become tedious early on. One thing I noticed in this volume versus the last is a tendency to run on at the mouth and stray from the (often vital) subject at hand -- illustrating what must have been the pivotal role of the editor in the heyday of Hunter's excellent 70's work. Finally, Brinkley's selections are odd and his annotations often bizarre. Thompson will mention some individual mentioned in passing a hundred pages ago and we scratch our heads and wonder who it is he's talking about, yet a passing reference to Hitler is footnoted with a helpful explanation of who Hitler was!! All in all this book has a more slapped-together feel, and perhaps it's because Thompson at this point was more heavily into drugs an liquor, but I found his earlier correspondence more arresting and interesting.
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Summary: The Unwitting Autobiography...
Review: Considering there are at least 5 biographies floating around about Hunter S. Thompson, and he doesn't seem the type to write an autobiography, this is the closest thing we will ever get. Picking up where Volume I left off, Fear and Loathing in America is a complete reversal of fortune from its predecessor. Whereas Volume I documented the lament and poverty of Thompson as a young, struggling writer, dealing with the rigors of hustling a career in journalism or literature without working a "real job"--this volume covers Thompson in his shining glory years. Fresh off the success of Hells Angels, he conquers with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Not only that, but it covers everything in-between, providing a much-needed counterpoint to the extreme surreal elements of his gonzo journalism, showing us the facts that exists outside the books and the articles. Thompson almost always portrays himself as the smirking, all-knowing, invulnerable watcher of things. Even when writing from his own point of view, he becomes the omniscient narrator and the cruel god watching over the world he is describing. Very rarely does he get really personal and revealing in his writing, nor does he need to. This volume is filled with personal correspondence, journalistic entries about Thompson's life and times. And his writing here is just as solid as it is in any of his books. His ability to bend language and make it bark and snarl at the end of his leash is what makes Thompson an irreplacable American writer, and a perfect vehicle to have documented the turbulence of the last 4 decades. This volume of letters is the perfect companion to the flash and bang of his books, giving us an altogether different point of view of Thompson's life and lets us make our own conclusions about how much life imitates art and helps us realize that it works the other way 'round as well.
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Summary: I again can not think of a title
Review: Fear and Loathing in America is mainly for hardcore fans or people who after reading Fear and loathing in Las Vegas wanted to know what Thompson is really like and if all the strange myths and terrible legends they heard about Thompson are true or not, I myself am a big fan of Thompson and I enjoy this book quite a lot, I did not like it at the beginning, for two months is stood their on my bookshelf and one day, I gave it another go and I loved it, I was so surprised at how much I liked it, these days, I pick it up to a random page and read it. Long live Dr. Thompson
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Summary: Sometimes choppy, but it is also brilliant like HST
Review: Hunter S. Thompson's book here is really a collection of letters he wrote to various people, some in the literary business, to friends, family, some fans, etc. On how much you like the book depends on how you follow the letters' paths, but Thompson die hards (like myself) will find some interest here, in particular with his correspondence with Oscar "Dr. Gonzo" Zeta-Acosta with his letters also included making their segments worth the buy alone.
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Summary: fear and loathing in las vegas
Review: Hunter S.Thompson is brilliant. I don't think people realize how creative and crazy this man really is. All of his books are pure genius. Conservative people stay far away and why not, these books aren't for you. Anyone with wit like this is a gift to the open minded literary world. Read this book and I guarantee you'll be looking for more. Easy and fun to read. God's mercy on you swine!!!!!!!!!!!
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Summary: Required high school reading
Review: I have been strangely influenced by this man since first picking up _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_ in my early teens. I grew up sheltered as a farm boy, and HST introduced me in a very tangible way to the dark underbelly of Americana. By the time David Lynch's film came along, I was no longer shocked by the whole rotten, weird world they portrayed. _Hell's Angels_ is a brilliant piece of documentary book writing and sociology as well as incisive commentary about our culture. HST, despite his rampant debauchery and drug use, is one of the clearest political thinkers out there. He was right about Vietnam before anyone listened. He was on to Nixon and his crooked cronies long before anyone cared. I have yearned in these strange and treacherous times for more clear criticism, for some explanation, for some straight-talking about the sick and twisted nest of snakes that's holed-up in Washington now... but, pending that, this book will do nicely. HST's correspondence shows the near-manic nature of his affair with written words. This collection gives us a picture of how he tosses off notes to friends and enemies alike, bantering, raving, ranting mainly to himself as a part of the process of sorting out his works-in-progress. Reading this has made me mindful of the value of correspondence, and my relation to it. It is revelatory and insightful, fast-paced and fun. I recommend this to any HST fan who wants to learn more about the vague personality we seem to have only so far caught glimpses of through his collected works.
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Summary: More caustic ranting & opinions
Review: I was a big fan of volume 1 of his letters- it was new and fresh and unlike anything I had read before. It seems as Hunter ages he sours rather than mellows, which for someone of his ilk isn't surprising. However it doesn't always make it for compelling reading either. He is so proud of his opinions, so righteous, with each letter trying to outdo the previous it gets like a one joke movie.
I also wish he would write what he knows and leave out the letters with personal opinions that aren't relevant, only there to wound and lift his pedestal a little higher. Specifically his anti-Christian tirade on page 55 in a letter to a reader of his remarkable "Hells Angels". Hunter explains that the Angels had no attitude toward Christianity, fine, he knows. However, not enough just to report, he puts down the pen and picks up his sword and writes, ". . . they (the Angels) have been spared the millstone of one of history's greatest lies." Really? Why? Couldn't leave it at just answering the question? Ego rules over reason again.
Read his first collection, its fresher and energetic. This collection is like visiting with a bitter old man who believes his opinions on everything are "breaking news".
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Summary: Anyone wanting to know the evolution of Fear & Loathing...
Review: I'm a contemporary American Lit. scholar, and for any literature scholar, primary documents are of utmost importance when determining relevant interpretations and plausable meanings for pieces. Here, in the second volume of Thompson's letters, you are able to get a glimpse of how Thompson constructs the public image of madness and depravity, all the while maintaining his reflective distance from the material he's writing. Within these covers you can see the arduous revision process as Thompson struggles with the work-in-progress of his best known book, _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_. He considers it a "failed experiment in Gonzo journalism," but that's what makes it great. The revision process makes so many good writers into great writers (I have in mind most of the great Maxwell Perkins' disciples - F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemmingway, Ring Lardner, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, et al.) This book, and the first collection of his letters, _The Proud Highway_, are essential to anyone who wants to know more about the REAL Hunter S. Thompson, and the method behind the madness.
Rating:
Summary: Should Be Enshrined!
Review: Just finished this and it should be enshrined in the Smithsonian as either(or both)the best:
1. Example of linguistic diarrhea ever committed to paper.
2. Argument FOR drug control laws ever written.
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