Gonzo: Hunter S.Thompson Biography: Hunter S.Thompson Biography (Graphic Biographies) Paperback – 14 Oct. 2010

Neat

Seek the truth at all times,but if it's dull - make something up!A breeze of a book for a wet Wednesday...

The life of Hunter S Thompson is interesting for readers. Often depicted as a crazy drug writing hoodlum with an obsession for guns, politics, and of course Fear and Loathing, it is difficult to pull away that mask to see what Hunter is really like.This book doesn't really clear things up nor is it a comprehensive biography of Hunter's life. Documenting his younger days as a troubled child to his unfortunate suicide, everything inbetween is as jarring as his prose. The story flits to each major life moments of Hunter's life becoming difficult to follow and without a satisfactory conclusion especially in the later chapters.I can say that the art is at least nice. Having a limited colour palette being mainly greys, blacks and whites keeps things atmospheric and grim.If you want to read up on Hunter's life I'd recommend the wikipedia page.

"I want you to keep in mind that I'd just as soon not be dismissed as some drug-addled clown." While this question of image and public perception isn't one that troubles the majority of us, it was certainly an issue that plagued Hunter S. Thompson. By turns described as the great American iconoclast, the great American outlaw, the great American hedonist and, depressingly far less regularly, the great American writer, Thompson carried for years a justified fear that he had succeeded best in becoming a caricature of himself. It's true that the legend very nearly eclipsed the man. Despite his fairly prolific literary and journalistic output, Thompson is still, even after his relatively quiet final years and untimely death, best known for his excesses rather than for his creativity and innovation. With Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson Will Bingley and Anthony Hope-Smith aim to redress this fact by offering an account of Thompson's life that highlights those achievements and events of which the man himself was most proud.After a brief introduction, Gonzo begins properly with the incident of the mailbox that will be familiar to readers of Thompson's Kingdom of Fear. This act of childhood rebellion and the defiance of authority that followed it were considered by Thompson to be the defining moments of his life, the moments in which the chaotic and rebellious pattern of his adulthood was begun. What follows is a chronological whistle-stop tour through Thompson's life that takes in all of his newsworthy moments, including the launching of his career as a journalist, his time in Puerto Rico, the fateful visit to the Kentucky Derby, his time riding with the Hell's Angels and hanging out with the Beats, his war of words against Nixon, his political campaign to be elected Mayor of Aspen, and his ultimate arrival at literary success and celebrity status.Gonzo is generally well-written by Will Bingley although there are many points in the book where greater use of dialogue and text would have been appreciated. It is actually a very quick novel to read since it relies very heavy [more so than the majority of recent real-world graphic novels] on the illustrations rather than on the written word. The majority of the panels are accompanied by only a few words or a sentence. This often works well as the art is so good in Gonzo but the book would have been even better if Bingley had added more text to explain Thompson's motivations and actions during many of the key episodes of his life. Gonzo aims to be an accurate account of the real Hunter S. Thompson rather than a rehash of the myth and so it is a real risk to just let big events play out without discussing what was really inspiring Thompson at the time.Bingley has produced a good chronological account of Thompson's life that helps to clarify all of his toing and froing and to illustrate how he developed as both a writer and as a person. It is a generally thorough account although there are a couple of noticeable omissions. First, the 80s and 90s are only given a page each and, although Thompson was certainly not producing his greatest work during his period, this is woefully inadequate. It would have been better to have a longer book that detailed Thompson's despair during those two decades about being trapped in his own image, his recycling of old material and also his politics and the highpoints that did occur [for example, the filming of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas]. By concentrating on the most productive and `entertaining' period of Thompson's life, Bingley is once again risking writing a biography of Thompson the myth rather than Thompson the man. Secondly, there are a few important characters from Thompson's personal life that are either underrepresented in the book or not featured at all, most notably Thompson's second wife Anita and his son Juan.Despite, or perhaps because of, Thompson's colourful life, Anthony Hope-Smith has chosen to illustrate Gonzo entirely in black and white, and shades of grey. Hope-Smith has produced an excellent `version' of Thompson that is noticeably different from the Doonesbury persona and the illustrations of Ralph Steadman. His Thompson is vital and explosive and even on the quieter panels seems to capture the frantic way in which Thompson lived his life. His supporting characters are realistic in the main and their appearance is in-keeping with the text, although when famous faces [for example Bob Dylan] appear there is a tendency for them to be in their clichéd [or perhaps iconic?] outfits and poses which are not always appropriate to their position in Thompson's life story.The Foreword by Alan Rinzler is an interesting addition to the book. Rinzler was Thompson's editor for all of his earlier [and best] books and is at pains to point out that he and Thompson had a professional relationship rather than their being firm friends. However, Rinzler knew Thompson well, which is not to say that he particularly liked him as a person, and so can write authoritatively about his work. The legacy left by Thompson is a puzzle to Rinzler too: "Why isn't Hunter S. Thompson taken more seriously? As his editor and literary goad for 35 years over four of his best books, I'm sorry to see that the public spectacle of Hunter as the King of Gonzo - a brain-addled, angry, deeply depressed, self-destructive lout - has prevailed in the popular consciousness while the real story of this ground-breaking prose artist and investigative journalist has all but disappeared." This really is a puzzle since, when he was on form, Thompson really was exceptionally good at what he did. Rinzler has justifiably harsh things to say about the originally and worth of Thompson's later works and it is clear that, despite their personality clashes, he had great respect for Thompson's literary talent and so feels disappointed and almost let down by what Thompson allowed himself to become. The insight that Rinzler is able to provide into the life and character of Thompson is informative in itself and also serves to illuminatie Thompson's motivations and self-view.Gonzo is a great, innovative biography of a great, innovative man. Hunter S. Thompson lived a truly extraordinary life and despite the complications that surround his image - whether he is seen as author, liar, freak, bum, addict, psychopath or visionary - he was one of the most significant figures of 20th century American letters and so, in his books and articles, has left an immense and important legacy. Always remember: "No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride."

Perhaps it's just me but this graphic novel is very hard work to read on the Kindle. It's only possible to enlarge the text by double clicking on everything. That makes the reading experience very tedious. The graphics are good but I will not complete this in the Kindle format, which is disappointing.

I have been a fan of Thompson's work for many years. From Hell's Angels, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, to The Great Shark Hunt and The Curse of Lono, Thompson invented and defined the skewed, off-kilter participant journalism that became known as 'Gonzo'.While a big fan of his work, I am also aware that he was a brilliant but often unpleasant and contradictory man. A libertarian with a passion for drugs and guns; yet a staunch defender of democracy and pointed critic of America's lurch to the right. It's fair to say that in his later years he struggled to recapture his magic and traded on his reputation.But when Thompson was in full flow, with a cause to champion and enemies to thwart, his reporting was vivid and incisive; somehow capturing details others missed with caricature, at once exaggerated and razor sharp.In the foreword of this book, Thompson's sometime editor, Alan Rinzler, laments Thompson's squandered potential and Bingley's narrative reflects this. It's a poignant, nuanced portrait of a complicated man whose reputation came to overshadow him. The illustrations by Hope-Smith are not the best I have seen, his linework is occasionally sloppy and Thompson himself is often drawn as little more than a hat, sunglasses and a snarl. But this is perhaps apt. He does capture Thompson well in the quieter moments of the book, which is also where Bingley and Hope-Smith's portrait really hits home.Their biography does skim over what I describe as Thompson's 'late flourish' - his doomed project as the night manager at the O'Farrell Theatre and his wonderful book, the Curse of Lono (1983). In the process, this biography does give the impression that Thompson dropped into obscurity with the end of his first marriage and did little else of note since the Seventies. This is not quite true. He remarried and continued to write throughout the Eighties, Nineties and Noughties. Every so often he found that spark again, in particular in his response to the attacks of 9/11.Nonetheless, this is good introduction to the man behind the myth, showing his place in American political and literary history, and the important contribution he made to journalism.