Ingredients for a Jack Nicholson birthday surprise according to famed Gonzo journalist and lifelong zeitgeist consumer Hunter S. Thompson : a raw elks heart, huge stereo speakers mounted on the roof of a car, a tape recording of a pig being eaten alive by bears, a 100 million watt light bulb and a red distress flare powerful enough to illuminate 40 sqm for 40 seconds. Result : police hunt HST through Colorado mountains believing him to be a crazed and murderous Nicholson stalker.

Reality is several worlds stranger than fiction in Hunter Thompson's autobiography Kingdom of fear, a chronicle of the life of the drug-adoring sports journalist turned iconic observer of American decline. It all begins with HST's first visit from the law, through a mailbox incident that brings the FBI knocking and the entire book largely centers around HST's run-ins with various authorities, precipitated by his love of guns and drugs. From his bid to become Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, through his primetime assault court case to his memorable stint with 'The Judge'. Kingdom of Fear is essentially a collection of volatile cocktail-party stories flanked by sociopolitical rantings -and it is all the better for it. The book is not impeded by a linear narrative and HST is free to illustrate his life in the same maner that he has lived it : fast-paced and fragmented. This provides a superb insight into the mind and heart of the author.

Hunter S. Thompson fought the law -and he won. The golden grail would be the answer to a question asked numerous times throughout Kingdom of Fear : how does he do it? How does HST survive this reckless life of decadence, no inhibition and all-American value wasteland? A rhetorical question but Kingdom of Fear provides a glimpse of an explanation -that this is a man who survives because he is larger than life. Kingdom of Fear is an excellent entrypoint into the mind of a man both observer and product of the death of an American dream.

Review by Nicolai Hartvig

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