Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream by Thompson (

Description: Songs of the Doomed by Thompson Between 1959 and 1990, Thompson wrote a series of dizzying and dazzling essays, here collected in "Songs of the Doomed." Brilliant, hilarious, defiant, the pieces chart the course of American politics and culture over four decades--from the soaring highs to the hideous lows--in signature style. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description First published in 1990, Songs of the Doomed is back in print -- by popular demand! In this third and most extraordinary volume of the Gonzo Papers, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson recalls high and hideous moments in his thirty years in the Passing Lane -- and no one is safe from his hilarious, remarkably astute social commentary. With Thompsons trademark insight and passion about the state of American politics and culture, Songs of the Doomed charts the long, strange trip from Kennedy to Quayle in Thompsons freewheeling, inimitable style. Spanning four decades -- 1950 to 1990 -- Thompson is at the top of his form while fleeing New York for Puerto Rico, riding with the Hells Angels, investigating Las Vegas sleaze, grappling with the "Dukakis problem," and finally, detailing his infamous lifestyle bust, trial documents, and Fourth Amendment battle with the Law. These tales -- often sleazy, brutal, and crude -- are only the tip of what Jack Nicholson called "the most baffling human iceberg of our time." Songs of the Doomed is vintage Thompson -- a brilliant, brazen, bawdy compilation of the greatest sound bites of Gonzo journalism from the past thirty years. Author Biography Hunter S. Thompson was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. His books include Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72, Screwjack, Kingdom of Fear, The Great Shark Hunt, Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone, Hells Angels, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He died in February 2005. Review Washington Post Book World Songs of the Doomed allows us to track Thompsons evolution as a writer, and hence the evolution of the form he played such a major role in creating. Long Description First published in 1990,Songs of the Doomedis back in print -- by popular demand! In this third and most extraordinary volume of the Gonzo Papers, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson recalls high and hideous moments in his thirty years in the Passing Lane -- and no one is safe from his hilarious, remarkably astute social commentary.With Thompsons trademark insight and passion about the state of American politics and culture,Songs of the Doomedcharts the long, strange trip from Kennedy to Quayle in Thompsons freewheeling, inimitable style. Spanning four decades -- 1950 to 1990 -- Thompson is at the top of his form while fleeing New York for Puerto Rico, riding with the Hells Angels, investigating Las Vegas sleaze, grappling with the "Dukakis problem," and finally, detailing his infamous lifestyle bust, trial documents, and Fourth Amendment battle with the Law. These tales -- often sleazy, brutal, and crude -- are only the tip of what Jack Nicholson called "the most baffling human iceberg of our time."Songs of the Doomedis vintage Thompson -- a brilliant, brazen, bawdy compilation of the greatest sound bites of Gonzo journalism from the past thirty years. Review Quote Washington Post Book WorldSongs of the Doomedallows us to track Thompsons evolution as a writer, and hence the evolution of the form he played such a major role in creating. Excerpt from Book Let the Trials Begin He that goes to law holds a wolf by the ears. -- Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy I wandered into a library last week and decided to do a quick bit of reading on The Law, which has caused me some trouble recently. It was a cold, mean day, and my mood was not much different. The library was empty at that hour of the morning....It was closed, in fact, but not locked. So I went in. Far up at the top of the long stone staircase I could see a small man gesturing at me: waving at me, shouting....But his voice sounded crazy and scattered, like the screeching of a cat or the sound of beer bottles exploding in a garbage compactor. The only words I could hear were OUT and NIGHT. When I got about halfway up the stairs I stopped and raised both hands. "Dont worry!" I shouted. "Police!" He shuddered and fell back, saying nothing. His eyes were huge and a shudder ran through his body as I approached. "No problem," I said to him. "Just routine police work." I flashed my gold Special DEA Agent badge at him, then reached out to shake hands, but he moaned suddenly and leaped away...and as he collapsed awkwardly on the cold marble floor I saw that his left ankle was encircled by a heavy steel band that was strapped to a black box. "What the fuck is that thing?" I asked him, reaching down to help him up. But he scuttled away again; and then he hissed at me. "You know what it is!" he whimpered. "You filthy murdering pig!" "What?" I said. "Are you crazy?" Then I jumped down on him and grabbed his foot so I could bring him a little closer. He uttered another sharp, terrified cry as I slid him across the smooth floor and pulled his ankle up to where it was right in front of my eyes. "Be quiet," I said. "I want a look at this thing in good light." He struggled briefly, but I quickly stepped over his leg and hyper-extended his knee until he went rigid, then I braced him and examined the box. It was a standard-issue Body Beeper with a lock-on ankle bracelet -- one of the New Age tools now available to law enforcement agencies everywhere, for purposes of electronic House Arrest for those who have been brought within The System, but for whom there is no room in the overcrowded jails, pens, and prisons. The United States of America has more people locked up than any other country in the world, including Cuba and South Africa. Our prison system from coast to coast is bulging at the seams, and hundreds more are being crammed in every day -- more and more of them saddled with the mandatory Sentences and No Parole Provisions that came in with the first Reagan Administration, which began only ten years ago, but it seems like twenty or thirty.... Indeed. But that is another very long story and we will save it for later....So lets get back to the library and my new buddy, the unfortunate Prisoner that I seized and captured by accident at four oclock in the morning when I caught him wandering aimlessly through the hallways of a massive public building with his eyes bulged out and his spine like rubber and probably his nuts on fire, too, because he had nothing to say for himself and no excuse for anything. He was a loser. A wimp full of fear, with no pride and sure as hell no Money....But I let him go anyway, and we talked for a while in the Mens Room about his problem. We were both nervous, so I went out to the car and got a bag of warm beers, along with a wooden pipe about half-full of good marijuana. Soon we were both in a better mood, and I told him I was not really the Police, but just another good old boy with a yen to Read Law for a while and a few hours to spare before my next court appearance. He was a first-time offender from Phoenix, serving work-release time in the Library on a six-year Attempted Rape charge that happened when he wandered into the Ladies Room at the airport and got in a fight with two Mexican women who said they were paid police informants and turned him in as a Sex Offender when the airport police finally ran him down in a false doorway at the far end of the Lost Luggage hangar and dragged him away in handcuffs to the Red Carpet Club where they subjected him to a loud and humiliating Strip Search and beat him on the kidneys with iron gloves. He was innocent, he said, but it made no difference....When they finally got him to jail he was charged with nine felonies including Aggravated Assault on a Police Officer, Gross Sexual Imposition, and Possession of 2,000 Marijuana Seeds that fell out of the lining of a suitcase he had borrowed from his son, for the trip. That night he was beaten severely in the holding cell by a gang of sodomites who took all his cigarettes and then kicked him into a coma. After thirty-three days in the jail hospital, he was assigned to a public defender who laughed at his case and called him "shiteyes" and said it was all a matter of money. Ten weeks later, he was assigned to another lawyer who said he had no choice but to plead guilty and take his medicine like a man. "I was lucky," he said. "I almost got sixteen years." He grinned happily and stared into my eyes. "As it is now, Ill only have to do five." He was broken; a niggardly shell of a man, so afraid of the Law and the Cops and the Courts that he felt lucky and grateful to be serving only five years instead of sixteen -- even though he was innocent. But now, after two long years on his knees within The System, he no longer missed standing up. It made me nervous, so I started pacing around in circles on the white tile floor and jabbering distractedly at him from time to time....I was thinking; my mind was running at top speed, scanning and sorting my options. They ranged all the way from Dumb and Dangerous to Crazy, Evil, and utterly wrong from the start. "Do you keep any whiskey in this place?" I asked him. "We need whiskey. My brain is getting hazy." He stared at me for a moment. Then he smiled vaguely and stood up. "Sure," he said. "I think I can put my hands on a pint of Old Crow." He chuckled. "What the hell? I could use some whiskey, myself." He slid down off the marble washbasin where hed been sitting and shuffled out of the room. He moved quickly and almost gracefully, but the ugly black box on his ankle slowed him down and caused him to walk with a limp. I sat on my own basin and drank our last warm beer. What the hell am I doing here? I wondered. I am a Doctor of Journalism and a Man of The Cloth. Why am I slumped in a bathroom at the Public Library at four oclock in the morning? Drinking whiskey and smoking marijuana with a soul-dead convict who might be taken back in jail at any moment? "Whats your name?" I asked him as he returned with a half-finished pint of whiskey in a brown bag. "Andrew," he said. "They call me Andy." "Okay, Andrew," I said. "Give me that whiskey and stand back. We are on the brink. Yes. I have an idea." He tossed me the bottle and I drank deeply, then handed it back to him. "Dont worry about having this stuff on your breath when they come for you," I said. "I have a new electric toothbrush out in the car that will sterilize your whole thorax in ten seconds. I also have some very fine cocaine downstairs in the car, which you might want to use when your eyes start looking like they do now...." I slapped him on the leg and hit the Old Crow again. "Hot damn, Andrew!" I barked at him. "We are warriors. The time has come to rumble!" He said nothing. The bottle of whiskey was tilted high over his face, and I could see that he was finishing it off....So what? I thought. We can always get more. The whiskey stores opened at seven, and I didnt have to be in court until ten. There was plenty of time to do anything we wanted. Many wrongs could be righted in five hours if we had the right tools.... "Well, Andrew," I said to him in a high-pitched mournful voice. "I hate to be the one to tell you this...I dont want to hurt you, but -- " "No!" he shouted. "Please dont kill me!" I seized him quickly by the hair and jerked him off balance. His eyes rolled back in his head and then he went limp. "Stop whining!" I snapped. "I just want to tell you about a legal axiom." "Bullshit," he croaked. "Youre a goddamn vicious maniac!" He jerked out of my grasp and leaped away, then he braced on the balls of his feet, and bashed me in the stomach with a frenzied right hook. "You bastard!" he screamed. "Get away from me! Youre a paranoid psychotic!" "We are going to Court, Andrew. We are champions! We will crush them like cheap roaches! TODAYS PIG IS TOMORROWS BACON!" I spun suddenly and hurled my green beer bottle so fast across the room that it exploded against the wall like a glass bomb before he even saw it happen. BANG! Whirling like Quisenberry and catching a runner on the nod at second....Fantastic speed and accuracy, no reason at all, but Andrew went crazy with joy and I had to subdue him physically and give him a chance to calm down. It was almost dawn. "Where are the telephones?" I asked him. "Where is a fax machine? We will kill the ones who eat us, and eat the ones we kill!" We had no choice. I moved quickly for the door, but he stopped me. "Wait a minute," he said. "Were almost out of whiskey." He was right. The Old Crow pint was empty except for a few drops down in one corner, and the bars would not open for three hours. "Dont worry," he said. "I know where theres Details ISBN0743240995 Short Title SONGS OF THE DOOMED ANNIV/E 10 Publisher Simon & Schuster Language English Edition 10th ISBN-10 0743240995 ISBN-13 9780743240994 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 973.92 Year 2002 Residence Aspen, CO, US Birth 1937 Death 2005 Subtitle More Notes on the Death of the American Dream DOI 10.1604/9780743240994 Imprint Simon & Schuster Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2002-12-01 NZ Release Date 2002-12-01 US Release Date 2002-12-01 UK Release Date 2002-12-01 Author Thompson Pages 355 Edition Description 10th Anniversary ed. Publication Date 2002-12-01 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:8567898;

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