DOCTOR THOMPSON LEARNS HIS TRADE

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	• Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Modern Library) Hunter S. Thompson Modern Library, 1999 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 113 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The first but not the last

vintage HST - great background to the workings of this genius

There's a reason....

There's a reason Thompson is such a respected writer. This is gonzo at its finest. Thompson takes us to the very heart of an exclusive crew and gives us a reasonably objective and interesting view. 5/5.

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Worth it the cost

This was a very informative book. Mixes the historical information of the Hell's Angels (and other motorcycle groups), with enough details of their activities to keep the reader interested. Very descriptive, made you want to take a shower to wash all the grease and testosterone off you after each reading. Captured the attitude of the times very well. Couple parts where it got a little graphic, but rang true. Would have liked to have had more recent information on the subject, but understand this book was written some time ago. Seemed to be a very accurate depiction (balanced) on all sides; the motorcycle gangs, the attitudes of the general public and the authorities and how they interacted and were perceived.

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DOCTOR THOMPSON LEARNS HIS TRADE

As Thompson aficionados are probably aware Hell's Angels is Hunter's first real foray into the sustained writing that would make us smile or be provoked to call for his head on a platter for the next forty years. Although the text clearly demonstrates that this is not a piece of `gonzo' journalism, as it later came to be known, one can see the outline of where he could be heading in this book on probably the most famous outlaw motorcycle gang in American history. The line between Thompson the reporter and Thompson the participant is still fairly clear but one can see just enough sympathy with the subject matter of his book to see where he might be heading. His major `gonzo' work and most famous book Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas thus did not just come out of the blue.

And what of the subject matter of his book, the infamous Hell's Angels that in my youth my mother warned me against incessantly? As noted above Hunter gained a grudging sympathy for them during his yearlong experience in and around their hangouts and their nefarious various doings in Northern California. Some of the antics that they were involved in like their `robust' partying in natural settings and scaring the `squares' seem a little dated, and juvenile. Their gratuitous violence, however, seems rather too familiar.

The more sociological aspects of their marginal social existence is far more interesting and Thompson does a good job of identifying the post-World War II American times that gave rise to such self-defining outcasts. This phenomenon enters the books as one of the outcomes that occur when the Turner thesis on the effects of the end of the frontier and land's end get fleshed out in sunny California. While these men, and they were almost exclusively white Anglo-Saxon men (the women involved with them are a separate and in some ways more interesting question although in the book a marginal one), came from mainly working class backgrounds the details provided by Thompson portrays a classic lumpenproletarian milieu. Thus, politics, protest or allegiance to other organizations meant nothing to them. Forget all that intellectual gibberish, it was about the bikes, man. Dr. Freud can read what he wants into that. Dr. Thompson gives it to us straight.

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Hells Angels

I have always been intrigued with the Hells Angels and this book answered many questions especially the history of the club. I was impressed that the author lived with them for a year.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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