The second installment in HST’s selected letters, Fear & Loathing in America has proved to be a fascinating read. Beginning in the 1950’s, HST keep carbon copies of all his letters for filing purposes in the belief that one day he would be a famous writer and his correspondence would be published. Like so many other Thompson predictions, this one proved true. The range and scope of the letters contained in this volume is simply amazing. HST had contacts and correspondence across almost every section of American society from Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchan, Gorge McGovern, and Walter Mondale at one end of the spectrum to Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe, Jann Wenner, and Oscar Acosta at the other end.
The time period covered by these letters have proven to be a crucial period in modern history and nobody should be without a view from HST’s side of things. From the 68’ Democratic National Convention to the 75’ American withdrawal from Vietnam, the Mint 400 in Vegas to his own personal bid to run for Sheriff of Pitkin County (Aspen) on the Mescaline ticket, HST was there and more often than not part of the action. In this regards his letters read like a quasi-autobiography, tracing the twists and turns of his life throughout this turbulent period of American history. For the creator of Gonzo Journalism, this was his defining period. Perhaps the best way to get an understanding of the book would to read a few excerpts.
“But as I grow older and meaner and uglier it becomes more & more clear to me that only a lunatic or an egomaniacal asshole would try to impose the structure of his own lifestyle on people who don’t entirely understand it, unless he’s ready to assume personal responsibility for the consequences.” (584) - How relevant is that today? Maybe Bush should brush up on his HST before he starts his next war.
“You decadent pig. Where the f*** do you get the nerve to go around telling those wops that I’m crazy? You worthless c***. My Italian tour is already arranged for next spring & and I’m going to the whole goddamn trip wearing a bright red field marshal’s uniform & accompanied by six speed-freak bodyguards bristling with mace bombs & when I start talking about American writers & the name Tom Wolfe comes up, by god, you’re going to wish you were born a f***ing iguana!” (373) HST writing his old buddy Tom Wolfe.
“America is really Amerika” (342)
Well I think you get the point by now and if not, well than I guessed you never will. So read this book when you get the chance or anything else by HST for that matter. For me he is the best American writer of the last 50 years.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Bad Times in Buenos Aires – Miranda France 199 pgs.
The title of this book is a bit deceiving. It is a chronicle of the experiences (both good and bad) of an Englishwoman journalist in Buenos Aires in the mid 1990’s. Not really knowing what to expect from this book, I figured that reading anything I could get my hands before moving to BsAs myself. It turned out that I was pleasantly surprised and found myself laughing out loud at points, always a sure fire sign of a good read. Using the experiences of her everyday life in BA as a framework to build off of, France interweaves hilarious anecdotes of daily life in BA, provides glimpses into the BA residents (they are known as Porteños) psyche, and gives an account of the all too often bloody history of Argentina. Although the France complains about the various short comings of BA, the chronic lack of coins, the crossed wires of the telephone system, the endless queues for anything and everything (all of which are still very much true), you can definitely tell that she has developed a soft spot in her heart for unique quirks that make BA what it is.
Argentina at the turn of the 20th century was the sixth richest country in the world behind the USA and the leading European powers. With so much promise for a grand future and such failure to achieve anything close to the possibilities it is no wonder the events of the subsequent hundred years are filled with political and economic instability. The rise and fall of Juan and Evita Peron, the various military dictatorships and the infamous ‘Dirty War’ of the 1970’s that accounted for the disappearance of tens of thousands of Argentines all invoke strong emotions that still reside just under the surface of Argentine life, often times coming directly to the forefront. France explores this common history and the effect it has had on the Argentine people. One possible result is the number of psychoanalysts in BsAs; per capita there is more than three times as many in BsAs than there are in New York City. Apparently it is a Porteño pastime to be psycho analyzed, indeed many find it hard to accept life without it, often working two or three jobs in order to pay for analysis.
For me this book gave me an idea of what to expect when I arrived here in the Paris of the South as it is often called. Although it speaks of a BsAs about 10 years past, it excited my imagination and curiosity in this giant Latin American city, the home of the Tango. The Tango is a sad genre speaking of lost loves, suicides, murder, and betrayal; a fitting theme for the constantly melancholy Porteños, something that really catches the essence of the people. France describes the dance, if done correctly, as passionate and loveless as a one-night stand.
Although I have found through my own experience some of France’s tales have been embellished a bit for dramatic affect, the book provided me with a decent idea of what to expect once I arrived. Since France wrote Argentina suffered a terrible economic crisis in 2001 that sent the country reeling for years and it has had noticeable effects on all levels of society. Today Argentina is moving forward again and prosperity is returning, but it must be realized that much more than a decade has passed between 1997 and 2007.
Argentina at the turn of the 20th century was the sixth richest country in the world behind the USA and the leading European powers. With so much promise for a grand future and such failure to achieve anything close to the possibilities it is no wonder the events of the subsequent hundred years are filled with political and economic instability. The rise and fall of Juan and Evita Peron, the various military dictatorships and the infamous ‘Dirty War’ of the 1970’s that accounted for the disappearance of tens of thousands of Argentines all invoke strong emotions that still reside just under the surface of Argentine life, often times coming directly to the forefront. France explores this common history and the effect it has had on the Argentine people. One possible result is the number of psychoanalysts in BsAs; per capita there is more than three times as many in BsAs than there are in New York City. Apparently it is a Porteño pastime to be psycho analyzed, indeed many find it hard to accept life without it, often working two or three jobs in order to pay for analysis.
For me this book gave me an idea of what to expect when I arrived here in the Paris of the South as it is often called. Although it speaks of a BsAs about 10 years past, it excited my imagination and curiosity in this giant Latin American city, the home of the Tango. The Tango is a sad genre speaking of lost loves, suicides, murder, and betrayal; a fitting theme for the constantly melancholy Porteños, something that really catches the essence of the people. France describes the dance, if done correctly, as passionate and loveless as a one-night stand.
Although I have found through my own experience some of France’s tales have been embellished a bit for dramatic affect, the book provided me with a decent idea of what to expect once I arrived. Since France wrote Argentina suffered a terrible economic crisis in 2001 that sent the country reeling for years and it has had noticeable effects on all levels of society. Today Argentina is moving forward again and prosperity is returning, but it must be realized that much more than a decade has passed between 1997 and 2007.
Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance – Noam Chomsky
Wow. This book is simply fantastic in my opinion. As critique of U.S. foreign policy for the past 50 year, the writing is exceptional for its clarity and depth. Chomsky methodically picks apart the multiple aspects of foreign relations: economic, military, cultural, and places them within the grand context of America’s strategic aims for maintains its role as leader of the world. Dismissing what is said on governments behalf and focusing on the much more accurate indicator of actions, a clear and coherent picture emerges; the U.S. will stop at nothing to maintain its power and influence around the globe. Denouncing terror one hand while supporting it when it serves an interest, preaching democracy abroad while limiting it as much as possible at home, promising aid for development while ensuring its main effect is financial return at the developing country’s expense; the goes on and Chomsky never runs out of examples taken from the last 50 years to prove his points.
I have been introduced to Chomsky before mainly through his work in linguistics and from listening to a few of his speeches, but this book took it to a whole new level. To my knowledge there is no one else currently writing in the U.S. that can reproduce the criticisms that Chomsky raises, whether it be on the level of clearly laid down arguments, depth of research, or the ability to see things for what they really are. I can’t remember who said the quote “A true historian can have no country” but I can think of no one better to apply this to than Chomsky, perhaps replacing historian with observer of international affairs.
Anyone with any interest in the world, the U.S. role in it, international relations, and the reasons behind the antagonism felt by much of the world towards the U.S. should read this book. Even those who are ardent supporters of U.S. policy would do well to give it a go if only to be brought up to date with the most challenging arguments against it. I have engaged in conversations with a few such people and they have always faltered when I brought up the points raised in the book. I now Hugo Chavez is a fan, he brought the book (Spanish translation of course) to the U.N. when he addressed the general assembly and said that anyone who wanted to know what was happening in the world today simple had to read Chomsky to understand. Getting that kind of endorsement is pretty telling; a head of state on the largest international stage is the kind of publicity one cannot buy. Perhaps I should just leave you with that.
I have been introduced to Chomsky before mainly through his work in linguistics and from listening to a few of his speeches, but this book took it to a whole new level. To my knowledge there is no one else currently writing in the U.S. that can reproduce the criticisms that Chomsky raises, whether it be on the level of clearly laid down arguments, depth of research, or the ability to see things for what they really are. I can’t remember who said the quote “A true historian can have no country” but I can think of no one better to apply this to than Chomsky, perhaps replacing historian with observer of international affairs.
Anyone with any interest in the world, the U.S. role in it, international relations, and the reasons behind the antagonism felt by much of the world towards the U.S. should read this book. Even those who are ardent supporters of U.S. policy would do well to give it a go if only to be brought up to date with the most challenging arguments against it. I have engaged in conversations with a few such people and they have always faltered when I brought up the points raised in the book. I now Hugo Chavez is a fan, he brought the book (Spanish translation of course) to the U.N. when he addressed the general assembly and said that anyone who wanted to know what was happening in the world today simple had to read Chomsky to understand. Getting that kind of endorsement is pretty telling; a head of state on the largest international stage is the kind of publicity one cannot buy. Perhaps I should just leave you with that.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
A HST Classic
Hunter S. Thompson – Fear & Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 505 pg.
Another classic from HST, in fact maybe my favorite work I have read of his so far, but its hard to choose. The setting for the book is the presidential campaign of 1972 pitting Gorge McGovern against Richard Millhouse Nixon. Hunter is sent by Rolling Stone to be the Washington D.C. correspondent for the magazine. Aside from running the National Affairs Desk, HST provides his own unique perspective on what it is like to be out there on the campaign trail. Starting with his coverage of the Democratic primaries and running all the way to the nomination of McGovern at the DMC, HST gives the inside story on what is happening ‘out there’ on the campaign trail, something the straight press can never do because of restrictions like ‘objectivity’ and the like. The result is perhaps the best account to date on what is really going on behind the scenes of a campaign for the highest office in the land.
The only drawback about reading HST is that it always gives me an incredible urge to drink and act in a semi-crazed style. I don’t know what it is, but it always results in me consuming at least a few beers if not more. And with a hunger to find a mescaline dealer, but I haven’t seen one of them wandering around for quite some time. Maybe I’m just not looking hard enough…. Ok, I seemed to have digressed there. I just trying to say that this book is essential reading for anyone interested in politics and the machinery behind it. Even if politics aren’t your cup up tea, HST brings a new dimension to any subject that he writes about, one that can be appreciated for its raw truth as well as its unconventional delivery.
Another classic from HST, in fact maybe my favorite work I have read of his so far, but its hard to choose. The setting for the book is the presidential campaign of 1972 pitting Gorge McGovern against Richard Millhouse Nixon. Hunter is sent by Rolling Stone to be the Washington D.C. correspondent for the magazine. Aside from running the National Affairs Desk, HST provides his own unique perspective on what it is like to be out there on the campaign trail. Starting with his coverage of the Democratic primaries and running all the way to the nomination of McGovern at the DMC, HST gives the inside story on what is happening ‘out there’ on the campaign trail, something the straight press can never do because of restrictions like ‘objectivity’ and the like. The result is perhaps the best account to date on what is really going on behind the scenes of a campaign for the highest office in the land.
The only drawback about reading HST is that it always gives me an incredible urge to drink and act in a semi-crazed style. I don’t know what it is, but it always results in me consuming at least a few beers if not more. And with a hunger to find a mescaline dealer, but I haven’t seen one of them wandering around for quite some time. Maybe I’m just not looking hard enough…. Ok, I seemed to have digressed there. I just trying to say that this book is essential reading for anyone interested in politics and the machinery behind it. Even if politics aren’t your cup up tea, HST brings a new dimension to any subject that he writes about, one that can be appreciated for its raw truth as well as its unconventional delivery.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century – Barbara W. Tuchman 597 pgs.
I have to say that this book turned out to be a really nice surprise. I found it in a used bookshop in Buenos Aires for 10 pesos and thought what the hell, I already knew a bit about the 14th century from a class I took in university and figured I could stand to learn a bit more. As soon as I began reading it I knew I had found a rarity among history books, an interesting read and actually exciting read! This stems from the style employed by Tuchman. Having chosen the area she wanted to cover, namely Western Europe in the 14th century, she needed something to provide a focus and uniting thread. For this she took the somewhat unusual approach of selecting not a person of royalty, a religious figure, or a member of the lower social class, but a noble that has the advantage of straddling in various ways all three of the aforementioned roles. Her noble, the Lord of Coucy, holding lands in the realm of northern France in the area of Picardy was an extraordinary figure by any consideration, involved in almost all the major military, political, and religious events of his. Of course it helped his cause that the three spheres so often, if not always overlapped in his day. Come to think of it, it still seems like those three spheres overlap quite often in our own age. Funny how history has a way repeating itself, or as it has been said, history never repeats itself, men always do.
The 14th century was a time of profound change and upheaval for the people of Europe. A long and destructive war was waged between the Kingdoms of England and France, known to posterity as the Hundred Years War, which was to leave both countries and much of Europe devastated long after the fighting had stopped. During the middle of the century a new terror descended on all the peoples of Europe, the Black Death or Bubonic Plague. Sparing neither rich nor poor, devout nor unbeliever, the great wave of death that swept through Europe multiple times in the last half of the century killed around half the total population, which was not to recover its 1300 level until around the 1550’s. So terrible was the Black Death and its consequences that it was simply known as the ‘great mortality’ to the people of the day. To throw one more destabilizing agent in the mix, the later half of the 14th century also gave rise to the Pope’s leaving of Rome in favor of a new residence in southern France at Avigion. This eventually lead to what is known as the papal schism, where for a time there were rival claimants to the papacy with one residing in Rome and one in Avigion, with the countries of Europe forced to take sides between them. For a time there were even three Popes at once. In a world destroyed by war and death, people looked to God for answers and when they found a split Church more corrupted and ungodly than ever change was only just around the corner.
Tuchman does a wonderful job of tying together the major events of the time around a narrative centered on Coucy. More often than not he is certainly a part of these events. Throughout the narrative are sprinkled social, economical, religious, and further historical background, painting a vivid picture of the life in France and England, and to a lesser extent the Italian states, the Holy Roman Empire and the Iberian kingdoms at the time. To this extent I think that Tuchman’s book is a success. As with all narrative histories though there are evitable flaws. To say that one event leads to another in an continuous flow of cause and effect, especially when it is centered around one character, is to deny and miss a lot of areas where a constant interaction of multiple forces help to shape and form that particular time in history. The tendency shown by Tuchman to attribute actions to individual leaders personalities and whims seems to me to be a throwback to the ancient historians of the classical world.
Another flaw that I see is the taking the life of a noble as a representation of the time. A noble by definition is a person set apart from the masses of humanity. To think that the Lord of Coucy or any of his associates in anyway represents what most people of the time experienced is to be deceived. He was primarily concerned with his own class, namely the ruling class, and the power that was derived from the position. Tuchman does much to paint him as a brilliant, enlightened man ahead of his time in many ways. That may be true to some extent but it is nevertheless also true that he used all the means available to him to exploit those of a lower class, as did all in the ruling class.
Even though I have criticisms for the book, I still believe it carried out its function well, namely to illuminate that age of European history often known as the Dark Ages. The choice of narrative as the vehicle for the history has its limitations as stated above but it also has many positives as well. Anyone looking to gain a preliminary understanding of this very eventful time would do well to pick up Tuchman’s book. I can only guarantee that it will whet the appetite for deeper search into the age.
I have to say that this book turned out to be a really nice surprise. I found it in a used bookshop in Buenos Aires for 10 pesos and thought what the hell, I already knew a bit about the 14th century from a class I took in university and figured I could stand to learn a bit more. As soon as I began reading it I knew I had found a rarity among history books, an interesting read and actually exciting read! This stems from the style employed by Tuchman. Having chosen the area she wanted to cover, namely Western Europe in the 14th century, she needed something to provide a focus and uniting thread. For this she took the somewhat unusual approach of selecting not a person of royalty, a religious figure, or a member of the lower social class, but a noble that has the advantage of straddling in various ways all three of the aforementioned roles. Her noble, the Lord of Coucy, holding lands in the realm of northern France in the area of Picardy was an extraordinary figure by any consideration, involved in almost all the major military, political, and religious events of his. Of course it helped his cause that the three spheres so often, if not always overlapped in his day. Come to think of it, it still seems like those three spheres overlap quite often in our own age. Funny how history has a way repeating itself, or as it has been said, history never repeats itself, men always do.
The 14th century was a time of profound change and upheaval for the people of Europe. A long and destructive war was waged between the Kingdoms of England and France, known to posterity as the Hundred Years War, which was to leave both countries and much of Europe devastated long after the fighting had stopped. During the middle of the century a new terror descended on all the peoples of Europe, the Black Death or Bubonic Plague. Sparing neither rich nor poor, devout nor unbeliever, the great wave of death that swept through Europe multiple times in the last half of the century killed around half the total population, which was not to recover its 1300 level until around the 1550’s. So terrible was the Black Death and its consequences that it was simply known as the ‘great mortality’ to the people of the day. To throw one more destabilizing agent in the mix, the later half of the 14th century also gave rise to the Pope’s leaving of Rome in favor of a new residence in southern France at Avigion. This eventually lead to what is known as the papal schism, where for a time there were rival claimants to the papacy with one residing in Rome and one in Avigion, with the countries of Europe forced to take sides between them. For a time there were even three Popes at once. In a world destroyed by war and death, people looked to God for answers and when they found a split Church more corrupted and ungodly than ever change was only just around the corner.
Tuchman does a wonderful job of tying together the major events of the time around a narrative centered on Coucy. More often than not he is certainly a part of these events. Throughout the narrative are sprinkled social, economical, religious, and further historical background, painting a vivid picture of the life in France and England, and to a lesser extent the Italian states, the Holy Roman Empire and the Iberian kingdoms at the time. To this extent I think that Tuchman’s book is a success. As with all narrative histories though there are evitable flaws. To say that one event leads to another in an continuous flow of cause and effect, especially when it is centered around one character, is to deny and miss a lot of areas where a constant interaction of multiple forces help to shape and form that particular time in history. The tendency shown by Tuchman to attribute actions to individual leaders personalities and whims seems to me to be a throwback to the ancient historians of the classical world.
Another flaw that I see is the taking the life of a noble as a representation of the time. A noble by definition is a person set apart from the masses of humanity. To think that the Lord of Coucy or any of his associates in anyway represents what most people of the time experienced is to be deceived. He was primarily concerned with his own class, namely the ruling class, and the power that was derived from the position. Tuchman does much to paint him as a brilliant, enlightened man ahead of his time in many ways. That may be true to some extent but it is nevertheless also true that he used all the means available to him to exploit those of a lower class, as did all in the ruling class.
Even though I have criticisms for the book, I still believe it carried out its function well, namely to illuminate that age of European history often known as the Dark Ages. The choice of narrative as the vehicle for the history has its limitations as stated above but it also has many positives as well. Anyone looking to gain a preliminary understanding of this very eventful time would do well to pick up Tuchman’s book. I can only guarantee that it will whet the appetite for deeper search into the age.
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