Tags: autobiography | gonzo journalism | memoirs

I'm willing to bet that if you were to put a cell from the body of Hunter S. Thompson, any cell; brain (one of the few rumored to still exist) or otherwise, into a petri dish full of cells taken from normal people and examined it all under a microscope you'd be able to recognize the Thompson cell immediately because it would be the big, mean, odd-shaped one in the middle bouncing around, eating up all the little ones, trying like hell to escape...

Most who recognize the name Hunter S. Thompson do so from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. The chronicle from the brink. This is unfortunate. Fear and Loathing is indeed a valuable work. Yet it is merely one. A single song. A popular hit from the year 1971 that many of us try so desperately to sing the words to. There's so much more to Thompson than 'Vegas'.

Before and since.

From his ill-fated and hilarious stint with the Air Force all the way through his dealings with the Hells Angels. Guns, goblins, booze, vending machine intolerance, wild boars, whores, fiction, booze, Indians, gambling, far away places, drugs, choppers, booze, deaths, births, and more.

Thompson was there for it all... usually. And you can't say he didn't have a damn keen eye for it. And if you believe the old adage about the pen being mightier than the sword, then The Proud Highway will make you realize Thompson is one hell of a warrior. Maybe the mightiest around.

In that I'm unable to decide on an ideal quote, I've resorted to opening the book at random and using the first words that hit my eyes.

To wit: "IN THE COURSE OF A RAMBLING, NERVOUS DISCOURSE ON SOME ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT SUBJECT, I EXPOSED MYSELF... to myself... AS A SEVERE NEUROTIC, a virtual headless chicken, totally incapable of making value judgements, and running on a rum-soaked treadmill towards a schizophrenic rainbow in a two-dimensional sky."

Perhaps not the most definitive of the book as a whole but it does display admirable self-perception and grasp of the keys for a twenty-one-year old. It's easier to say too much than not enough. Thompson has a lot to be proud of. People fight for his books like sharks on a pig. The Proud Highway is volume 1, encompassing 1955-1967. The next volume is due out soon.