Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S. Thompson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
Book Review: Brilliant Journalism: HST is the man...
Summary: 5 Stars
Thompson produces classic, madcap romps through the American psyche. HELL'S ANGELS is a great example... Vibrant and hilarious.Book Review: DOCTOR THOMPSON LEARNS HIS TRADE
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Book Review: Does he ride like he writes?
Summary: 3 Stars
From what I know, Hunter Thompson is a great author but this must not have been his best work. He drag's something simple out for what seems to be days and yet he seems to summarize the events that actually lasted for days. The book has alot of references to outside material and it almost seems like he is writing it from an outsiders view sometimes. This book only documents a years time and that leaves alot of the Angel's history left untold. If you've read everything else on the Angel's then go for it otherwise finish the rest first.Book Review: Don't be miss informed
Summary: 4 Stars
The reviewers that gave this book a negative spin really missed the boat. The book is not a sensatonalized account as "Fear and Loathing", is it is a record, and a great one at that,of Hunter's time spent with these modern outlaws. It is informative, shocking, and very entertaining.Book Review: Early Hunter S. Thompson
Summary: 4 Stars
This is early Hunter S. Thompson and already his own life is in such disarray that I wonder how much of his information can be trusted. Nevertheless, he captures the relationship between "law and order" and the Hell's Angels in a way that no other has. I have not read Sonny Barger's book but it is a must if one is to complete the picture. Like most "outlaw" groups the Hell's Angels tend to see themselves in a certain almost heroic light. Hunter captures how they saw themselves in the middle sixties or there abouts. Barger admits much later that they have softened with time into something else (just not mainstream society). The all for one and one for all attitude the Angels Supposedly espouse has always made me personally uneasy even when made available to me. I have been more of an independent I suppose so Hunter's descriptions of the Hell's Angels psychology is enlightening to me although it is tempered with half truths.