The Bookworm: Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson. 481 pages. Grand Central Publishing. 1973.

This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

This morning I woke around 10:07, ate some toast, and resolved to read the remaining 80 or so pages of Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72. I had to finish it as soon as possible.

I made the mistake of going to Prairie Lights on Friday. I wanted to snag a copy of The New York Times Magazine, but when I saw they were sold out I decided to browse the nonfiction/essay section. Bad idea. My only visit to PL, or any other bookstore in IC, since returning was a quick in-‘n’-out in search of the latest Little Village issue, so I had yet to do some serious perusing. I immediately started salivating uncontrollably at the sight of all those books. I was on the verge of stacking titles into a “to buy” tower when I remembered the eight-book queue I have barely scratched since returning to the heartland. I barely touched it before leaving California.

Before I do any more book buying I am making myself read through my current backlog. (I’m such a masochist.) At this rate I should be finished by Thanksgiving.

FL ’72 is the result of Hunter S. Thompson’s year-long and head-first dive into the craziness of presidential campaigning. The book is a “mass of first draft screeds” he wrote for Rolling Stone while covering the 1972 Democratic primaries, the Republicrat conventions in Miami, and George McGovern’s ill-fated push for the presidency.

For one giant first draft, it’s a damn good book. (According to the author’s note at the beginning, the whole thing was lashed together over the course of a couple days at a hotel in San Francisco. HST was given “two cases of Mexican beer, four quarts of gin, a dozen grapefruits, and enough speed to alter the outcome of six Super Bowls” by the Stone staff to get the book finished in time for the deadline.) Part Gonzo, part embellishment, and part hopelessly distracted, FL ’72 strays from political writing’s tedious norm and delivers a first-hand, drug and booze addled peek at not only what happens behind the campaign and political curtain, but also sheds light on the largely unseen world of the national press corps. HST’s lifestyle was extreme, as the book provides good and hilarious evidence for, but many of his colleagues in the “linear press” at the time were far from clearheaded, either.

I bought FL ’72 at Skylight in April. (Now you know the shameful scope of my reading queue.) HST’s investigative and in-depth reporting skills amazed me when I read Hell’s Angels, and I was eager to read more of his stuff from the ‘60s and ‘70s. FL ’72 was the perfect fit in that sense, and also tickled my interest in the time period. Perhaps I should blame my parents and having grown up in an age of inescapable Boomer nostalgia and historical homesickness. The ‘60s and ‘70s were culturally epic, and the political environment in the United States reflected the complexity and volatility of what was happening socially. The country, and the world, seemed like a 20 million pound powder keg with a 30-second fuse. It’s a fascinating time to read about, and FL ’72 offers 481 pages of it.

On that note, though, I will say portions of the book push the attention envelope. The most boring part was a 28-page, “98 percent verbatim transcript” of a conversation HST had with McGovern strategist Rick Sterns and Bill Dougherty, the Lieutenant Governor of South Dakota, about a complex maneuver the McGovern staff made at the DNC to secure enough delegates for the nomination. The political analysis, accounts of campaigning, and profiles of the candidates could be tedious for some. (Like I said, I’m such a masochist.) Also, the book is chock full of obscure politicians and dated references. Names like Ed Muskie, Eugene McCarthy, John Lindsey, and Spiro Agnew are familiar to me, but perhaps not for everyone. It no doubt helps to have Wikipedia at the ready for names like George Metesky, Artie Bremer, and D.B. Cooper.

The treachery of Watergate was just beginning to be uncovered at the time HST and Rolling Stone staffers were hurriedly putting together the last pieces of the book, so his speculations about the future and the presidential campaigns of 1976 and 1980 proved amusing in light of what actually happened. A Nixon victory in ’72 would, he thought, no doubt favorably position Vice President Agnew to become the Republican nominee four years later. As it turned out, Agnew resigned in October 1973 as part of a deal to drop charges of extortion, tax fraud, bribery, and conspiracy. And we all know what happened to Nixon. Peppered throughout the book’s accounts of the Nixon administration and campaign are names such as John Mitchell, John Ehrlichman, and Donald Segretti, all of which became synonymous with Watergate. (HST mentions Segretti jokingly in footnotes that were likely added just before publication in 1973. HST was wrongly fingered as a possible co-conspirator in Segretti’s “ratfucking” campaign against Ed Muskie.)

Ironically, HST did a little of his own playful ratfucking of Muskie. He wrote that “word leaked out that some of Muskie’s top advisors had called a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with ‘some kind of strange drug’ that nobody in the press corps had ever heard of.” HST speculated that Muskie was being treated with, and addicted to, a drug called Ibogaine, which explained the candidate’s odd behavior during the primaries in Florida and Wisconsin. It was, in fact, just a bunch of bullshit. Very uncool, if you ask me. Sure it’s funny to call a Senator a drug crazed looney, but it is shamelessly unethical to start an unsubstantiated rumor like that. Frankly, I was convinced Muskie was addicted, and only discovered the Ibogaine thing was a fabrication after doing a little online research.

FL ’72 is a damn good read if you have the patience and interest to follow HST through the interesting political gauntlet that was the ’72 presidential election.

New words I learned: All descriptions courtesy of my MacBook dictionary. Cord, as in its meaning as firewood: “a measure of cut wood, usually 128 cubic feet (3.62 cu m).” Baleful: “threatening harm; menacing.” Niggle: “a trifling complaint, dispute, or criticism.” Cordovan: “a kind of soft leather made originally from goatskin and now from horsehide.” Denigrate: “criticize unfairly; disparage.” Paunch: “a large or protruding abdomen or stomach.” Golem: “(in Jewish legend) a clay figure brought to life by magic.” Filigree: “ornamental work of fine (typically gold or silver) wire formed into delicate tracery.” Atavistic: “relating to or characterized by reversion to something ancient or ancestral.” Pyrrhic: “(of a victory) won at too great a cost to have been worthwhile for the victor.” Ken: “one's range of knowledge or sight.” Bastinado: “a form of punishment or torture that involves caning the soles of someone's feet.” Glower: “have an angry or sullen look on one's face; scowl.” Mange: “a skin disease of mammals caused by parasitic mites and occasionally communicable to humans. It typically causes severe itching, hair loss, and the formation of scabs and lesions.” Manqué: “having failed to become what one might have been; unfulfilled.” Chicanery: “the use of trickery to achieve a political, financial, or legal purpose.” Selah: “(in the Bible) occurring frequently at the end of a verse in Psalms and Habakkuk, probably as a musical direction.” Sybarite: “a person who is self-indulgent in their fondness for sensuous luxury.” Peroration: “the concluding part of a speech, typically intended to inspire enthusiasm in the audience.” Knell: “the sound of a bell, esp. when rung solemnly for a death or funeral.”