Hunter Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, despite its title, is not a book about the Hell’s Angels group. It’s a book about the difference between perception and reality, and the Angels are merely the conduit through which Thompson explores the dichotomy, conducting a systematic exploration of the misconceptions 1960s America had about the Angels, motorcycles, and the counter-culture, as well as an exploration of the delusions the Angels had about cops, squares, and themselves.
His ultimate conclusion? (1) Despite the rampant fear of the Angels that pervaded society—a fear, he contends, that was largely a construction of the media—the bikers were nothing more than run-of-the-mill, petty criminals, who liked to party. (2) Despite their inflated sense of significance and influence—a sense, Thompson also contends, was largely a construction of the media—the Angels were nothing more than run-of-the-mill, petty criminals, who liked to party.
The distinctions made by Thompson between the erroneous image America had of the Angels and the dull reality is interesting in that, looking back on the life of Hunter Thompson some forty years after the publication of the book that propelled him to fame, Hell’s Angels offers an unanticipated perspective from which to analyze the author’s life. Thompson was an unknown magazine writer when he began covering the Angels, and from 1965 to 1973 he would transition to nationally recognized writer for Rolling Stone and the bestselling author, in addition to Hell’s Angels, of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, ‘72. In less than a decade the line between Thompson the serious-though-Gonzo writer and Hunter Thompson the wild, drug-fueled celebrity will become so blurred that the distinction will cease to exist, and his career will essentially be over.
I heard Patton Oswalt say, more or less, that there is a point when a comedian becomes so famous that they will get big laughs and standing ovations from an audience just because everyone is so excited to see them in person, and a comedian, he said, will never be as funny after because he can no longer gauge by an audience’s reaction if what he’s doing is really good. The idea is that a comic needs to be able to work his material out on stage and have some bad shows, and when a crowd is unwilling to boo and heckle, the comedian isn’t pushed to refine his act. Kurt Vonnegut wrote about reaching a similar point in his career, which occurred when he submitted a manuscript to his publisher (the name of the particular novel I can’t recall), and his editor, whom Vonnegut noted was much younger than himself, offered no suggested corrections. The novel was proofread and published without Vonnegut having to change a single word. This is not a good thing.
I was reminded of this in reading Hell’s Angels. Hunter Thompson’s career was ruined because, like the Angels, he began to buy into the image that society constructed of him. He became the Gonzo journalist people expected. But in Hell’s Angels you can still detect a hunger in the writing, an almost palpable sense that Thompson wants the book to succeed and is diligently working to constantly make the text as engaging as possible. Indeed, the book is more interesting than his later work. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is funny and entertaining, but compared to Hell’s Angels there is a feeling that Thompson began to take something for granted after his initial success. Yes, the prose is more adventurous in Fear and Loathing, but it as though Thompson is working from the assumption that even if his writing is not relentlessly brilliant the book will still be successful. In other words, the act he puts on in his later works is more daring, but the performer is operating with a net in case he falls. In Hell’s Angels there is no net, and if I may extend the metaphor, the book is fascinating and ultimately successful because it presents us with a great author who is writing without the net of a reputation to protect him if he falls and who therefore pushes ahead, afraid to look down.
