A Review of Hunter S. Thompson's
Proud Highway

The notorious Hunter S. Thompson--native son of Kentucky, gonzo journalist, inconsolable misanthrope, malcontent, and all around crank--is now a man of letters. Quite literally.
         The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman is a nearly 700 page collection of letters Thompson penned between 1955 and 1967, from the time he was a senior at Louisville Male High School through the publication of Hell's Angels, his breakthrough work as a journalist.
         Arranged chronologically, the letters were written to family, friends, lovers, colleagues, editors, politicians, and famous writers--whose ranks Thompson was crazily confident he would soon join, and from whom Thompson was not in the least shy of asking favors. In a letter to William Faulkner--who, in common with the rest of the world in 1959, had never heard of a brash kid named Hunter S. Thompson--the 21 year-old writes to quibble with Faulkner over his views regarding the obligation of the writer, but does not hesitate to end his letter with this request: "And, incidentally, if you feel, as a result of this letter, a ripping desire to send me a weekly cheque, please feel free to do so. My corruption tolerance has been tested and found firm."
         Yes, The Proud Highway is full of these Thompson-esque burlesques--which are, of course, hilariously splenetic, shocking, and not infrequently insightful--but it is an interesting compilation for other reasons as well.
         As a writer, Thompson has--paradoxically--always seemed to render himself obsure, hiding out behind an elaborate, jeering persona, even as he has made himself and his reactions central to whatever story he is telling. But The Proud Highway makes a couple of things clear. One, Thompson's "persona" is, improbably, much less of a put-on than his readers (this reader, at least) might have imagined. The letters do reveal its refinement over the years--Thompson's whetting of his ever-edgier voice--but his inimitable style is already pretty well developed in even his earliest letters to high school friends.
         And, two--because it is so throughly mixed in with his crazed hyperbole--Thompson's sometimes breath-taking honesty is probably his most underesteemed quality as a writer (and correspondent). In The Proud Highway's selections, he seems to withhold nothing, whether it's in a heart-felt letter to his mother on the occasion of his grandmother's death, or a in letter of application to a newspaper in which he hysterically ennumerates all the qualities that make him "difficult to work with."
         It's easy to browse this collection--in fact, it almost invites it--but The Proud Highway is most satisfyingly read from start to finish because the book finally adds up to an epistolary autobiography, a life in letters. It's great fun to watch the formation of Thompson, his development as a "gonzo" journalist, how he learns to work an image or phrase (including the first ever use of his now trademark "fear and loathing" trope) for all it is worth.
         It's all here, a decade's worth of the days and nights of "Dr." Hunter S. Thompson. And at some point you begin to wonder: What on Earth possessed the man to compose so many long, thoughtful letters? Thompson himself provides an answer--in yet another letter, of course: "Because it's the only way . . . I can look at life objectively. Otherwise, I'm so involved in it that I forget that the rest of the world is merely a stage setting for my life."