The Great Shark Hunt, by Hunter S. Thompson


"It’s teddible, teddible."

These are the last words I would use to describe Hunter S Thompson's The Great Shark Hunt, but are probably the ones I will remember the most from this fascinating book. They were uttered by his friend Ralph Steadman in the second essay, "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved," which established Thompson's "Gonzo Journalism" style of making the writer an essential part of the story.

Thompson, who killed himself back in February, is such a good read. His essays are so layered and complex that they should be read with at least two strong cups of coffee in your system, and they are worth it. He talks about wearing pantyhose for Muhammad Ali, offering Ted Kennedy heroin on an airplane, and zooming around the city of sin with Oscar Zeta Acosta in a passage from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which was made into a 1998 Johnny Depp movie.

The best passage, I found, was the one for which the book was named, one that Thompson wrote for Playboy. He is sent to write about a fishing derby run by a bunch of rich, red-necked anglers, one of whom is distracted during an interview because “all he seemed to have any real interest in at the moment was the ‘Argentine maid’ he was grappling with in the cockpit of his boat. She was about 15 years old, had dark-blonde hair and red eyes, but it was hard to get a good look at her, because ‘Cap’n Tom’ - as he introduced himself - was bending her over a Styrofoam bait box full of dolphin heads and trying to suck on her collarbone while he talked to me.”

Later, a stoned Thompson sucks up sand through his nostrils thinking it was coke, and about the funniest thing I’ve ever read is of how he and his friend Yail Bloor (who is actually his Aspen friend Michael Solheim) made it through a Texas airport with orange amphetamine pills spilling out of his shoes.

But that’s not to say he was all about drugs and stoner trips through exotic places. The back cover carries an endorsement from the New York Times, saying “He smells injustice,” and he does. He’s got a very clear sense of what is right and wrong, writing about race, politics, and the bullshit from Richard Milhous Nixon, to whom the book is dedicated, “who never let me down.”

This was a great read, and timely, considering the number of "Fear and Loathing" references I've read the last couple weeks with the national election a month away, and looking to reading more from him. In fact, I might begin digging through downtown used bookstores for old copies of his articles in Rolling Stone.