Whiskey and Gorillas: Doctor Thompson Farewell

“Running fast and loud on the early morning freeway…long hair in the wind, beards and bandanas flapping, earrings, armpits…stripped down Harleys flashing chrome jamming crazy through traffic at 90 miles per hour like a burst of dirty thunder.” HELL’S ANGELS, Hunter S. Thompson 1965.

“I was slumped in my bed in the Flamingo, feeling dangerously out of phase with my surroundings. Something ugly was about to happen, I was sure of it. The room looked like the site of some disastrous zoologoical experiment involving whiskey and gorillas. The ten foor mirror was shattered, but still hanging together, bad evidence of that afternoon when my attorney ran amok with the coconut hammer smashing the mirror and all the lightbulbs.” FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS.

Hunter Thompson died in Woody Creek, Colorado where he retired in the late Sixties as he put it to raise wild boar and Doberman Pinschers. THE HELLS ANGELS book rose from an article commissioned by THE NATION. It took thirty nine years for his novel THE RUM DIARIES to be published. While Tom Wolfe worked the Park Avenue beat, Hunter Thompson rode the Pacific Coast Highway writing about the brutal confrontation attending cultural upheaval and personal meltdown. He was the first writer whose prose made my hair stand on end; for all the Gonzo component Thompson wrote like a war correspondent from a battlefield few others ever saw. “We were somewhere near Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold…My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest to facilitate the tanning process.” From FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS.

Hunter Thompson was sixty-seven years old.

Branding Revisited

Two weeks ago an article in the New York Times profiling Jane Friedman of Harper Collins ignited a firestorm among devotees of books; Ms. Friedman expressed a vision of a time when book buyers would simply reach for a Harper Collins title without awareness of the author. In the spirit of solid journalistic curiosity I sent Ms. Friedman an email asking for a clarification; she didn’t respond. Since nature abhors a vacuum we can only imagine her thoughts as an assistant read salient parts of the inquiry aloud. Mr. Miscellany is on line two; what should I tell him?

There’s evidence to suggest that Ms. Friedman’s idea is already gaining traction. Think back to the moment during INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS when the half-formed replicants began to resemble Kevin McCarthy. Obviously if all they looked like him the sinister plan to take over the planet would’ve been quickly detected; we’d have the cops comparing notes scene where they’d say…they all look alike. We don’t look the same…something’s wrong.

Romance writers can attest that HARLEQUIN is a brand. In fact HQ is busy creating demographic based imprints that calibrate the readers taste for which books must be written. The authors are low paid and very secondary to the process; sometimes their names don’t appear on the jacket. When they are acknowledged they write under psuedonyms appropriate to the sub-genre.

Judith Regan of ReganBooks, a Harper Collins imprint, is often mentioned as a publisher well versed in branding. Her titles are topical on provocative subjects like sex. She also published Tommy Franks memoir AN AMERICAN SOLDIER. Is the general a brand name? Will you discover him in a bookstore section marked ‘ReganBooks?’ Does your next door neighbor resemble Kevin McCarthy?

The argument could be made that the influence of branding has contributed to the decline in readership; a poorly written novel by a famous writer is one thing. Five in a row generally kills interest in future offerings from said writer; that the publisher is invisible in such a fiasco is a good thing. Bad books are the author’s fault; the logo on the spine is an innocent bystander.

Reviews on the way

In case you were wondering, I haven’t completely dropped out of the reading and writing world I used to inhabit. In fact I have had some very enjoyable hours holding my daughter and reading (both to her and to myself). It doesn’t get much better than that!

So here are some reviews that are on deck:

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

My Anotonia by Willa Cather

The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki

We the Media by Dan Gilmore

Look for these reviews to start on Monday.

Reviews on the way

In case you were wondering, I haven’t completely dropped out of the reading and writing world I used to inhabit. In fact I have had some very enjoyable hours holding my daughter and reading (both to her and to myself). It doesn’t get much better than that!

So here are some reviews that are on deck:

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

My Anotonia by Willa Cather

The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki

We the Media by Dan Gilmore

Look for these reviews to start on Monday.

Mysterious Island

The 59th annual Edgar awards will be handed out April 28th at the Grand Marriott Hotel in New York City. If you’re planning to attend, or have been nominated for an award, better leave now; it takes two months to navigate the lobby of the Grand Marriott despite color coded instructions as to which elevator bank is yours, which tower your room is in. Although the hotel is in midtown some of the rooms are actually on the Upper East Side.

The last time I was there I was meeting a client for drinks. I never found him; that was 1988. Larry, I hope you’re okay. When it opened, some people praised the Grand Marriott as having a ‘futuristic’ look; apparently in the future we’re doomed to wander through a carpeted labrynth clutching card keys and hoping the bellhop who took your luggage off to the tower will one day find his way back to your color coded patch even as Magellan once returned to Lisbon and asked, “was I gone long?”

Anyway this article isn’t about the hotel. I’m not fond of hotel lobbies large enough to re-enact the battle of Gettysburg. Let’s assume the authors are escorted by guides through the hotel and actually arrive at the award banquet before the sun also rises. I think the winners will all be from New York City simply because the out of towners, TJ Parker, Laura Lippman to name a few, are at a serious disadvantage. They won’t have anything to wear to the banquet; once they’re checked in and their luggage vanishes into the fern infested depths they’ll be consulting the handy chart issued to guests that explains the significance of the color stripe on the carpet…follow the green stripe to the green elevators; this is your elevator bank. These are mystery writers, well equipped to solve puzzles; still, is TJ going to wear a tux on that long flight from LAX? I think the Edgar award in each category should go to the author who finds their room, locates their luggage and makes it to the banquet hall in less than an hour.