[In] December 1971, as national correspondent for Rolling Stone. Thompson hit the presidential campaign trail, and his stream of monthly Gonzo journalism reports became one of the brighter features of that otherwise sorry year. Now rushed into book form with some additional material …, they seem even better than the first time round—the gaps, delays, and general fooling around have melted away with the heat of events. It simply doesn't matter as much now that he doesn't discuss McGovern's welfare proposals at any length or that the elaborate parliamentary maneuverings of the Democratic convention are no clearer here than they were elsewhere. What remains, instead, is very much what Thompson says he intended: "a kind of high-speed cinematic reel-record of what the campaign was like at the time, not what the whole thing boiled down to or how it fits into history."
It should be noted at the outset that Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 is open to attack from just about any traditional standard of political journalism: it is sometimes self-indulgent, wildly speculative, overwhelmingly partisan (pro-McGovern), and even short on information (most of the pieces were written on the assumption that the reader had already heard the major details). It should also be noted that none of this matters very much. Hunter Thompson is an original; there is no one quite like him, and we turn to his work not for "objective" reporting … but to watch an interesting sensibility engaged in high drama. Particularly in a case like the presidential campaign, where television has taken over standard reporting (and hardly anyone expects to hear the "real story" of backroom dealings anyway), his eccentricity works for him—he seems a rare individual voice in a world of homogenized telecasts. His raving excess is what we read him for, and, as with all good writers, his style—a wild mishmash of put-on, fantasy, and cultivated lunacy—seems an extension of personality. He is the kind of writer who talks to you right on the page. When this kind of high-voltage energy is frustrated by its subject (as was often the case on the campaign trail), it simply creates its own excitement. (p. 76)
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