In the following review, Copetas discusses Thompson's Songs of the Doomed and offers personal reminiscences of socializing with "Doc" Thompson.

By conceiving his journalism as a form of fiction, Thompson has been able to shape actual events into meaningful works of literary art. (p. 16) New journalists, such as Thompson, and fabulators, such as [Kurt] Vonnegut, make opposing epistemological contracts with the reader for similar ends. While the one promises fact and the other fantasy, both seek a greater freedom for their fictive imaginations. Because they both assume that artifice is an essential element in all knowledge and communication, they eve...

In the following essay, McCumber discusses the impact of Thompson's work and his current projects.

These days The Making of the President 1972 is of course damned, because Theodore White comes too close to accepting President Nixon's view of himself…. Hunter Thompson …, with his [Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail '72] has aroused even more partisan comment: if you hate President Nixon and the American establishment generally, Thompson is good; if not, he's unbelievably bad. (p. 7) It is true that [Thompson] claims to "record the reality of an incredibly vo...

Thompson's methods … go beyond traditional fiction into those of more innovative art—techniques and styles tasting more of [Ronald] Sukenick and [Steve] Katz than of [Henry] Fielding and [William] Thackeray. Plus he identifies with (and even becomes a part of) the action more than does Tom Wolfe or most of the other New Journalists. Thompson calls his new style "Gonzo Journalism," and its effect discredits Wolfe's thesis that the techniques of recent fiction are ina...

In the following excerpt, Menand reviews Thompson's Songs of the Doomed, charging that the author is still living in the counterculture of the 1970s.

In the following review, Rosenbaum asserts that Thompson is at his best in Songs of the Doomed when he's on the road after a story, instead of writing from the sidelines of his Woody Creek home.

It's taken me a month to get through [Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas], and Thompson's slickly unpleasant sentences still stick in the gullet. Does the road of subjective reporting, of fact-into-fiction, necessarily lead to the New Journalism, to that Death Gulch presided over by the grinning skulls of Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson? In its present phase, the New Journalism is an instrument of vulgar imaginative totalitarianism, and it commands the kind of attention one might give to the psychol...

In the following review, Vigilante complains that Thompson's "Generation of Swine is no more than the wish-fulfillment of a slightly deranged registered Democrat."

In the following review, Bernstein discusses Thompson's need to record his life and share it with the public in The Proud Highway.

In the following interview, Allis describes his attempt to interview Thompson.

In the following review, Freely discusses Thompson's Better Than Sex and Paul Perry's unauthorized biography of Thompson and asserts that the gonzo journalist has lost his edge.

In the following review, Mitgang asserts that Thompson "takes no prisoners" in his Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the 80s.

[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 M...

The "60's," which ran from 1965 to 1974, brought forth a fresh, raw journalism appropriate to the general abandon…. Hunter Thompson is indisputably a hugely important sociological phenomenon. The age's distinctive feature was iconoclasm—anyone in a position of authority was presumptively engaged in nefarious enterprise…. So it was iconoclasm and a personal hedonism expressed in sex, drugs—and rhetoric. (p. 1) [What] emerges with a most awful vividness ...

Bad craziness. Dangerous lunacy. Permanent hysteria. But especially bad craziness. That is Hunter S. Thompson's real destination on his "savage journey to the heart of the American dream," and you know it from the first moment the drug-addled duo heave into view…. [Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream] is a trip, literally and figuratively, all the way to bad craziness and back again.

I worry about the health of Dr. Hunter Thompson. I think I am supposed to do that. He is the most creatively crazy and vulnerable of the New Journalists, seemingly, and scattered throughout his dispatches are alarming reports on his health. Nor are his sicknesses imaginary. In this, his latest book, he gives the opinion of a physician: "He'd never seen anybody with as bad a case of anxiety as I had. He said I was right on the verge of a complete mental, physical, and emotional collapse."...

As I write, Raoul Duke is standing blindfolded in front of an Iranian firing squad, haggling over the bribe he is offering. For Doonesbury's sake, I hope those atavistic waterheads grease the twisted little bugger; he hasn't been funny for months now. We would all be better off without him. Like Hunter S. Thompson's journalistic style, Uncle Duke has grown predictable…. Perhaps that is a harsher way to put it than Thompson's work deserves. Many people I respect consider Fe...

[If] you accept what Thompson is doing, [Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72] works. That is, this heavily personalized writing-on-the-run, riddled here and there by the clear eye of hindsight, does convey an honest picture of a political writer picking his way through all the hoopla, propaganda, tedium, and exhaustion of a campaign. For the straight political writer, survival is sought both physically and professionally throughout an election year; keeping the body functioning and the soul ...

[Hell's Angels] shows the extent to which, in our society, the individual needs protection against himself as well as against others. This is a reporter's account of approximately a year spent in contact with the California gang of motorcycle outlaws…. Thompson complains that the news media have exaggerated the extent to which the Angels terrorize the communities through which they ride. But his lurid narrative, despite its sympathy for his subjects, reveals the threat they pose. Speed,...

Apocalypse has come and gone, and what will the psychedelic writers do now—Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson? Did they flame out, like their decade? Their long roller-coaster sentences, whose art was to seem half out of control, caught the veerings of the '60s. It was a breathless time, no one could keep up—take notes as you run, and stop every now and then to exclaim something like, "Just so!" Mailer got there first…. Thompson came last and most extra...

I guess you'd best forget trying to understand the rationale behind Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to The Heart of the American Dream." Never mind if you don't wholly agree with him when he writes that "Every now and then when you life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas." Don't worry if i...

In the following review, the critic faults Thompson's Better Than Sex, saying, "The aim is true but the barbs not quite as lethal as his earlier literary death blows."

The change in journalism in the sixties showed itself more spectacularly on the fringes than at the center of established institutions. The so-called New Journalism, or "para-journalism," as its critics labeled it, developed parallel to the chief organs of information, influencing them only subtly and gradually, in tandem with the influence of the age…. This work included a broad spectrum of underground writing—political, countercultural, feminist, pornographic, and so on—...

In the following review, Ross asserts the value of Thompson's wisdom in Generation of Swine.

In the following review, Ross praises Thompson's style but complains that his Better Than Sex is too disjointed.

In the following review, Gaughan asserts that although Thompson's Better Than Sex is not better than his Fear and Loathing books, it is worthy of attention.

In the following review, Kaiser calls Thompson's The Proud Highway "neither particularly interesting nor particularly well-written."

The easy acceptance of violence lends to ["Hell's Angels"] a cartoon quality. We observe Angels brutalizing themselves and others and somehow we expect them to recover as quickly as the cartoon cat and mouse. It's not that Thompson doesn't give us a vivid picture of brawls and orgies. His language is brilliant, his eye is remarkable, and his point of view is reminiscent of Huck Finn's. He'll look at anything; he won't compromise his integrity. Somehow ...