Book Report: Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson

Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book because I've been very curious about the idea of the outlaw biker for a long time, probably since I first played a demo of the old Lucasarts adventure game Full Throttle. This idea of a rough and tumble individualist, a modern day Robin Hood really stuck somewhere in the back of my brain. Also, I've read a lot of stories about Hunter S. Thompson, but never read anything by him, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to get both in in one book.

I'll be honest: when I got about half way through the book, I realized that I hadn't been blown away by the legendary Hunter S. Thompson. In fact, I had kind of forgotten that he had written it. Over the second half, though, I realized that this was because I wasn't really noticing that I was reading something that had been written, if that makes sense. It was more like I was sitting in somebody's living room–someone who had lived a life or two very removed from mine–who was telling me story after story about their crazy couple of years hanging out with these biker gangs. I think that's some of the genius of his writing (at least here).

The Hell's Angels as featured in the book were not as “chaotic good” as I had hoped and not really as “chaotic evil” as the reputation sensationalist press clippings had given them. The majority of the book seems to be trying to demythologize the Angels as the great threat to small-town American life. The reality, though wasn't much better: an often sadistic, aimless group of drifters whose morality seemed capricious at best. More like the trolls of 4chan than any counter-cultural revolutionary, the image that I've carried of these 1 percenters deflated as I turned each page.