About this title: Gonzo journalist and literary roustabout Hunter S. Thompson flies with the angels--Hell's Angels, that is. He's lived with them, he knows them and their machines, he speaks their language,and he reports it back to the world with all the fearsome force of a souped-up cyclone burning rubber.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1974
ISBN-13:9780345331489ISBN:0345331486
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Well-bound PB that appears to have spent time with the book's subjects. Edgeworn/stained cover. Unmarked text but some rippling and water stains until p. 50 and from p. 320 to end. [frpb] Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 348 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Fine. One dogeared page corner (has been straightened back out & lies tight & straight). Otherwise book is like new! Cover is super glossy & clean. Spine is UNcreased-tight & square. Pages are tight, clean, straight, & unmarked. F6d. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books, New York
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780345331489ISBN:0345331486
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. Black covers, clean with some rubbing. hairline crease at fornt hinge. spine edges rubbed, no crease to spine. corners lightly worn, last ten or so pages has light moisture texture, minor. text clean, 348 pages. one name inside front flap from previous owner. a very nice and scarce copy. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books, New York
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780345410085ISBN:0345410084
Description: Very Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. 273 pp.; 21 cm. Tight, clean copy. Light edgewear to wraps. Browning. "'California, Labor Day weekend...early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur...The Menace is loose again. ' Thus begins Hunter S. Thompson's vivid account of ... read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books, New York
Date Published: 1967
ISBN-13:9780345331489ISBN:0345331486
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. First printing. Bookstore stamp inside front cover. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 348 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: 25th Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books, New York, NY, USA
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780345331489ISBN:0345331486
Description: Near Fine. 348 pages. Very light spine crease almost unnoticeable. A fine copy. read more
Description: Very Good- 284 pgs., lightly worn copy, creased at spine, binding still tight, pages yellowed, thin strip of surface at front cover peeled off, lightly foxed page edges. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1996-09-01
ISBN-13:9780345410085ISBN:0345410084
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780345410085. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1996
ISBN-13:9780345410085ISBN:0345410084
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
"Not a complete page-turner, and not nearly as brilliant as 'fear and loathing', this is none the less well worth reading, full of captivating hipster-language, and weird insights into the subculture of the Hells Angels. Hunter S. Thompson is a brilliant investigative journalist both able to give a high-flying sociological analysis of the Angels, and at the same time (quite unlike most sociologists) able to blend in with them - ride bikes, drink and consume drugs with the best... "showing real class". The book is both a wild tale of some of the antics and crazy parties the Angels were part of in the 60s and a tale of how society reacted - how the newsmedia, the police, the squares and politicians all misunderstood and misinterpreted the angels as a group. The most interesting misinterpretation however is the idea some left-wing "berkeley-type" intellectuals apparently also had regarding the angels... that they were basically on the same side, and that the angels just needed to be illuminated before they would sympathise with hippies. A total misunderstanding of who the angels were, and what they represented."
"Is there anything more delicious than when the infamous writes about the infamous. I'm hardly one of those whacked-out Hunter S. Thompson-ophiles, but "Hell's Angels," his nonfiction-ish account of spending the mid-1960s with the motorcycle club as it revved its way into mainstream media is a total kick.
"Weird as it seems, as this gang of costumed hoodlums converged on Monterey that morning they were on the verge of 'making it big,' as the showbiz people say, and they would owe most of their success to a curious rape mania that rides on the shoulder of American journalism like some jeering, masturbating raven. Nothing grabs an editor's eye like a good rape."
Thompson follows their runs, when the group converges on a city, which preemptively terrorizes the locals, who envision all the raping and pillaging they are about to have foisted upon them. It's not a basis-less fear: the Angel's are known for brawls and gang bangs -- although they tend to reason that the women they encounter know what they are in for. He writes about their commitment to uncleanliness, the bikers' uniform and the rumors of inner-circle homosexuality. The drinking and the drugs, and their day jobs -- or lack thereof -- and seemingly pedestrian pursuits. As they grow in popularity, the Hell's Angels become publicity seekers who eventually want to charge money to share their stories.
Associating with Hell's Angels does little for Hunter Thompson's reputation with his neighbors, and he is evicted when there are complaints about these visiting motorcyclists and their wild ways. In my favorite moment of the book, Thompson turns to the reader to confess that the really bad stuff wasn't even done by Hells Angels. Their visits, he says, were just loud music, a few bikes on the sidewalk, and an occasional shot out back window.
"Most of the bad action came on nights when there was no Angels around: One of my most respectible visitors, an advertising executive from New York, became hungry after a long night of drink and stole a ham from the refrigerator of a nearby apartment; another guest set my mattress afire with a flare and we had to throw it out the back window; another ran wild in the street with a high-powered Falcon air horn normally carried on boats for use as a distress signal."
Not to mention the time a visiting poet chucked a garbage can under the wheels of a passing bus.
In the last third of the book, Thompson gives the Angels a bit of access to his life. This is where the Angels start hanging out on Ken Kesey's land and taking LSD, which strangely mellows them out. There is Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg and nudity and police cars.
(Obviously I'm going to have to read "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" now, since I enjoyed this so much.)"
"At the time of publication the Hells Angels were a home grown menace that was both real and imagined (and they owe not a little of that infamy to the media as HST aptly points out). They have since evolved from their simple nomad rabble rouser days to being mischievous enough to earn the ire of the F.B.I. along with the rest of the "Big Four" outlaw gangs. In the "Quebec Biker War" between the Angels and the "Rock Machine", over 150 people were killed which is on par with the biggest Cosa Nostra conflicts in the U.S.A. So while average citizens don't generally walk in fear of the Hells Angels it is a stretch to consider biker gangs to be an insignificant thing of the past.
For my part I thought that it was very interesting and surprisingly fair considering that the author was in effect part of the Angels camp by association. Drawing from first hand experience from "runs" that he participated in and primary source interviews, HST pulls no punches in calling it as he sees it. Often he points out the illogical doctrines of gang mentality and inherent irony at their loss individuality in the attempt to distance themselves from society at large and their law abiding motorcycle counterparts without the evangelical fire of an outsider looking in.
It is precisely because the book is not "nearly as Gonzo" (as stated by another reviewer) as some of his seminal works that Thompson makes a credible account. He doesn't overly vilify the Angels nor does he belittle their loyalty to one another and the jocular perspective on what they consider to be a misfit lifestyle. His commentary carries perspective because he is accomplice by mild participation but he never quite loses the stigma of "the establishment" by the Angels own admission. This is punctuated at the close by the stomping he takes from the hands and boots of some of the Angels. Despite that he chooses not to close with malice but with words of affection for some of the Angels he grew to know as people beyond the colors.
Thompson's account was researched, thorough and insightful. He never offers a conclusion or even a reason why-only a what. For that he offers the reader a ride with the perhaps the most infamous of the world's outlaw motorcycle gangs.
"There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still out there. Or maybe it's in. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions."
-Hunter S. Thompson: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga of The Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs-"
"My girlfriend had just finished this book, and I had run out of Terry Pratchett (for the moment), so I picked it up. It's good.c Hunter S. Thompson goes well out of his way to rock out with a pack of 60s and 70 Hell's Angels, way out there in Cali. He does a great job of confronting and dispelling a great deal of the rumors of these modern pirates, but at times I think he simply painted them how he wanted to see them. Thompson does his best to bring out the basic humanity of his subjects, whom he rodes with, drank with, and fought with over a number of years. Covered are legendary clashes with the police, which are really never the Hell's Angels' fault. I feel as if I've known the Hell's Angels Thompson creates: they're rednecks, they're drunken, drugged louts who hang around their bars waiting for something to happen, and if it doesn't, they just pick something to fight and fight it. Often one another. In the end, Hell's Angels evokes the image of brotherhood gone wrong, of the bottom 1% of the human pile, the wretches, who simply want the world their way and refuse to compromise. The Hell's Angels of the 60s and 70s were simply a gang in the purest sense of the term. They were loosely friends, and defended one another with inhuman fervor against any outsiders. And there's drugs and sex and orgies and all sorts of other stuff. Fires, parties, drugs and cops, and a cowardly drug addict journalist sitting in the middle of it all, recording what went down, dipping his toes in the brackish waters of their world, never allowing himself to become completely sodden, until one of them pulls him down. The prose is light, a little too stilted in the On the Road vein, but still entertaining. I read this one fast, and it kept me moving. Recommended as a brief respite from whatever series you're currently reading. 4 of 6"
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