Hell's Angels: A Strange & Terrible Saga

I recently finished Hunter S. Thompson's journalistic endeavor with the outlaw motorcycle gang the Hell's Angels, his first major book publication. This is the fifth book I have read by the Doctor (along with countless articles) and although it is not my favorite, I thoroughly enjoyed every moment. It is easy to tell he had not yet found his voice, a voice that would eventually require a new vocabulary to fully describe. There is a section in this book entitled "The Hoodlum Circus and The Statutory Rape of Bass Lake," which makes up the bulk of this story. Coincidentally I worked on Bass Lake, a small community just south of Yosemite National Park, for an entire summer and never heard the tale of the outlaws' run to this quiet rural vacation spot on July 4th, 1965. I highly recommend this book and anything else written by Thompson, who I would say is easily my favorite writer. I just wanted to leave you with a quote from the Doctor to show you the power of his words.

"But with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right... and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it... howling through a turn to the right, then to the left, and down the long hill to Pacifica... letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge... The Edge... 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 luck 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 time 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."

R.I.P. Dr. Gonzo