Slight anxiety and a certain distaste on the bus route '09
Two people in as many days have approached me on the bus, getting my attention with meaningful looks and contortions of their heads, to ask me about the book I'm reading. It's a Hunter S. Thompson collection, called "Generation of Swine" that collects a bunch of his columns from the '80s. It's funny, like Thompson is news all of a sudden? He's been dead for four years and his heyday was thirty or forty years ago. It's sort of strange to have people asking me questions about this book, like it's a secret, special rarity, when in truth I bought it at a cut rate off a three foot stack of identical paper-backs.
Anyway, it's interesting reading Thompson because he gives you his own special little history lesson. First of all you're reading about some pretty major events, mostly scandals, and you have to dig the names you know out of references to many more names you've never heard before. Then you have to try to decide if Thompson is telling the truth or not, and then you need to maybe consider the metaphorical content of his seemingly bizarre rants, with or without clues to the true meaning or intent of the column. Over all I liked the first collection "The Great Shark Hunt" a little better, but I'm getting a neat perspective on events that were surrounding my developing brain in the late eighties.
The main narrative thrust (If it can be called narrative) of most of the columns in "...Swine" is about the three or four year race to the '88 presidential election. Reagan was at the end of his two terms in office and had become a pathetic, increasingly senile lame duck president. What I never knew was that George Bush Senior spent most of his last few years in the Vice Presidency mired in scandal that made Thompson confidently declare him a sure loser and a likely jail bird by the end of the whole mess. Bush's change from scandal ridden whipping dog to "yuppie president" was apparently entirely accomplished by a totally pathetic showing on the parts of all his contenders.
It's also interesting to see how many big names in politics in the eighties are still big names today. Joe Biden apparently ran for the Democratic nomination for '88 but dropped out of the race because of some sort of controversy (Something like cheating on a law exam twenty years prior, did anyone hear about this recently?)
Anyway, it's interesting reading Thompson because he gives you his own special little history lesson. First of all you're reading about some pretty major events, mostly scandals, and you have to dig the names you know out of references to many more names you've never heard before. Then you have to try to decide if Thompson is telling the truth or not, and then you need to maybe consider the metaphorical content of his seemingly bizarre rants, with or without clues to the true meaning or intent of the column. Over all I liked the first collection "The Great Shark Hunt" a little better, but I'm getting a neat perspective on events that were surrounding my developing brain in the late eighties.
The main narrative thrust (If it can be called narrative) of most of the columns in "...Swine" is about the three or four year race to the '88 presidential election. Reagan was at the end of his two terms in office and had become a pathetic, increasingly senile lame duck president. What I never knew was that George Bush Senior spent most of his last few years in the Vice Presidency mired in scandal that made Thompson confidently declare him a sure loser and a likely jail bird by the end of the whole mess. Bush's change from scandal ridden whipping dog to "yuppie president" was apparently entirely accomplished by a totally pathetic showing on the parts of all his contenders.
It's also interesting to see how many big names in politics in the eighties are still big names today. Joe Biden apparently ran for the Democratic nomination for '88 but dropped out of the race because of some sort of controversy (Something like cheating on a law exam twenty years prior, did anyone hear about this recently?)