The barbarian bikers are coming! (Hell's Angels - Hunter S. Thompson)

Member Name: Jumbo Scotch Egg

Product:	Hell's Angels - Hunter S. Thompson
Date:	12/05/01 (456 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining and well informed

Disadvantages: Thompson's writing style was still at the developmental stage

Hunter S Thompson made his name with Hell’s Angels in 1966, the book which marked the beginnings of Gonzo journalism. In some ways he struck it lucky by hitting on the right subject at the right time. The Angels were ripe for a detailed account, following their sudden rise to fame in the US press in 1965. Despite being in existence since the end of the Second World War, the Angels had been relatively obscure until an incident known as The Monterey Rape. The Californian papers picked up on the alleged gang rape of two young women on a Monterey beach by a gang of Angels. The story took off, and soon the New York Herald Tribune, Newsweek and Time were running front page stories on the biker menace. Almost overnight, the Angels became nationally notorious, a mob of outlaws on unholy motorbikes who sacked respectable towns, drinking all the beer, attacking respectable citizens, and raping the women. Average Americans, particularly Californians, dreaded a visit from these terrible people.

Thompson wanted to find out the truth behind this sensationalist reporting, and took the most direct route by seeking out the Angels himself and asking them. He managed to gain their trust as far as any non-Angel was likely to, and rode with them off and on for a year. His account is deceptively casual, but the apparently haphazard structure of the book conceals some skilful writing. He ties together a host of fascinating asides on subjects such as the US and British motorcycle industries, police tactics in rural America, the Angel’s gay and S&M overtones, road safety, biker movies, bail bondsmen, and how to strip down a Harley Davidson.

One of the main themes of the book is the role the media played in building up the Hell’s Angels in the minds of the public. Ironically, the Angels were close to extinction when they hit the headlines in 1965. This sudden exposure reversed their fortunes, and to some extent helped to turn them into what th
e media had claimed they already were. The original stories were mostly exaggeration. Neither of the alleged rapes at Monterey actually seems to have taken place. However, a spectacularly biased report by the Californian Attorney-General gave official credence to a large number of myths, and ensured that the Angels, and indeed anyone else on a motorbike, received a difficult time at the hands of the police. Confrontations between Angels and police were virtually guaranteed by the panicked response to their presence from townspeople, convinced they were about to be on the wrong end of raping and pillaging. There was an element of truth in the rumours, but no more than that. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the notorious murder at the Rolling Stones Altamont concert, which occurred after this book was written, was the inevitable culmination of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hell’s Angels is made particularly enjoyable by Thompson’s persona, which even at this early stage in his career features prominently in his writing. Of course, this is nothing compared to the full-on Gonzo writing of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, However, when he reveals that he blew out the back windows of his house with five blasts of a shotgun the reader can see the signs of things to come. Later on, he claims to have "gone over the high side" taking a corner too fast on his bike. His enthusiastic description of the grim injuries suffered by his passenger is hard to square with his insistence that "there is nothing romantic about a bad crash".

Thompson gradually builds up a comprehensive picture of the people he met, and mixes in a significant amount of very interesting analysis. For example, he keeps revisiting the disputed origin of the Angels, discussing reports that they were formed solely by ex-servicemen who came out of the Army in 1945 and proved unable to exchange their dangerous day-to-day existence for a suburban exis
tence. He also traces their origins to desperate immigrants, the dregs of society, who drifted west across the US until they ran out of land and were obliged to scratch out a living on the west coast. Whatever the truth of the matter, Thompson spins a very good theory. He also convincingly nails the real reason that the average small town American found the Angels so threatening: "In this downhill half of the twentieth century they are not so different from the rest of us as they sometimes seem. They are just more upfront about it."

Summary: