| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in "Screwjack" and Other Stories for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
They will not be disappointed. His notorious " Screwjack" is as salacious, unsettling, and brutally lyrical as it has been rumored to be since the private printing in 1991 of three hundred fine collectors' copies and twenty-six leather-bound presentation copies. Only the first of the three pieces included here -- "Mescalito," published in Thompson's 1990 collection "Songs of the Doomed" -- has been available to the public, making the trade edition of "Screwjack" a major publishing event.
"We live in a jungle of pending disasters," Thompson warns in "Mescalito," a chronicle of his first mescaline experience and what it sparked in him while he was alone in an L.A. hotel room in February 1969 -- including a bout of paranoia that would have made most people just scream no, once and for all. But for Thompson, along with the downside came a burst of creativity too powerful to ignore. The result is a poetic, perceptive, and wildly funny stream-of-consciousness take on 1969 America as only Hunter S. Thompson could see it.
"Screwjack" just gets weirder with its second offering, "Death of a Poet." As Thompson describes this trailer-park confrontation with the dark side of a deservingly doomed friend: "Whoops, I thought. Welcome to the night train."
The heart of the collection lies in its final, title piece, an unnaturally poignant love story. What makes the romantic tale "Screwjack" so touching, for all its queerness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man's burden: that "we are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School
...and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again."
Ostensibly written by Raoul Duke, "Screwjack" begins with an editor's note explaining of Thompson's alter ego that "the first few lines contain no warning of the madness and fear and lust that came more and more to plague him and dominate his life...." "I am guilty, Lord," Thompson writes, "but I am also a lover -- and I am one of your best people, as you know; and yea tho I have walked in many strange shadows and acted crazy from time to time and even drooled on many High Priests, I have not been an embarrassment to you...."
Nor has Hunter S. Thompson been to American literature. Quite the contrary: What the legendary Gonzo journalist proves with "Screwjack" is just how brilliant a prose stylist he really is, amid all the hilarity. As Thompson puts it in his introduction, the three stories here ""build like Bolero to" a faster & wilder climax that will drag the reader relentlessly "up" a hill, & then "drop" him off a cliff....That is the Desired Effect."
Book Description
Hello. Have a nice a day. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Mescalito clearly inspired the hotel room carnage in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and as such provides an interesting reference for the fans. Screwjack and Death of a Poet are even further off the wall than Thompsons usual (unusual?) offerings, pleasingly sick and great for freaking out your work colleagues when they ask what you are reading. Enjoyable as these all are, 40 pages of large type for...[the price]is pretty steep, why haven't these been pasted into one of HST's longer compendia?
For the die-hards only.
Screwjack is definitely of interest to HST fanatics to complete their collection. Newcomers to the Gonzo style would be more advised to try the good Doctors other books first.
This was written as a bit fun. And up until now there have only been 300 private press's made of this little gem. It has to be the most funked up bunch of short stories I have ever had the pleasure to spend my time reading.
It seems the good Doctor has gone completly sideways with this one... Truely bizarre! From Mescaline (Mescalito) to Domestic Violence (Death of a Poet) to Beastiality (Screwjack). It get's it all in in less than 60 pages.
If your out there looking for a ripping yarn like Fear and Loathing and know nothing of Hunter S. Thompson.. This book isn't for you! But if like me you are a fan of the Dr of Journalism this has to be featured in your collection so you can bring it out on special occasions just to shock you square friends when the start talking about classic literature..
Certainly makes you wanna go out and gobble up and shed load of Acid and Mescaline all at once and reap the consciquences..
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
