textual... T ...references


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Hunter S. Thompson
Hell's Angels
Ballantine, 1972 (paperback, 348 pages) [TRUTH] [CONSCIOUSNESS] [PULP]

True, drugged-out writing has given us some bonafide classics in the past (Crowley, Burroughs, you know). But it is the mark of the speedfreak that he produces tangled heaps such as this. Convoluted, obsessively repetitive (how many times do we have to re-read the ethical mindset of the Angels?), and in the end just plain annoying. Maybe you like this aggressively "hip" style of gonzo journalism, but if you don't, maybe you (like me) would prefer the more, uh, "linear" text of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. --T.C.

(first appeared in Reign of Toads #3)

Ballantine


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Nick Tosches
Dino
Doubleday, 1992 (hardcover, 548 pages) [TRUTH] [MEDIA] [PULP]

Dean Martin. Most of us run for the door when the name is uttered--the unspeakable atrocities of Cannonball Run, Airport, the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. And, worst of all, Jerry Lewis too ingrained in our childhood (and a decade best forgotten) for our heads to bear. But this bio portrays Dino more as the lackadaisical exploiter, the crass drunk who crashes the Hollywood dream-party, steals all the broads and booze and escapes to a golf course in Beverly Hills and a one-show-a-night gig in Vegas... The man who knows all the cogs in the Hollywood meat grinder and jumps into it willingly, sipping martinis all the way through, doing what he's told when the cameras roll, but somehow getting away with letting his jolly contempt of the whole business shine through the facade.

But through it all (though Dino Crocetti stands square at the center) the reader knows what Tosches is really getting at: this book is less a myth-busting hatchet job (Dean, after all, dissects his own myth better than Tosches ever could) than it is a document of the rise of the American cult(ure) of mediocrity--the bread (Wonder) and circuses (television), the Martin and Lewis. The US, after all, never really belonged to the ivory tower types (despite what Camille says), but to the drinkers and gamblers, entertainers and mobsters, the crooks and politicians that pull the strings from behind the big curtain. And what makes this all so amusing is the fact that no matter how many times someone yanks the sham aside and reveals the shadows behind it, the reaction is the same: "So what?" But Tosches realizes this, and the result is this tome, cynical, gruff, abrasive, funny, and as fine a read as I can think of nowadays. --T.C.

(first appeared in Reign of Toads #3)

Doubleday


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