Sincerely Yours, HST

Are you a Fear and Loathing fan? A Hunter S. Thompson fanatic? Do you want to bask in the fortunate compulsiveness and foresight of an eccentric writer who saved all of his letters in the stubborn and cocky knowledge that he would one day become famous and publish them for all to read? Perhaps you're just interested in all those postcard romance books these days. The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman (1955-1967) will do you some good on all counts.

The book, more a collection of one-way letters written by a young and irreverent Hunter Thompson, shows his rise over the course of twelve years, from a pondering (and scared) pseudo-journalist to popular author. As an added bonus, the reader gets insight into the Hunter Thompson many of his contemporaries loved to hate. Even in his own writing in these letters, Thompson seems entirely aware of the dichotomy between two battling personalities. One is a sardonic, opinionated, no-holds barred extremist-jokester with a hankering for stirring up mischief and going against the grain. The other, a hopeless and failing romantic type with a doomed urge to roam and ramble, seems often too willing to take the backseat.

His letters to editors, famous authors, bill collectors, lovers, friends, family, and more all seem to form a written personal biography of a man known today only as a legend. The fact that we only see Thompson's side of things doesn't seem to really matter; it's more fun to imagine responses based on footnotes and reactions from Thompson in follow-ups. Though situations are sometimes blown out of proportion by the mind of the man himself, this collection shows a personal side of Hunter S. Thompson that reveals more about the man behind the bite.

Even then, HST still knows how to put on a show for the audience, interspersing social commentary, philosophical waxing, manic depression, and hilariously sarcastic anecdotes from his own life. Ultimately, these letters are more than a birthday card from your grandmother, they tell about a person, a way of life, and a period in history when a broke, unpublished writer could live on no money and still own a black Jaguar convertible. Or maybe that was only in the case of Hunter S. Thompson, a man who clearly believed he could get away with anything he wanted and laugh at his own personal joke, sick or sane, all along the way.