Michael Cleverly

While it’s not a new book, I just got around to reading “The Kitchen Readings” by Michael Cleverly and Bob Braudis. It’s a collection of short anecdotes about the infamous author, Hunter Thompson.

Cleverly and Braudis were longtime friends of Thompson from the town of Woody Creek, Colorado where he lived. They were part of his “inner circle” of friends and spent lots of time hanging out with him at his house or in town, saw many of the people coming and going in Thompson’s life at home.

In the introduction they tell us that Thompson wasn’t quite as awful and wild and crazy as the persona he built up, especially not at home, off the road. They sort of imply they’re going to tell more about his normal home life, and they describe how Thompson would often have people over to sit around his kitchen and read what he wrote. I expected a bit more of that, somehow.

Instead, the book is mostly short anecdotes about Thompson being crazy and wild. Short tales about his use of drugs, sleeping late into the afternoon, firing guns with wild abandon…. Most of the stories in the book pretty much back up the whole mystique about Thompson as a wild, crazy drug fiend. Pretty much the opposite of what based on the introduction and Walter Isaacson’s blurb on the back of the book.

Then at the end again, they remind that most of the time at home Thompson and whatever company of people he has over don’t behave with insanity like outsiders would expect, but sit around the table discussion politics, discussing sports, discussing cars and normal stuff men his age would sit around discussing.

Overall it wasn’t a very good book. While it’s got some amusing stories, Cleverly and Braudis are barely a fraction the caliber of writer their primary subject was.… (més)

Was HST a likable scalawag, as all of his cronies testify in this oral history...or a frequently rude, obnoxious, self-centred asshole, the impression I got as I read these back-slapping accounts of Hunter's foibles and follies, as assembled by two of his best buddies. To my mind, HST does NOT come off particularly well in these lurid episodes, his bad behavior frequently egged on or tolerated or enabled by those who claimed to be his friends. Lots of wild stories but no real insights into Thompson, the MAN. What made him tick, what strange channel was he tuned to that allowed him to march to his own drummer right to the very end? THE KITCHEN READINGS offers no clues, only more additions to the HST myth. Which is maybe the way he would've liked it...… (més)