Gonzo Papers, Vol. 3: Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream is a book by the American writer and journalist Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author who wrote The Rum Diary , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 .He is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to...

, originally published in 1990. This third installment of The Gonzo Papers

The Gonzo Papers

The Gonzo Papers is a four volume series of books by American journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson published between 1979 and 1994. The word Gonzo is often used to describe the unique style of journalism that Thompson cultivated throughout his life....

is a chronologically arranged selection of stories, letters, journals and reporting, allowing readers to see how Thompson's brand of "new journalism

New Journalism

New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism, which included...

" has evolved over the years. It is a collection of Dr. Thompson's essays and articles. This collection is mostly made up of pieces from the Reagan era

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

, but there are also some older stories, including excerpts from his unfinished first novel, Prince Jellyfish

Prince Jellyfish

Prince Jellyfish is an unpublished novel by American journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson.The novel was Thompson's first, having been written around 1960 while he was in his early 20s and was working as a reporter for the Middletown Daily Record in New York State...

and The Rum Diary

The Rum Diary (novel)

-External links:* Totally Gonzo – The Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo Journalism Community* at the Internet Movie Database*...

, which was not published on its own until 1998.

Dedication Page

To David McCumber and Rosalie Sorrells:


"When the going gets weird,


the weird turn pro"


-HST

Content

Because Songs of the Doomed is a collection of essays, short stories, and hard-to-find newspaper articles written by Thompson during his extensive career, the book is separated into five distinct sections, each named after a decade the writer himself survived: The Fifties: Last Rumble in Fat City, The Sixties: What the Hell? It's Only Rock and Roll..., The Seventies: Reaping the Whirlwind, Riding the Tiger, The Eighties: How Much Money Do You Have?, and Welcome to the Nineties: Welcome to Jail, respectively.

Having the essays, stories, and articles included in the book in order by decade allows readers to take an unlikely look into how the author's style (and personal habits) changed over the course of his career. Of course, it also allows us to look more deeply into the political, cultural and social atmosphere of each time period, all through the eyes of one ever-changing man.

Complete Contents of Songs of the Doomed:

Author's Note
I. Let the Trials Begin
II. Electricity
III. Last Train from Camelot
IV. Note from Ralph Steadman


The Fifties: Last Rumble in Fat City
I. Tarred and Feathered at the Jersey Shore
II. Saturday Night at the Riviera
III. Prince Jellyfish
IV. Fleeing New York


The Sixties: What the Hell? It's Only Rock and Roll...
I. Letter to Angus Cameron
II. The Rum Diary
III. Revisited: The Puerto Rican Problem
IV. The Kennedy Assassination
V. Back to the U.S.A.
VI. Hell's Angels: Long Nights, Ugly Days, Orgy of the Doomed
VII. Midnight on the Coast Highway
VIII. Ken Kesey: Walking with the Kind
IX. LSD-25: Res Ipsa Loquitor
X.Chicago 1968: Death to the Weird
XI.First Visit with Mescalito


The Seventies: Reaping the Whirlwind, Riding the Tiger
I. Iguana Project
II. Never Apologize, Never Explain
III. Vegas Witchcraft
IV. High-Water Mark
V. Fear and Loathing
VI. Lies
VII. Ed Muskie Doomed by Ibogaine
VIII. Washington Politics
IX. Summit Conference in Elko: Secret Gathering of the Power Elite
X. Opening Statement: HST
XI. Rolling Stone: Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here
XII. Dance of the Doomed
XIII. Checking into the Lane Xang
XIV. Whooping it up with the War Junkies
XV. Confidential Memo to Colonel Vo Don Giang
XVI. Memo to Jim Silberman on the Death of the American Dream
XVII. Letter to Russell Chatham


The Eighties: How Much Money Do You Have?
I. Welcome to the 80's
II. Love on the Palm Beach Express
III. Sugarloaf Key
IV. The Silk Road
V. Letter to Ralph Steadman
VI. Letter to Ken Kesey
VII. Last Memo from the National Affairs Desk
VIII. Memo from the Sports Desk
IX. Wild Sex in Sausalito
X. The Dukakis Problem: Another vicious beating for the New Whigs
XI. Secret Cables to Willie Hearst
XII. San Francisco Examiner Columns
XIII. The New Dumb
XIV. Fear and Loathing in Sacramento
XV. Whiskey Business
XVI. I knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll

I Knew the Bride

"I Knew the Bride " is a song written by Nick Lowe and first popularized by Dave Edmunds. It was released on Edmunds's 1977 album Get It and a year later in a live version by Nick Lowe's Last Chicken in the Shop for a compilation released by Stiff Records.Lowe performed the song during a Stiff...

XVII. Community of Whores
XVIII. Return to the Riviera Cafe
XIX. Avery: Making Sense of the 60's
XX. German Decade: Rise of the Fourth Reich
XXI. Turbo Must Die
XXII. Memo to Jay Johnson
XXIII. Warning Issued on Cocaine

Literary Criticism

Jerry Stratton wrote of Songs of the Doomed on the Mimsy Book Review site:

"The subtitle is “More Notes on the Death of the American Dream”. Maybe if it’s dead he can stop loading up on dangerous drugs and going out looking for it, settle down and raise a nice family in Woody Creek? Fat chance, though he certainly has tamed since his Fear and Loathing days... The more things change, the more they stay the same. Some things here are duplicates of articles in other books, but this is a return to style of Thompson, and well recommended."

Memorable Quotes

I wandered into a library last week and decided to do a quick bit of reading on The Law, which has caused me some trouble recently. It was a cold, mean day, and my mood was not much different. The library was empty at that hour of the morning. ...It was closed, in fact, but not locked. So I went in.

These are bad times for people who like to sit outside the library at dawn on a rainy morning and get ripped to the tits on crank and powerful music.

We spent the next six hours in a tiny concrete cell with about twenty Puerto Ricans. We couldn't sit down because they had pissed all over the floor, so we stood in the middle of the room, giving out cigarettes like representatives of the Red Cross. They were a dangerous-looking lot. Some were drunk and others seemed crazy. I felt safe as long as we could supply them with cigarettes, but I wondered what would happen when we ran out.

In a passage from Hell's Angels: Long Nights, Ugly Days, Orgy of the Doomed... Thompson sums up his fascination with the world of writing:

I found out then that writing is a kind of therapy. One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having to come to grips with it. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it. So I use writing as a learning tool.