Peter Richardson (2) (1959–)

> “I’m really in the way as a person,” Thompson said in 1978. “The myth has taken over.”

This is the second book on Hunter S. Thompson that I've recently read; the first one is David S. Wills - 'High White Notes - The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism', which focuses on how Thompson invented gonzo, his style of writing. This book is far more biographical and has pros and cons when compared with Wills's book.

Richardson has done a fine job in going through Thompson's sea of writing, easily sifting through the good and bad. The good lies mainly in how Richardson sees Thompson from a helicopter picture. The bad is that Richardson gets too deeply into subjects that he's written about previously, mainly *Ramparts* magazine and Carey McWilliams, perhaps mainly known for having edited the magazine *The Nation*.

Still, there are many nuggets found here. Richardson does not shy away from criticising Thompson on a variety of subjects, for example, racism, bad writing, and abuse (of both women and substances).

It's lovely to read on how Richardson weaves a tale of why Thompson started writing, although Wills goes deeper into Thompson's genesis.

> McKeen also observed that Prince Jellyfish bore the influence of J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, which its author described as “celebratory, boisterous, and resolutely careless mayhem.” Set in postwar Dublin, the comic novel depicts the daily rounds of Sebastian Dangerfield, another selfish and arrogant charmer who beats his wife and drinks away the family’s limited funds. Critics described Dangerfield variously as “impulsive, destructive, wayward, cruel, a monster, a clown, and a psychopath.” The Ginger Man was first published in 1955 by the Olympia Press, whose catalog included works by Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, and William Burroughs. Donleavy’s novel appeared in the Traveller’s Companion series, which was known primarily for its erotica and banned in Ireland and the United States. (Grove Press reissued the novel, which eventually sold more than 45 million copies worldwide.) Donleavy was furious that the novel was mistaken for smut, but its transgressive status probably heightened the appeal for Thompson. Reading The Ginger Man, Thompson said later, “made up my mind that I had to be a writer.”

There are some interesting comparisons made between Jack London and Thompson.

> Like Thompson, London believed that fiction was more truthful than mere fact. “I have been forced to conclude that Fact, to be true, must imitate Fiction,” London wrote. “The creative imagination is more veracious than the voice of life.”

I like Richardson's writing style: at times, stringent, other times, relaxed:

> Hunter was absolutely obsessed with the Senate hearings and Robert Kennedy. It was the only damn thing he would write about in that period. He was fascinated with all that shit. He really liked the job Bobby Kennedy was doing, and he stopped writing about sports altogether.

All in all, this is a pleasant read about a groundbreaking, unpleasant, mercurial, and weird person whose best qualities left a magnificent dent in not only American writing but everywhere. Thompson appears to have been like a caged lion: magnificent to look at from afar but lethal up-close.… (meer)

Richardson is a university professor who spent time in the recently opened Dead archives to write a cultural history of the Dead and their times. Richardson seeks to understand why the Dead remained so popular for 50 years despite numerous predictions of irrelevance. Even the death of Jerry in 1995 resulted in the highest revenues in merchandise in band history, and spin-off and mimic bands are still going strong. The Dead were more than a band but a cultural and artistic movement. They tapped into an American ideal of radical freedom that has been picked up the left and right. Richardson attributes three themes that made them so popular: ecstasy (not the drug) ie. seeking a peak moment be it drugs or just rapture. Nomadism, the open road and freedom to move about. And community. I think he makes a pretty good argument, although these themes could be applied to other fan-centrist things, such as table-top gaming or Star Trek conventions. This is the most recent in a growing library of Dead histories, I think it's pretty good and well worth the time. The remove of years adds perspective and context to understand what the Dead were about and how it has influenced culture for us all.… (meer)

This book was published in 2014, and Richardson attempted to differentiate his book from the (at a wild guess) dozens of previously published band biographies and musical histories of the Grateful Dead by, as the title suggests, writing a book about the ways in which the band shaped, and was shaped by, the important cultural events of their era(s). All in all, I'd say that Richardson succeeded in this goal quite nicely.

Richardson does a nice job of providing an overview of the background to and creation of the original Counter Culture/Hippie movement as it developed in San Francisco. It is fair to say that that movement and the Dead were organically joined, and that probably neither would have developed as they did without the other. As Richardson portrays it, the Dead's style of performance, in which they aimed to tear down the walls between musician and audience and to create music that would lend itself to ecstatic dancing in particular, placed them squarely at the center of the growing scene. Acid was definitely a vital component of the philosophy.

As the movement faded and/or evolved, the Dead tried their best to stay true to their core values, while changing themselves as their organization grew along with the sizes of the crowds that came to see them and the necessity for larger venues became clear. Richardson also shows how the Dead became lightening rods for the anti-counter culture politics of the Reagan Revolution, all the while remaining a touchstone of value for their fans, old and new, who still wished to find an alternative to the growing clampdown that the 80s represented in American society.

Richardson makes clear the damage done to the band, and especially to Jerry Garcia, by the pressures of their fame, as well as to the myriad ways, sometimes wise but also foolish, that the musicians insisted on supporting their extended "family" and also of trying to wrest control of their own fortunes from corporate entities. At the same time, the group strove to remain a collective as much as possible, with no one person having control over the band's decisions or destiny.

But as his topic was the Dead's cultural role, Richardson does stay away from a lot of biographical material regarding the band members. Other than Garcia, whose role as musical leader and philosophical guru make his life central to the greater story being told, details about various band members' marriages, breakups, etc., are mostly left out, and even the musicians' intra-band relationships are touched on only lightly, and only when specific to the book's central theme. This aspect of the book I found refreshing and appropriate.

I have been a fan of the band and their music since my college days (mid-1970s), though I would not go so far as to say that I've ever been a Deadhead. Back in my younger days, when I was eagerly gobbling up anything I could find about the counter culture and its icons, I did read a couple of those earlier books about the Dead, but it had been at least 20 years since I had done any of that reading when I decided to pick up this book and see what Richardson would have to say about the Dead phenomenon from this relatively far chronological remove. While a lot of the information was already familiar to me, going through the history again was fun, and reflecting on Richardson's perspectives was worthwhile.… (meer)