There are, as Hunter S. Thompson correctly perceives, "no jokes when we start talking about introducing saltwater eels into people's body cavities." In a world where reality has become the greatest joke of all, where degenerate leaderships and cynical evangelists manipulate truth and guilt and all those other hazy moral terms in order to perpetuate their own vile existence, a line must be drawn somewhere. Eschew idealism and dogmatism alike, but when it comes to eels up bums someone, somewhere has to intervene. The Doctor will see you now.

Kingdom of Fear is part autobiography, part social critique and part correspondence. An interesting mix in the hands of a writer known and feared equally for his excoriating criticism of the establishment and his reputation as a very dangerous, probably loaded, probably armed, psychopath. But fear not, gentle reader, the mellowing confessional quality implied in the subtitle (Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century) is of no consequence, for the great gonzo spirit is as sharp and angry as ever, as Thompson's chosen epitaph suggests: It never got crazy enough for me.

Kingdom of Fear champions an insatiable lust for intellectual freedom. Like Henry David Thoreau's 'majority of one' and Mark Twain's Huck Finn it has a share in that pioneering, individualistic literary spirit that pervades much great American writing. In many ways the book constitutes something of a continuance of that most elliptical quest set out in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. As in this earlier example, the quest itself is opaque, and though its destination is hard to define - is it moral? practical? completely irresponsible? - followers of the good Doctor's oeuvre will recognise many of the signposts along the way: Freedom; the death of the American Dream; the aesthetics of the very fast motorbike; intoxication; firearms; the horror; all are themes inextricably bound up in the man and his vision.

But what is this vision?

"My first face-to-face confrontation with the FBI occurred when I was nine years old." This would be a life changing experience for anyone, but for young Thompson, standing there between angry parents and sinister government types, the clear guilt of instigating the destruction of a school bus, albeit in retaliation for its driver's sadistic meanness, is not permitted to cloud the real issue at stake, to wit: how is the individual to live in relation to a powerful and often arbitrary authority? Bow down and take the rap or question that authority?

Thompson chooses the latter and has done so ever since and Kingdom of Fear is in part a documentation of this work beyond the perimeters of acceptable, acquiescent behaviour. Thompson's prose roars as he describes a late night birthday surprise for fellow Woody Creek resident Jack Nicholson: "In addition to the bleeding elk heart, there was a massive outdoor amplifier, a tape recording of a pig being eaten alive by bears, a 1,000,000-wat spotlight, and a 9-mm Smith & Wesson..." These "jokes and gimcracks", accompanied by a handheld mortar, are deployed liberally on Thompson's "mission of joy," and the following day's media panic about the "assassination attempt" is greeted with bewilderment, "What tragedy? Hell, I was up there at about three and the place looked peaceful to me." The penny drops, and not for the first time Thompson the author seems to see the actions of his crazy, bushy-haired doppelganger, in a new light: almost as surprised by his own actions as the reader.

But Kingdom of Fear is no mere pot-boiler of pranks and japes, no rehashing of Fear and Loathing's salty tales of epic bad-craziness. In 1990, a director of pornographic films intruded into Thompson's beloved Owl Farm retreat and sparked a chain of events that lead to Aspen's D.A filing several felony charges for possession of cocaine, LSD, marijuana, blasting caps and dynamite. And also a couple for third-degree sexual assault and third-degree simple assault (allegedly grabbing said individual's left breast and punching her). Thompson pleads his own case in the early stages of the book (he'd defended himself in a volatile situation, accidentally brushing her naughty bits) not dwelling on any of the details, and the story is continued later in a series of newspaper reports interpolated into the text, filling the reader in on how the case collapsed amidst allegations of lies and corrupt policing. Critics might question whether this could just be an example of the media looking after its own, but then it's certainly an irony that Thompson allows that medium of grotesque caricature to carry his side of the story. He is at once humble about the affair "I was never especially proud of that squalid episode in my life" and vituperative toward the persecutors who tried to 'bring him within the system: "We busted them like shit-eating dogs'¦"

The US legal system, particularly its mediation between the state and the individual is, understandably, a running theme throughout Kingdom of Fear. Thompson writes at length about his own experience of police brutality in Chicago in 1968, where anti-war protests upstaged Lyndon Johnson's national democratic convention, and were ruthlessly suppressed by police and military. This denial of the right to dissent, epitomised in the subsequent Nixon era, is identified as a focal point for Thompson, one which inspired him to run for sheriff in his home town two years later. Although the Freak Power campaign lost the election, Thompson remains sanguine about its contribution to the momentum for change, inherent in the 1960's demonstrations. "We frightened the bastards so badly that on Election Day they rolled people in wheelchairs- and even on stretchers - into the polling places to vote against us."

In the subsequent years, his political conscience has not waned, campaigning against the Felony Murder Law - particularly in the Lisl Auman case and the Patriot Act (Thompson founded the Fourth Amendment Foundation). Unsurprisingly, he does not like Bush II '¦."To say that this goofy child president is looking more and more like Richard Nixon in the summer of 1974 would be a flagrant insult to Nixon'¦Whoops! Did I say that?" Thompson thus remains, at the "end of the American century", an ambiguous figure. Still armed and tooling round on a fast motorbike like some redneck de Quincey, still abusing the establishment in the most eloquent terms: "Well shit on that dumbness. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world."
Again the question: What is the Hunter Stockton Thompson vision? Whatever it is, its part of the thread that leads back through Kingdom of Fear to that young boy facing down a couple of Feds. Thompson has few illusions regarding the fate of the ideals of post-war America. "Freedom was yesterday in this country. Its value has been discounted. The only freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness." Perhaps this could be considered a close approximation to the good Doctor's vision, if dumbness is allowed both its meanings. For if Thompson is a great writer for anything, it is for his inimitable humour and vociferous conviction, both constantly waged in opposition against stupidity and silence. "Death," as he is wont to proclaim, "to the pigfuckers!"



Kingdom of Fear: by Hunter S. Thompson is published by Penguin: Allen Lane

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