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    Screwjack
    Screwjack
    Screwjack
    Audiobook50 minutes

    Screwjack

    Written by Hunter S. Thompson

    Narrated by Scott Sowers

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Hunter S. Thompson’s legions of fans have waited a decade for this book.

    They will not be disappointed. His notorious Screwjack is as salacious, unsettling, and brutally lyrical as it has been rumored to be since the private printing in 1991 of three hundred fine collectors’ copies and twenty-six leather-bound presentation copies. Only the first of the three pieces included here—“Mescalito,” published in Thompson’s 1990 collection Songs of the Doomed—has been available to the public.

    “We live in a jungle of pending disasters,” Thompson warns in “Mescalito,” a chronicle of his first mescaline experience and what it sparked in him while he was alone in an L.A. hotel room in February 1969—including a bout of paranoia that would have made most people just scream no, once and for all. But for Thompson, along with the downside came a burst of creativity too powerful to ignore. The result is a poetic, perceptive, and wildly funny stream-ofconsciousness take on 1969 America as only Hunter S. Thompson could see it.

    Screwjack just gets weirder with its second offering, “Death of a Poet.” As Thompson describes this trailer-park confrontation with the dark side of a deservingly doomed friend: “Whoops, I thought. Welcome to the night train.”

    The heart of the collection lies in its final, title piece, an unnaturally poignant love story. What makes the romantic tale “Screwjack” so touching, for all its queerness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man’s burden:that “we are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School … and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again.”

    Ostensibly written by Raoul Duke, “Screwjack” begins with an editor’s note explaining of Thompson’s alter ego that “the first few lines contain no warning of the madness and fear and lust that came more and more to plague him and dominate his life …” “I am guilty, Lord,” Thompson writes, “but I am also a lover—and I am one of your best people, as you know; and yea tho I have walked in many strange shadows and acted crazy from time to time and even drooled on many High Priests, I have not been an embarrassment to you …”

    Nor has Hunter S. Thompson been to American literature. Quite the contrary: What the legendary Gonzo journalist proves with Screwjack is just how brilliant a prose stylist he really is, amid all the hilarity. As Thompson puts it in his introduction, the three stories here “build like Bolero to a faster wilder climax that will drag the reader relentlessly up a hill, then drop him off a cliff … That is the Desired Effect."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 30, 2012
    ISBN9781470337100
    Screwjack
    Author

    Hunter S. Thompson

    Hunter S. Thompson was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. His books include Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, The Rum Diary, and Better than Sex. He died in February 2005.

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    Reviews for Screwjack

    3.5/5

    138 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 1/5
      Violence to animals just isn’t my thing I usually enjoy Thompson
    • 4/5
      Crazy and frenetic as only Hunter can be! "Mescalito" was my favorite story of the three, as it reminded me so much of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", which I love!
    • 5/5
      Classic HST style short story, had me laughing out loud :-)
    • 2/5
      A short one. Money-maker perhaps?
    • 4/5
      That third story was pretty damn weird but the first was incredibly clever and the second quite shocking. Overall, a quick read that fans will enjoy.
    • 4/5
      Well...here we have another barely coherent, yet hilarious Hunter S. Thompson offering. Without delving into the history, I'm not sure of the reality of these stories (obviously, the last being told by his alter-ego is even more out there). But it's Hunter Thompson, so why let reality get in the way? Super quick read and yet, still has some laughs.
    • 5/5
      If the inside of your brain exploded from too much tequila and too many drugs, and the leftover bits tried to describe the experience, you would find yourself with something very similar to 'Screwjack.' More brilliance from The Good Doctor.