Stephen Amidon
Wild Bard of Woody Creek
Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S Thompson
By William McKeen
Aurum 448pp £18.99 order from our bookshop
The recent deaths of Norman Mailer and Hunter S Thompson mark the end of the serious-writer-as-celebrity figure in America, a tradition that began with Mark Twain and reached its apogee with Ernest Hemingway. From now on, unless an author manages to piss off Oprah Winfrey, there is little chance that he will break through the membrane that envelops the literary scene to enter the mass consciousness.
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