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Better Than Sex (Gonzo Papers, Vol 4) | 
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Author: Hunter S. Thompson
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy Used: $4.99
You Save: $10.96 (69%)
New (30) Used (41) from $4.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  31 reviews
Sales Rank: 81988
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0345396359
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.929
EAN: 9780345396358
ASIN: 0345396359
Publication Date: August 22, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Book is in good condition with only minor blemishes on the cover. Pages are clean.
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Amazon.com
Since his 1972 trailblazing opus, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hunter S. Thompson has reported the election story in his truly inimitable, just-short-of-libel style. In Better Than Sex, Thompson hits the dusty trail again - without leaving home - yet manages to deliver a mind-bending view of the 1992 presidential campaign, in all its horror, sacrifice, lust, and dubious glory. Complete with faxes sent to and received from candidate Clinton's top aides, and 100 percent pure gonzo screeds on Richard Nixon, George Bush, and Oliver North, here is the most true-blue campaign tell-all ever penned by man, beast, or Thompson.
Product Description
"Hunter S. Thompson is to drug-addled, stream-of-consciousness, psycho-political black humor what Forrest Gump is to idiot savants."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
Since his 1972 trailblazing opus, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hunter S. Thompson has reported the election story in his truly inimitable, just-short-of-libel style. In Better than Sex, Thompson hits the dusty trail again--without leaving home--yet manages to deliver a mind-bending view of the 1992 presidential campaign--in all of its horror, sacrifice, lust, and dubious glory. Complete with faxes sent to and received by candidate Clinton's top aides, and 100 percent pure gonzo screeds on Richard Nixon, George Bush, and Oliver North, here is the most true-blue campaign tell-all ever penned by man or beast.
"[Thompson] delivers yet another of his trademark cocktail mixes of unbelievable tales and dark observations about the sausage grind that is the U.S. presidential sweepstakes. Packed with egocentric anecdotes, musings and reprints of memos, faxes and scrawled handwritten notes (Memorable."
--Los Angeles Daily News
"What endears Hunter Thompson to anyone who reads him is that he will say what others are afraid to (.[He] is a master at the unlikely but invariably telling line that sums up a political figure (.In a year when all politics is--to much of the public--a tendentious and pompous bore, it is time to read Hunter Thompson."
--Richmond Times-Dispatch
"While Tom Wolfe mastered the technique of being a fly on the wall, Thompson mastered the art of being a fly in the ointment. He made himself a part of every story, made no apologies for it and thus produced far more honest reporting than any crusading member of the Fourth Estate (. Thompson isn't afraid to take the hard medicine, nor is he bashful about dishing it out (.He is still king of beasts, and his apocalyptic prophecies seldom miss their target."
--Tulsa World
"This is a very, very funny book. No one can ever match Thompson in the vitriol department, and virtually nobody escapes his wrath."
--The Flint Journal
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| Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...
 FEAR AND LOATHING IN PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 1992 April 22, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Know this. The late Hunter Thompson, Doctor Gonzo, was something of a muse for me although our politics, in the final analysis, were light years apart. In the end he never found a Democratic Party presidential candidate that he, even if grudgingly, could not support. I have read everything of his that I could get my hands on. During many a troubled time when I got down on the seemingly hopeless struggle in the fight for socialism his savage humor aimed at the inanities of bourgeois politics and politicians carried me through. That said, the book under review Better Than Sex about the trials and tribulations of covering the ill-starred 1992 presidential campaign eventually `won' by Bill Clinton is not one of his better efforts and even with his vast journalistic skills must have been a chore rather than something to really dig into. I will tell you my take on the matter.
Hunter Thompson started making a name for himself as a political journalist in his first efforts at trying to understand presidential campaigns during the ill-fated Democratic campaign of George McGovern against one Richard M. Nixon in 1972. His Fear and Loathing on Campaign Trail 1972 stands as a classic of `alternative' journalism on the issue. He stated then that a political junkie, and by any definition he was one, could only really stand in the vortex of one such campaign before burning out. Nevertheless he pressed his luck. Unfortunately, Thompson found himself in the place where Teddy White found himself after his seminal `straight' reporting on the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon campaign, The Making of President. White too, went on to write more such books and not to his benefit. In short, pigeon-holed. Take that lesson for what it is worth.
The problem with Better Than Sex is that Thompson had written it all before, and to better effect. The writing seems frantic and tired, very tired. It did not help that his cast of main characters- one President George H. W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton and the genuine dingo bat Ross Perot- would make even a political junkie get him or herself to the nearest rehabilitation center. The book reflects that hollowness in many ways not the least is the extraordinary amount of filler (literally with `draft' notes, letters, etc.) that clutters the book. If these reasons do not convince you then a three star rating on a genuine five star journalistic hero of mine tells the tale. Still, there is more than enough savagely funny analysis and humor for a real Thompson junkie to get by on during those lonely political nights. Enough said.
Not what I expected but still good January 26, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Lots of politic stuff.Kind of boring theme but Hunters words makes it fun and intersting.It is a good book if you are a Hunter fan.If you are not dont start go with this one.Pick up "Fear and Lothing in Las Vagas" or "Hells Angels".After you read those book this book will be lot better.
 Political Junkies, Rejoice... June 3, 2005
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I find that, no matter what book I read by the good Dr. Thompson, I can never write an appropriate review or make any sort of intelligent, logical comment on the subject. To date, I've read Hell's Angels, The Rum Diary, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas twice, along with a few of the articles in Hey Rube. Picking up Better Than Sex, I hoped to finish the book and be able to, finally, write some sort of response to the book, putting to rest this impotence of critique that seems to hang like a strange, twisted shadow over his writing.
Like most people faced with the inability to perform a task, mine is psychological, rooted in a sort of awe factor, that phosphorous phantom known as envy that usually takes the form of imitation or fear and inability. I mean, essentially, you read Thompson and when you put the book down, you say "I want to write like that." Then, you open up Word or, if you're a bit old-fashioned, you pull out a pen and paper, and sit there, staring at the blankness, the perfect emptiness that you know you're only going to muck up because no human being can write like that.
No living human being, anyway.
What Thompson did - not only in writing but in life - was to infuse everything he touched with a sort of rough humanity. Whatever the subject, from the loss of idealism in the sixties hippy culture to why Bill Clinton was a weird one, but the only thing we had going in 1992, he could explain and expound upon it with the word of a poet and the common sense of your best childhood friend. The man knew how to craft a sentence and a story, something that was both informational and interesting, and by the time you reach the end of the story, you realize you're walking away not only entertained but educated. He had the power to do that.
Better Than Sex is a bit different from his earlier work, mostly in that it relies heavily on deviant, manic faxes sent to everyone from Clinton's campaign manager to Jan Wenner at Rolling Stone while Thompson was covering the campaign trail in 1992. While you're shuttled from one strange jaunt to the next, entertained at Hunter's various bizarre suggestions, you're also learning, picking up things you never realized were going on in that oh-so-important election year. He's pointing out mistakes that Bush Sr. made in 92, mistakes that were remembered not only by Hunter, but as becomes apparent as the book comes to a close, by the Bush II campaign. It's like a hard, fast look at the 2004 election trail, seeing the same plays from the same teams, except this time the away team learned from their mistakes twelve years ago, and they're not about to lose this championship again.
Reading it, however, isn't just an entertaining story or a guide to how to win a Presidential election. It's also a window into the mind of a man who was fed up with the Republicans twelve years ago, ready to take drastic action if Bush Sr. was re-elected. Reading it now, in light of Thompson's suicide in February, one can almost begin to comprehend the incomprehensible, as in his weirdest, most outrageous moments, Hunter revealed more of himself than he did when straight-laced and serious. In his coverage of the 92 campaign is the story of a man who could not live under the fascist iron fist of the more moderate Bush Republicans of the past, who reviled everything they stood for, and who threatened to flee the country should they take control for another four years. He shows himself as a man who is reinvigorated by the victory of sensibility over the zealous, Big Brother of a Republican party that was half the strength and only a forth as fanatical as the one that recently enthroned itself for another four years. He is revived by the masses throwing out the trash and choosing to change the ways of the country by making a choice for improvement and change. Twelve years later his rallying cry in Rolling Stone went unanswered, America chose fascism over freedom, and freak power as a force to be reckoned with is dead in the United States-how could he survive in that world?
This is not to say that a single presidential election could determine the life or death of one man; when it comes to politics, mortality rates are usually in the thousands. What Better Than Sex does say, however, is that like it or not, Thompson was a political junkie, that while his reputation was built on drugs, his perfect drug is a good political match, and that as a catalyst, it held major sway with a man whom drugs alone could not touch.
Accurate Title May 22, 2004
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book is better than sex. His best since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He's not your average acid casualty. This book is an amazing blend of outrageous, mind bending accusations, libelous paranoid ranting, and just good old fashion fun. Hunter is a national treasure and this book is a great read.
A great representation of sarcasm May 5, 2004
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Better Than Sex is a book for those who like to read sarcastic, humorous, and often-cynical writing. Thompson creates a world of politics that is not the "norm" in the United States. It is something ugly, COMPETETIVE (even capitalizing it makes it understated), and downright dirty. He compares getting into politics like an addiction, a very serious addiction. It can mold people into a horrible beast that would run over their own mother as long as they got elected.
This is a book about politics. Yet, there are stories contained with James Carville, the ragin' cajun, stealing Hunter's money and jacket. Also, Thompson describes the, both good and bad, possibilities of a fax-machine, press pass, and telephone. Thompson basically shows his interest in politics in a very uninterested way. He almost makes it seem like he doesn't, in actuality, care about politics through his blatant sarcasm and, at times, downright rudeness. However, while reading, that does not deter from that he is obviously obsessed with politics. I think he's simply trying to state his opinion in a broad, un-censored way. All in all a very good and fun read, for those of you who are cynical and critical of the world around you.
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