Hunter S. Thompson & Ayn Rand: BFFs?
Apparently Hunter S. Thompson really liked The Fountainhead. Who knew?
But he also liked The Great Gatsby, along with an interesting array of other titles that you can see here. These are books that he recommended to people, and they include a couple of things I’d almost forgotten about, like A Singular Man by J. P. Donleavy. J. P. Donleavy! Not very surprising on the list is Henry Miller’s The World of Sex.
Somebody should put together a book of authors’ favorite books. That would make for some interesting reading, eh?
(Image via Amazon’s Hunter S. Thompson page.)
9 comments on “Hunter S. Thompson & Ayn Rand: BFFs?”
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WHAT THE HELL 
Not so sure how Hunter could remember what he read.
Good point! Maybe he took notes when lucid.
Reblogged this on WHAT THE HELL and commented:
Every now and then I like to throw an older post up, just to relive the magic. This happens to be my most popular post of the year, for totally unknown reasons. Hooda thunk?
Ayn Rand … the original Gonzo journalist? Perhaps not.
It does boggle the mind, no?
I’d a’ liked to a’ gone shootin’ with him in the woods somewhere. Feel I already have.
I’d like to see him and William S. Burroughs go a shootin’ together. Stand back!
That’s good. No apples!
My initial thoughts on this are that this is a very random quote taken from a letter to a friend long ago when Thompson was quite a young man. He spoke frequently about the authors he enjoyed over the years, and while mentioning many others, not once did he ever mention Rand, to my knowledge, ever. I mean ever. So one little sentence to a friend at that tender age leads me to think he suffered the same fate that many a good meaning, curious, voracious reader endures: an initial positive reaction to Rand when in the early stages of literary development and human development. I would bet just about anything that had anyone asked him about this in his later years he would have. a different take.