Screwjack: A Short Story

By Hunter S. Thompson

Book Overview

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, making the trade edition of Screwjack a major publishing event.
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-of-consciousness 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684873214
• ISBN13: 9780684873213
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Quick And Dirty Gonzo

I love this little book. People who measure their literature by the pound may complain about this one, but fans of Thompson will whip right through it. SCREWJACK was first published privately in 1991, and has been spawning rumors ever since. Only one of its essays, a 1969 account of Thompson's first mescaline trip written in real time, was previously published elsewhere. As well as being an incredible piece in that you can actually see him writing himself through the freakout and emerging on top, "Mescalito" perfectly crystallizes the life of a freelance writer (some of us, anyway): " ... [H]alf drunk full of pills and grass with deadlines past and people howling in New York ... the pressure piles up like a hang-fire lightning ball in the brain. Tired and wiggy from no sleep or at least not enough. Living on pills, phone calls unmade, people unseen, pages unwritten, money unmade, pressure piling up all around to make some kind of breakthrough and get moving again." SCREWJACK also includes the tale of a psychotic friend who killed himself in front of the author after making a disastrous bet on a football game, and the title story, a demented love scene between Thompson's crazier alter-ego Raoul Duke and a huge black tomcat, reminiscent of some mad cross between Mikhail Bulgakov and Dennis Cooper. (A version of this review was originally published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.)

Short Stories

For those of you who wrote that the price of the book was outrageous should have looked and seen that the book is short. It is a collection of three SHORT stories. Peronsally, I adored the book, all three stories, and was just happy that Screwjack was released. The third story, and title of the book, was such an amusing story I even named my cat Mr. Screwjack. However, I can assure you his and I's relationship is a little less intense.

Great look into the mind of a genius

I rode my motorcycle 20 miles in a light rain to eat breakfast in a cafe on the California coast with this small book stuffed into my worn leather jacket's inner pocket. I will never forget the look into Hunter S Thompson's psyche that this great little book provides for the reader. His words are especially powerful in "Mescalito" the author's first experience with Mesculine. His words as well as his train of thought become more and more garbled as he experiences the first of many wild rides that have become the wonderful although sometimes controversial subject matter for many of Thompson's writings. This is a great taste of Hunter S Thompson, for someone discovering or re-discovering his writing.

...It's A Damn Fine Book

Some reviewers were unjustifiably harsh in their comments in regards to Screwjack. While all are entitled to their own opinion, it would seem that those with a blast of negativity were searching for some pseudo-Fear and Loathing II. While HST did write extensively on over-indulgence, he shouldn't be labled only as the writer of an around-the-bend drug odyssey. Thompson is in fact a fine craftsman of language, which is prominatly displayed in Screwjack. Each story imbibes a surreal experience. More like twisted fairy tales than short stories. Screwjack itself is my personal favorite piece. It has a poetic flow and almost a sing-song rhythm. Reading Screwjack reminds me of strange dreams an blurry memories. Certainly something to check out.

A Great Quick Read

This is a great quick read... you'll finish it in 25 minutes. It is a complete success at what it attempts. I read it last night at Borders and loved it (I'm a big Thompson fan). My girlfriend, who's unfamiliar was startled by it, and wondered what I saw in it. The bottom line is that this is a very difficult book to write... read it and you'll understand. I'm a copywriter and I couldn't write this... check it out.