Ralph Steadman & Hunter S Thompson
by Ralph Steadman
Billed as "Ralph and Hunter, a great British original on a great American original: Butch and Cassidy on acid."
With a recommendation like that, it's hard to imagine who could resist this book. But wait - there's more! The foreword is written by Kurt Vonnegut, a friend of both Steadman and Thompson. Surely an irresistable line-up.
It is also hard to imagine that any of the above need any introduction: Ralph Steadman is one of the greats of British cartooning; and Hunter S Thompson was an American journalist and author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a book which Steadman illustrated.
In The Joke's Over Steadman writes of the decades of friendship and professional collaboration between him and Thompson. It is a remarkable memoir not only because of its subject but also because of the impressive talent of its author.
Kurt Vonnegut describes Hunter S Thompson as "a gun nut and drug abuser and heavy consumer of grain alcohol....." and Ralph Steadman as "the most gifted and effective existentialist graphic artist of my time." He also says that until he read & met Thompson, he would have thought it impossible for anyone whose brains were so saturated with mind-benders to make sense on a telephone, let alone write so well. The book has got to be worth reading!
Read this often hilarious memoir and laugh and despair in equal measure. And after that, you could move on to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas or some of Hunter S Thompson's other books.
