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Decadence and Depravity in Louisville, Kentucky
From https://quillette.com/2020/05/02/decadence-and-depravity-in-louisville-kentucky/
Published on May 2, 2020
Decadence and Depravity in Louisville, Kentucky
written by David S. Wills
Fifty years ago today, Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman drunkenly negotiated the pitfalls of Louisvilles Churchill Downs, home of the world-famous Kentucky Derby. At the time, Thompson was a moderately successful writer who had published an acclaimed book a few years earlier about his time among the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. Steadman was a talented young artist from Wales who had traveled to the United States in search of work.
For Steadman and Thompson, it would be their first meeting, but it was hardly Thompsons first derby. He had grown up in Louisvilles Cherokee Park area and was familiar with the whisky gentry who would be in attendance. As a teenager, Thompsons wit, charm, intellect, and surly insubordination had made him popular among the citys wealthy young men and women. However, he had never felt fully accepted and, when he was arrested along with a couple of classmates for holding up a car just shy of his graduation, his rich friends abandoned him to his fatetwo months in prison.
After 10 years of surviving as a journalist, Thompsons big break arrived in 1965, when he accepted an assignment from the Nation to investigate the rise of motorcycle gangs. The resulting article was a huge success, and offers from magazines and publishing companies began to pour in. In 1967, his first book, Hells Angels, was released to reviews that gushed over his wit and courage, and soon he was a hot literary talent. Despite the offers that came his way inviting him to file follow-up articles and book proposals, his literary output between 1967 and 1970 was not prodigious. However, in the few pieces of writing that he did publish, his prose style was already developing in a radical direction.
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Decadence and Depravity in Louisville, Kentucky (Original Post)
sl8
May 2020
OP
dhill926
(16,392 posts)1. K & R for the late, great HST....
callous taoboy
(4,597 posts)2. Got to hang out with HST and Ken Kesey one night
at Kesey's place in Pleasant Hill, Or. Even got to ride out there on the bus beforehand. Long story, and an amazing night.
Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)3. Lucky YOU !!