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The Footloose American: Following the Hunter S. Thompson Trail Across South America
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About The Footloose American: Following The Hunter
Product Description An adventure-filled and thought-provoking travelogue along Hunter S. Thompson's forgotten route through South America In 1963, twenty-five-year-old Hunter S. Thompson completed a yearlong journey across South America, filing a series of dispatches for an upstart paper called the National Observer. It was here, on the front lines of the Cold War, that this then-unknown reporter began making a name for himself. The Hunter S. Thompson who would become America's iconic "gonzo journalist" was born in the streets of Rio, the mountains of Peru, and the black market outposts of Colombia. In The Footloose American, Brian Kevin traverses the continent with Thompson's ghost as his guide, offering a ground-level exploration of twenty-first-century South American culture, politics, and ecology. By contrasting the author's own thrilling, transformative experiences along the Hunter S. Thompson Trail with those that Thompson describes in his letters and lost Observer stories, The Footloose American is at once a gripping personal journey and a thought-provoking study of culture and place. From Booklist As role models go, one could not choose one much more problematic than the late Hunter S. Thompson, whose alcohol- and drug-crazed escapades were, largely through his own words, legendary. As a journalistic example, though (those conditions notwithstanding), one could not do much better, and that is what travel writer Kevin has done, literally and literarily following in the footsteps of the young Thompson, who was working at that time (1962) for the National Observer. It was in South America, Kevin states, “that Thompson developed that razor-edged understanding of the dying American dream.” Kevin wants, like Thompson, to develop a keener grasp of the U.S. by tracing the pre-gonzo Thompson’s path, from Colombia to Brazil. Kevin is, like his model, an observant and witty, if inexperienced, writer; this is fine, historically well-researched travel writing in the tradition of Bruce Chatwin as well as in that of the youthful and restrained (partially thanks to dysentery) Thompson. --Mark Levine Review "A travel story that doubles as a hell of a ride through modern-day South American culture." -- Esquire "Not only does Mr. Kevin fill us in on the careening journey that helped define Thompson as a journalist, but he also delivers an engrossing and opinionated travel guide to modern Latin America." -- The New York Times "What Kevin uncovers about Hunter S. Thompson's apotheosis as a sui generis American voice is just as valuable and interesting as what he has to say about South America today." -- Los Angeles Review of Books Winner of the Maine Literary Award for Nonfiction About the Author BRIAN KEVIN has written about travel, adventure, and culture for Outside, Sierra, Men’s Journal, and Travel + Leisure. He received a 2010 Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers. He currently lives in coastal Maine where he's a contributing editor at Down East.
