Screwjack: A Short Story

Whoops, I thought. Welcome to the night train.

I was hoping for the night train. For more bits of HST's non-sequiters that are a bit of stream-of-consciousness, gonzo truth.

This wasn't it. _Screwjack_, a publication of a 90s, private printing only collection of 3 of HST's shorts (2 pieces out of 3 are straight fiction, I think I've read, but not sure). "Mescalito" was messy-- fun, but messy. Better done in _Fear and Loathing_. (although it's still impressive any time I read any writing committed while a human being was that utterly ripped.)

"Death of a Poet" was promising, but felt like it was bailed out on very abruptly. Like perhaps it could have gone on, and even ended the same abrupt way, but instead, the author just cut to the show more chase, put a period, and forgot to start a next sentence.

I wanted to like "Screwjack". Stylistically, it's one of the voices I expect when I want to read Thompson. But it seemed pretty pointless to me. I read it twice: yep, still pointless. But it does contain this passage which was absolutely worth the double reading

I am guilty, Lord, 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....

Passages like this are why I keep coming back to Thompson, no matter how twisted, violent, immoral, amoral, nauseating, and depressing it can be. Like no other writer I know, he can find the beauty in a shitheap of desperation. show less

Hunter S. Thompson's "Screwjack" is as salacious, unsettling, and even brutally trio of short stories. (I think the title story is sometimes distributed alone, or maybe used to label the set.) The first of the three pieces, "Mescalito", was published in Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream. This entire audio is enthusiastically narrated by Scott Sowers with a delivery I can easily imagine coming from HST himself.

“Screwjack”, the climactic title piece, feels like the joke “The Aristocrats”; how far will HST go? Voice by Raoul Duke in full cynical/mentally unbalanced Gonzo journalist mode, it is a vivid homoerotic fever dream that careens off into animal cruelty.

Well...here we have another barely coherent, yet hilarious Hunter S. Thompson offering. Without delving into the history, I'm not sure of the reality of these stories (obviously, the last being told by his alter-ego is even more out there). But it's Hunter Thompson, so why let reality get in the way? Super quick read and yet, still has some laughs.

If the inside of your brain exploded from too much tequila and too many drugs, and the leftover bits tried to describe the experience, you would find yourself with something very similar to 'Screwjack.' More brilliance from The Good Doctor.

Here's a little bit of Thompson at his mescaline-addled stream of consciousness best. It's a quick read and that's the only downer; one can never get enough of the Good Doctor.

Crazy and frenetic as only Hunter can be! "Mescalito" was my favorite story of the three, as it reminded me so much of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", which I love!

4 stars instead of 5 because there I barely got an hour out of this. Very entertaining however - I laughed and tensed.