A near 400-page eulogy from a friend who endured the best and the worst of times. Steadman's prose is a little off at times, but man does he make up for it with information, letters, tons of his drawings, and photographs that chronicle a 35 year friendship that saw the birth of Gonzo journalism to its untimely end in 2005. Steadman graciously gives us a run for our money in depicting Hunter S. Thompson as that bastard of his time. Not a good guy or a bad guy per se, but someone dancing to the be...

If you don’t already know and love HST’s work, this book isn’t for you. There’s not really much new ground covered. There are no deep insights to the man behind the myth (as if that were even possible, or anyone would want to read it if it was). Instead, we get a deja vu of Thompson’s greatest hits from Fear and Loathing at the Kentucky Derby onward, but this time from the slightly off kilter perspective of Steadman, HST’s long time wingman. So this is a book to read when you’ve already read all...

Surprisingly well written. A must for any fans of Gonzo and HST/RS collaborations. Reading the final chapter this morning, "Memo to the Sports Desk, 2006" was especially poignant, given the focus of the letter to HST in "heaven" and its focus on George W. Bush as a war criminal and idiot savant President. To his credit, George now looks incredibly sane compared to the MAGA nut job we just had in the White House for 4 years. We could really use HST about now...

Today's pig is tomorrow's bacon.

Although I’m a lifelong Hunter S. Thompson’s fan, I was a bit surprised, to say the least, at the degree of darkness and pettiness that seemed to surround the dysfunctional / love-hate work relationship between the illustrator Ralph Steadman and the wordsmith HST. At times, “The Joke’s Over” reads like a millennial “decoupling manifiesto” (it was published after Hunter’s suicide after all), showing the neglected and seldom-heard other side of the story, while shedding a bit more light on the lif...

Fantastic book looking at the collaboration between two definitive artists in their field: satire & the excoriation of the holy. Fuck the pope indeed. I was lucky enough to talk to Steadman at the time of the book's launch. It was a brilliant phone call; he was gentlemanly, highly obliging & most circumspect. His influence is massively underrated, from Spitting Image to the gargoyle distortions so prevalent in today's cartoons, with our knackered world and the information age to inform us of exa...

Few people knew HST better (or put up with more of his shit) than Ralph Steadman. I can see why he waited until his passing to publish this, as I can only imagine the haranguing and abuse (not to mention lawsuits) that would've otherwise likely ensued, but ultimately this was little more than a factual, mostly tender look back at their thirty-five years of working, fighting, and just generally living it up together. If HST were still around to object, it would be in his finally having to admit t...

I have never written a Goodreads review, and probably will not write many of them, but I felt some justification for my five-star rating was in order. Was this most well-written book I have ever read? By no means; but it had something that so many better-written, more focused books I have read lack: Integrity.This book (to briefly summarize) is a portrait of the relationship shared between Hunter S. Thompson (former Hell's Angel and American author extraordinaire) and Ralph Steadman (one of the

I was willing this book to be good. No commentary I've ever read on Hunter has EVER been good.It is not wonderful. Ersatz Gonzo stylings from the illustrator who admits that Hunter HATED when he tried to write anything on the pictures so essential to his own success. There was much territorial pissing.Of course, HST is a complete MONSTER. He maces Steadman in the face at their first meeting. I have to say I believe Ralph totally on that one. The wound of his eventual inevitable rejection by Hunt...

An interesting insight, sometimes a bitter rake, but overall a worthwhile read. Who'd of thought the illustrator behind many of the works of Hunter S. Thompson had a life of his own? Written from the shadow of arguable greatness Steadman lends his insider's voice to the clamor of voices trying to understand and account for one of the 20th century’s most controversial men of letters. Do his stories make me like hunter less? No. Does it make me like Steadman? Not really. As much as I love hearing

"Don't write, Ralph, you'll bring shame to your family" - Hunter S. Thompson. That he did. A sad shame indeed. Above my desk is a beautiful print of one of Ralph Steadman's finest pieces. Thompson is pierced through the throat by the carriage lever of a typewriter. The keys of the typewriter spell out "Aaaarrgh," which I find quite moving. I am not an art expert, but I know enough about the men behind the image to know that "Aaaarrgh," was perhaps an understatement for the torture they put thems...

Having read a good deal of Thompson's writing, I was curious to see what Steadman had to offer, since the two of them were so inextricably linked. One cannot really think of Thompson's writing without also mentally picturing Steadman's art, and vice versa. I did not really learn anything particularly new about Thompson. I already knew that he was a self-indulgent, egotistical and irresponsible child who had essentially become a parody of himself (one does not need to be a decent human being to b...

Essential, though not always pleasant, for the long-time HST fan, and, of course, the long-time Steadman fan, who has more than a large reputation outside his appearances with Thompson.

A great read, for the most part. The book opens with a great HST Gonzo quote about Steadman that is hilarious even if totally misguided, that I won't reveal here. Steadman is astonishingly intelligent, and surprisingly a top notch writer as well. He has full command of the Gonzo parlance, when he wants it, and a fresh and full-spectrum style the rest of the time. This memoir of his friendship with HST is filled with love, and with understandable loathing, for which he provides very ample support...

The book started a lot stronger for me than it finished. Probably because Steadman was more enamored with his early years with Hunter before he became more and more "Hunter." Funny that in their first assignment Hunter was the one restraining Steadman, and there's a great story of Hunter just running through the airport with the Ivory tusks he brought back from "The Rumble in the Jungle" after they were confiscated by customs. He got away with it...sorta. The book never quite really puts a finge...

Ralph Steadman and Hunter Thompson were kindred spirits. A match made at the Kentucky Derby in 1970.This is Steadman’s memoir — a running account, almost like a diary, of his relationship with Thompson, beginning when Steadman collaborated with Thompson on The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved. Steadman’s eccentric and dire artwork was the perfect complement to Thompson’s no-holds-barred writing style, and the two seemed to share similar attitudes toward the rich, decadent, and corrupt.Ste...

I have long been a fan of Hunter S. Thompson. In fact, I was a fan of his before I even realized that we co-inhabited the same region of this great state of Colorado. For me, this title was at first just another way of re-living stories already familiar to me from a slightly different angle. Ralph's artwork has become synonymous with Hunter's writing, but this was NOT an automatic effect. Honestly, I loved Hunter's writing because it was Hunter's. I always felt more like Ralph's art managed to f...

They say you should never meet your heroes. I'm not a man who has a lot of heroes, or puts a lot of weight into elevating people to such positions. But if I did, then one of them would be the inscrutable maverick madcap journalist, and creator of Gonzo that was Hunter Thompson. It's with some trepidation that I would recommend this book to people similarly inclined. You see, while Thompson's many great works are filled with a seething and lusty rage against injustice, usury and the perceived exc...

Ralph Steadman is almost as much a hero to me as Hunter S. Thompson. They are both geniuses in their own right, and towering counter culture intellects. Thompson was most definitely an asshole; Steadman, not so much, it seems. I would probably choose to hang out with Steadman more often than Hunter, as much as that pains me to write.Steadman caught some flack for this book, and why not? A lot of folks don't like to find out that their heroes have flaws, and Hunter assuredly had legions of them.

Very different than the typical sycophantic biographies you find of HST. He is uncompromisingly honest in his assessments of HST, and pulls no punches. He isn't afraid to include the good with the bad, and he is just as effusive with the praise for his talent and friendship as he is with his scorn and bitterness toward to the less-agreeable aspects of their friendship and working relationships. He makes it clear that he deeply valued their friendship and co-creative relationship, but it was alwa...