Lonely girl with too many books

"Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top.
At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles--a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other--that kept me going." H. S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

When I think of Thompson's writing, two styles immediately jump to mind. First, there is the quick, tight, almost auto-piloted narrative the keeps the plot moving, that allows no room for lulls. But then there are these melodramatic, consciously heady tangents in which his writing really shines. They're so honest they're almost naive, and when you read over them more than, let's say, twice, they almost seem cheesy, overly romanticized and borderline unoriginal, but there's always that first time, when you read it and the words come so naturally and truthfully that they just sort of wash over you, like a wave, and then they're gone. Just simple, beautiful words that seem to pride uncertain wisdom, and that just sound really, really nice together. However, the combination of the two styles is what I really dig, and what has, surprisingly, made me a bigger fan of Thompson's than, hm, Kerouac, whose writing tends to reek so potently of the latter that I oft feel as if I'm wading impatiently through some hot, gummy swamp of endless human speculation, some tangential netherworld where everything is just so.fucking.meaningful. that it all just sort of deduces to goop, to cud, to the shit that they feed comatose victims through tubes. Don't get me wrong, I think Kerouac is a beautiful writer, he is a poet, and his shit changed my life, but I really appreciate Thompson's nonchalance; the sparcity of his sentiment; his even-handedness. Like his narrators, his writing always manages to reign in the chaotic at just the right time, calling on just the right amount of conscience. Talk about tension between poles.

That being said, I'm not even that crazy about Thompson, so whatever. Shit's just entertaining, and I'm mad bored, reading my way into God's Good Graces. Har har.