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The writing is bland, for the most part, imbued with the self-assurance of a mediocre rich dude who always considered himself a "writer" but never got the chance to really write until his dad became president and a publishing house gave him up to $2 million. An unlikely outcome is described as having "less than de minimis" odds, which kindles the "bidding quietude" of acquiescence. A pair of alluring eyeballs are "deep-blue pools." Jim Morrison "was a fucking piker compared to my shenanigans."
Hunter is at his most passionate when describing these shenanigans. The "astounding—even death-defying" amount of drugs and alcohol he consumed during his months-long binges in $400-a-night hotel rooms. The "nonstop depravity" and the "cycle of drugs, sex, exhaustion, and exhilaration." His efforts to call out the "blatant racism" of hotel managers who dared to complain about the caravans of drug dealers and prostitutes parading through their lobbies at all hours. He was, in his own words, a character out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or one of his favorite Bukowski novels.
The author is at his most eloquent, as it were, when explaining the benefits of smoking crack. "The sensation is one of utter, almost otherworldly well-being," he writes. "You are at once energetic, focused, and calm. Blood rushes to every extremity; your skin ripples with what feels like bumblebees." Even in recovery, he still longs for the "torch-blast rush that shot to every tip of every appendage of my body," and "the sensation of being transported—at something like warp speed, as if riding bareback on a rocket ship—to some far-off, beautiful place." If you only knew "how good it made you feel," he insists, you might not think of him as such a failure.
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