SOURCE: "The Mad Adventure Continues," in The Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1996, p. 1.

In the following essay, McCumber discusses the impact of Thompson's work and his current projects.

"I have weird dreams," Hunter Stockton Thompson says. "I never expected to be looking over my life, page by page. It's like an animal eating its own intestines."

It is 3:45 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and he is perched like a barn owl on a high stool in his kitchen, eating not innards but a TV dinner, microwaved and then slathered with a hellbroth of mysterious mustards, chutneys and chili sauces. The plate suddenly lows with an unearthly light. I take this at first to be the sign of a chemical reaction, but it is actually the work of Thompson's newest gadget—the man is a gadget freak—a motorized, illuminated pepper grinder. The spotlighted meal is rapidly covered with...