SOURCE: "Lost Generation," in National Review, Vol. XL, No. 18, September 16, 1988, pp. 52-3.

In the following review, Vigilante complains that Thompson's "Generation of Swine is no more than the wish-fulfillment of a slightly deranged registered Democrat."

It is hard to admit how bad Hunter Thompson's new book is. To me—as to most of the younger writers I have worked with over the past few years—Thompson, along with Tom Wolfe and a bunch of other now-aging New Journalists and their long-defunct movement, still represents the wild hope that journalism could aspire to the condition of literature, while beating the "just the facts, ma'am" boys at their own game.

It was—heck, it still is—an exciting prospect, even if (especially if?) you were, like us, primarily political journalists at constant risk of being consumed and destroyed by the hack imperative, the insistent demand of the audience to be...