The Great Shark Hunt, a Hunter Thompson reader, offers the bulk and flavor of his work in the mainstream and on the margins of popular journalism….

[By] pulling so much of his topical work into a single pile, The Great Shark Hunt … creates a surprising impression. If you drop all these pages of HST at only a few sittings, you're likely to experience a striking acid insight—in spite of the engagingly manic ravings of his Rolling Stone persona, Thompson is actually a conventional writer, provided he's judged by the full body of his work.

For one thing, he's versed in the American classics, and his writing shows it. For the title piece in this reader, and for his avowed taste for rambling metaphysically during the lobster shift, he owes a debt to Moby Dick. For his chosen role as the hip provocateur, the man who changes identities...