Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72
Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. Fawcett Popular Library, 1973. Softbound. 'There are no hidden meanings,' said cover designer and frequent Thompson collaborator Tom Benton. 'I know art is often what other people bring to it. It’s a take-off for their own psychobabble. I don’t particularly want to hear it.' Influenced by artists ranging from Hokusai to Mark Rothko, longtime Aspen, Colorado resident Benton is best known for the 1970 campaign posters he created for Thompson's notorious campaign for Pitkin County Sheriff: a masterpiece of heraldry depicting a two-thumbed fist clutching a button of peyote and surrounded by a badge (an image that was later adapted into the journalist's gonzo icon). This mass-market edition of Thompson's classic document of campaign mayhem, first serialized in Rolling Stone in installments often submitted last minute using a very early fax machine the writer referred to as 'the mojo wire', features another triumphant use of symmetry and symbolism by Benton, as well as appropriately grotesque illustrations by the great Ralph Steadman.
