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''Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child In the Final Days of the American Century'' is a 2003 non-fiction book by American journalist and author
Hunter S. Thompson Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author, regarded as a pioneer of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe. He rose to prom ...
. The book is a collection of writings about Thompson's past that focuses on the theme of rebellion against authority. Many of the stories are placed in the context of the aftermath of the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
and its emphasis on heightened police and military operations.


Plot summary

The book seems to begin as memoir or an autobiography, but rapidly devolves into numerous fragmented accounts of Thompson's exploits which could be termed as a type of ''
Gonzo Gonzo may refer to: People * Gonzo (nickname), a list of people with the nickname * Radislav Jovanov Gonzo (born 1964), Croatian music video director Radislav Jovanov, also known as Gonzo * Matthias Röhr (born 1962), German musician whose stage ...
biography''. There is a rough adherence to actual chronology though many events in the book are not in order. However, some continuity does exist throughout the work, for example, the "Witness" segments, dealing with Gail Palmer's sexual assault lawsuit against Thompson, appearing once every section in roughly the same area. In addition to these larger narratives, there are also several sections which hold no connection to each other in any way, with the exception of some of the same people or places from a previous section being mentioned. Among the events, the ones which seem to be as closely related to Thompson's life include: *An early incident involving the FBI attempting to arrest a then nine-year-old Thompson for an action which apparently resulted in the destruction of a federal mailbox. *The "Witness" sections *Various exploits of Thompson's either at or involving the
Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre The Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre was a strip club at 895 O'Farrell Street near San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. Having opened as an X-rated movie theater by Jim and Artie Mitchell on July 4, 1969, the O'Farrell was one of Ameri ...
in San Francisco, a notorious pornographic theater where he claims to have worked throughout the mid eighties. *A possibly fictionalized account of how Thompson met his assistant and later wife Anita.


Major themes

Writing and
punctuation Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of writing, written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, c ...
themes are more pronounced in ''Kingdom of Fear'' than in many of Thompson's previous works. In particular, he habitually uses the following alterations: * The addition of a number in numerals in brackets after printing the number as word, such as, "but when you are a nine-year-old boy with two (2) full-grown FBI agents..." * The use of the
ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the grammatical conjunction, conjunction "and". It originated as a typographic ligature, ligature of the letters of the word (Latin for "and"). Etymology Tradi ...
instead of the word 'and' when he is using 'and' as a word to connect two adjectives, such as, ''deranged & insane'' * The use of the abbreviation 'yr.' instead of the word 'your'. * The capitalization of nouns deemed important to the author: "...an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and Uncertainty that comes with once-reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in..." * The
typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...
changes throughout the book. Thompson also used this style in the contemporary '' Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness''.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kingdom Of Fear (Book) Essay collections by Hunter S. Thompson 2003 American novels Novels set in San Francisco Simon & Schuster books