Ralph Steadman
The Joke’s Over: Bruised Memories: Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, and Me.
Harcourt (Hardcover)
$20.80

Artist Ralph Steadman’s wandering remembrance of the decades he spent as sidekick to Hunter S. Thompson, and illustrator of original gonzo journalist’s most famous prose, begins with a short epigraph attributed to Thompson that reveals plenty about the crazy relationship between the two men: ‘Don’t write, Ralph. You’ll bring shame on your family.’ Still, Steadman does write. And not too terribly, if, at times, a bit too much in the hallucinatory style of the ‘ole bastard,’ as he calls Thompson. There are photos and drawings too. But that Steadman was eyewitness to so much of the larger-than-life drugs, booze and gunplay -- right up until Thompson killed himself and left instructions for his body to be shot from a cannon -- is what makes The Joke’s Over a king hell joy ride.

-- Bob Townsend