''Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child In the Final Days of the

American Century The American Century is a characterization of the period since the middle of the 20th century as being largely dominated by the United States in political, economic, and cultural terms. It is comparable to the description of the period 1815–19 ...

'' is a book by

Hunter S. Thompson Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author who founded the gonzo journalism movement. He rose to prominence with the publication of '' Hell's Angels'' (1967), a book for which he s ...

, published in 2003. 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, 2001 terrorist attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

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 sta ...

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 Gail Palmer (also Gail Palmer-Slater) is an American former producer and director of pornographic movies in the U.S. during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Among her well-known movies are '' Hot Summer in the City'' (1976) starring Lisa Baker ...

'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 are listed below: *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 first opened as an X-rated movie theater by Jim and Artie Mitchell on July 4, 1969, the O'Farrell was one of A ...

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 (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...

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 conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters ''et''—Latin for "and". Etymology Traditionally in English, when spelling aloud, any letter that ...

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 the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...

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

Essay collections by Hunter S. Thompson 2003 American novels Novels set in San Francisco Simon & Schuster books {{2000s-novel-stub