Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 70

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Popular Culture Review

where anyone, no matter what his origins, no matter how poor and obscure he may
be, can rise to fame and fortune...It is possible in other countries too, but to the
average American the rise from obscurity to fame is peculiarly special to the virtue
o f his country” (4).
Hunter S. Thompson, like most Americans of his era, was raised to believe in
the existence of the rags to riches myth at the heart of the American Dream, and for
a time he believed in it wholeheartedly. However, like many who went through the
tumultuous, unprecedented, and ultimately unsuccessful rebellion that marked the
1960s, Thompson grew disillusioned with the myth he had grown up believing
was an inalienable truth; he came to believe that, for all intents and purposes, the
American Dream was dead. Accordingly, the American rags to riches myth and its
current condition are indeed what most concern Hunter S. Thompson; lamentations
on what he sees as the death of Alger’s version of the American Dream can be seen
throughout his work. Although Thompson has been largely critically ignored since
his heyday in the mid 1970s, his work is ripe for re-evaluation as it has anticipated
the current social climate in America. 5