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I can tell you the exact date and time I first watched the cult classic Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. I can tell you how I felt the first time I read The Curse of Lono, a book describing gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompsoní’s two trips to Hawaii in 1980. I can tell you where I was the day I found out that Thompson, one of the most iconic writers of the last one hundred years, committed suicide. If I can tell you all that, imagine what Ralph Steadman has to say.

For those of you not-in-the-know, Steadman was the artist paired with Thompson by Scanlaní’s magazine to cover the running of the 1970 Kentucky Derby. Though Scanlaní’s did not last much longer after that, the pairing of Thompson and Steadman did for over forty years. Ralph Steadman added art and depth to some of Hunter S. Thompsoní’s most notable works, including both Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, an adventure Steadman actually missed being part of, and The Curse of Lono.

In The Jokeí’s Over, Steadman discusses the intimate details of his long-standing partnership with one of the great critics and believers in America. Their adventures together vary from good to bad but always dance around the insane. But it is not just a year-by-year, moment-by-moment account of the life of one of the 20th Centuryí’s most bizarre literary figures that Steadman offers us in this memoir; it is context.

Steadman gives us the opportunity to look behind the scenes of a truly larger-than-life literary character and explains to us what was going on as he created some of his seminal works. It includes actual correspondence between Thompson and Steadman and shows us just how deep and tenuous their relationship as creators truly was. Through this book we can see how important Steadmaní’s art was to giving us the true scope of Thompsoní’s vision and how Steadmaní’s work helped Thompson, a man often distracted by his own eccentricities, to focus on his own work.

Much like the brutal reality that Steadman reflects in his art, the memoir offers us the often grim reality of Hunter S. Thompsoní’s life. Steadman paints a picture of a man tormented by his place in the world but who also strangely reveled in that torment. Thompson was a man who loved life but reviled the world he lived in. Many speculate that it was his disbelief in the direction of American society and politics that pushed him to his well-publicized suicide. It is the same gritty realism and ability to find his subjectí’s core that Steadman applied to his art that he also brings to his writing.

There are some amazing passages in the book. One that stands out is particular is an encounter between Steadman and Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs in the later portion of Burroughsí’ life. Though Thompson was not present for this encounter it is interesting in that it reminds us of Steadmaní’s place in the pantheon of the writers and creators of that generation, particularly his part in the invention of Thompsoní’s hyper-subective gonzo journalism. Another telling passage that typifies Thompson and Steadmaní’s relationship describes their initial meeting at the 1970 running of the Kentucky Derby in Louisville. As the trip ends, as Steadman recounts, Thompson spraying him in the face with mace, for the second time, and dumping him unceremoniously at the airport to return to the UK.

But the most important insight Steadman offers is when he describes why Thompson chose to end his life. He discusses Thompsoní’s final days and paints a portrait of an adventurer turned recluse, and he offers us the means to draw our own conclusions. As Thompson once told Steadman, í¢â‚¬Å“I would feel real trapped in this world if I didní’t know I could commit suicide at any timeí¢â‚¬ . That pretty much says it all.

Ian Goodwillie