Hella Nation - Evan Wright [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
NOT MUCH WAR, BUT PLENTY OF HELL
PISS DRUNK
DANCE WITH A STRANGER
WINGNUT’S LAST DAY ON EARTH
HEIL HITLER, AMERICA!
THE BAD AMERICAN
MAD DOGS & LAWYERS
TOUGH GUY
PORTRAIT OF A CON ARTIST
SCENES FROM MY LIFE IN PORN
FOREVER FOURTEEN
PAT DOLLARD’S WAR ON HOLLYWOOD
Acknowledgements
PUBLICATION CREDITS
ILLUSTRATION GUIDE
ALSO BY EVAN WRIGHT
Generation Kill
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
PUBLISHERS SINCE 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2009 by Evan Wright
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Pages 341-342 constitute an extension of this copyright page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wright, Evan.
Hella nation : looking for happy meals in Kandahar, rocking the side pipe, Wingnut’s war against the Gap, and other adventures with the totally lost tribes of America / Evan Wright. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-03240-4
I. Title.
PN4874.W75A
814’.6—dc22
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
To the great American humorist,
cynic and realist Alan D. Wright, Esquire
There is almost no circumstance under which an American doesn’t like to be interviewed.
—A. J. Liebling
INTRODUCTION
After the publication of my book Generation Kill, some critics called my work “gonzo,” because reporting from the midst of combat as I did struck them as an act of gonzo journalism. For Generation Kill and now Hella Nation, use of the term is a misnomer insofar as “gonzo” speaks of writing that is more about the reporter than the subject. With few exceptions, my intent has always been to focus on my subjects in all of their imperfect glory. Gonzo journalism was born and died with Hunter S. Thompson, and lives on only in his writing. But not even Thompson himself was entirely gonzo. One of the most astute political observers of his time and a grand American humorist in the tradition of Mark Twain, Thompson was also a prodigious reporter. His Hell’s Angels stands as a classic of immersion journalism—in which Thompson’s adventures in gathering his material never diverted focus from his outlaw subjects—and was an early inspiration for my own reporting from inside American subcultures.
Portions of Hella Nation appeared in different form in Rolling Stone at a time when I served as the magazine’s “unofficial Ambassador to the Underbelly”—a title jokingly bestowed on me in an editorial published by Rolling Stone’s managing editor, Will Stone, in 2002. My primary