You may know Hunter S Thompson better as the outlaw journalist with a penchant for drugs and alcohol, and for penning the cult classic Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. But before this debauched image of the man, there was a Southern gentleman who had a passion for books and would spend copious amounts of time typing out lengthy classic novels just “to get a feel for the words”.

Hunter’s love for reading spurred on his career, and helped shape his own work into the Gonzo style he doctored. This often made him a harsh critic of authors like Kerouac,  whose novel Big Sur he called a “stupid, shitty book”.

Plenty of books escaped Hunter’s blacklist, however. He had many recommendations for friends and colleagues who he wrote letters to in his signature style. Here are some of Hunter’s mini book reviews, and why he recommends reading them, taken from his collection of letters in The Proud Highway.

1. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell     

To Knopf Editor Angus Cameron:

“Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can’t reach. Facts are lies when they’re added up, and the only kind of journalism I can pay much attention to is something like Down And Out In Paris And London. …But in order to write that kind of punch-out stuff you have to add up the facts in your own fuzzy way, and to hell with the hired swine who use adding machines.”

2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

To Cameron:

“If history professors in this country had any sense they would tout the book as a capsule cram course in the American Dream. I think it is the most American novel ever written. I remember coming across it in a bookstore in Rio de Janeiro; the title in Portuguese was O Grande Gatsby, and it was a fantastic thing to read it in that weird language and know that futility of the translation. If Fitzgerald had been a Brazilian he’d have had that country dancing to words instead of music.”

3. Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron

To Viking Editor Robert D. Ballou:

“Last week I read two fairly recent first novels — Acrobat Admits (Harold Grossman), and After Long Silence (Robert Gutwillig) — and saw enough mistakes to make me look long and hard at mine [Prince Jellyfish]. Although I’m already sure the Thompson effort will be better than those two, I’m looking forward to the day that I can say it will be better than Lie Down in Darkness. When that day comes, I will put my manuscript in a box and send it to you.”

4. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

To high school friend Joe Bell:

“To say what I thought of The Fountainhead would take me more pages than I like to think I’d stoop to boring someone with. I think it’s enough to say that I think it’s everything you said it was and more. Naturally, I intend to read Atlas Shrugged. If it’s half as good as Rand’s first effort, I won’t be disappointed.”

5. The Outsider by Colin Wilson

To his mother Virginia Thompson:

“As a parting note — I suggest that you get hold of a book called The Outsider by Colin Wilson. I had intended to go into a detailed explanation of what I have found out about myself in the past year or so, but find that I am too tired. However, after reading that book, you may come closer to understanding just what lies ahead for your Hunter-named son. I had just begun to doubt some of my strongest convictions when I stumbled upon that book. But rather than being wrong, I think that I just don’t express my rightness correctly.”

6. Singular Man by J. P. Donleavy

To freelance journalist Lionel Olay:

“Now that you’ve taken personal journalism about as far as it can go, why don’t you read Singular Man and then get back to the real work? … I’m not dumping on you, old sport — just giving the needle. I just wish to shit I had somebody within 500 miles capable of giving me one. It took Donleavy’s book to make me see what a fog I’ve been in.”

7. The World of Sex by Henry Miller

To Norman Mailer in 1961:

“This little black book of Miller’s is something you might like. If not, or if you already have it, by all means send it back. I don’t mind giving it away, but I’d hate to see it wasted.”

To Mailer in 1965:

“Somewhere in late 1961 or so I sent you a grey, paperbound copy of Henry Miller’s The World of Sex, one of 1000 copies printed “for friends of Henry Miller,” in 1941. You never acknowledged it, which didn’t show much in the way of what California people call “class,” but which was understandable in that I recall issuing some physical threats along with the presentation of what they now tell me is a collector’s item. … And so be it. I hope you have the book and are guarding it closely. In your old age you can sell it for whatever currency is in use at the time.”