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A reader offers another view of Hunter S. Thompson's Monday night signing at Book Soup. This version is disappointingly devoid of the HST-vomiting-as-Benicio-del-Toro-watches tableaux, but leaves a number people standing on the sidewalk with unsigned books. The booze-induced puking strikes us as decidely more gonzo than skipping out on his fans.

I'm responding to the post "Hunter S. Thompson Lives Up To Legend At Book Soup"

1. We were all given a flyer with a heck of a lot of rules, that's true. But clearly printed on the flyer it said that HST would only be signing 208 books. I happened to be ticket # 246. I bought 2 books to be signed and most people in line also had more than one copy.

2. Hunter heckled us in an SUV. The profanities he yelled were something like: "I hate Bush, Bush hates you, if he gets elected he's gonna throw you all in jail. That's what he wants. He wants all free thinking people in jail." He was there for a couple of signal changes cursing and yelling stuff like this at us. I'm sure he thought he was giving us a solemn warning. It was pretty funny, most were either laughing or standing with their mouths open. HST and entourage took pictures of us.

3. The crowd was fun and lots of people would leave the line and check things out then come back and share the info. There were quite a few people who "figured out" that he would be pulling up around back, none of them came back with that vomit
story.

4. By all reports that came down our line, he was plastered, and however it challenging it may have been in his condition, true to his agreement, he signed EXACTLY 208 books and left. The story that came back to the line was that Benicio
had tried to convince him to stay all the way into the parking lot, then tried to get him to get out of the SUV and go back into the store. Again, no vomit was mentioned.

I was disappointed. But, my perspective is this: The "chi-ching of the register" was definitely involved — for Book Soup and HST's publicist. Whatever arrangements occurred between Book Soup and his publicist are irrelevant because HST
did not agree to them. Hunter agreed to sign 208 books. He signed 208 books, as agreed, and left. If this looks bad for Book Soup and his publicist it should.

As for being pathetic, I would comment that sometimes what seems funny and glamorous in a novel, doesn't really play well in real life. I found him to be exactly as he portrays himself in his books. In that, I was not disappointed.