End of the Road: Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and True Crime in the Auto-Apocalyptic West

In this essay I consider the true crime and automotive contexts of major work by Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson. I examine the specific role played by automobility in the commission and narrative rendition of era-defining or (as these writers might frame it) world-ending true crime, especially their reaction to the apocalyptic indications of the Manson Family murders. Despite their starkly differentiated literary personas, both Didion and Thompson used themes of speed and travel to distance themselves from Manson, and yet both ultimately exploited such "little fellas" (both the impoverished and socially marginalized Charles Manson and elsewhere the Hells Angels) to enrich their own literary fame.