When the best a provocateur can manage is a shrug, something must have gone wrong, but the anticlimactic nature of Hunter S. Thompson's new mini-collection Screwjack has a lot more to do with packaging than content. The book takes its title from a slim, sexually explicit description of the author's affection for the tomcat he shared with a woman who left him. An interesting enough piece—though, like much of Thompson's later work, it's buried beneath too many layers of obfuscation—originally published in a limited edition for the author's friends, it would serve as a fine piece in a larger anthology. But as the anchor of a three-piece work, it slips through the fingers before making much of an impression. Here, it's been joined to "Mescalito," a previously published 1969 account of Thompson's first experience on mescaline that anticipates Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas without suggesting its insight, and "Death Of A Poet," a forgettable account of gambling, blow-up dolls, and murder that starts well before traveling quickly to points both bizarre and familiar. Thompson diehards will want Screwjack, but with the same $15, anyone else could pick up a copy of Hell's Angels, Las Vegas, or The Great Shark Hunt, or cover part of the cost of the just-published second installment of Thompson's letters, and be much happier for their choice.