Since I wrote Enter The Jack-Rabbit several people have asked me what significance, if any, the title had. I always mumbled something about politics, sleep deprivation and Hunter S. Thompson which, I gather from the responses, was never very clear. So, for the first time, the passage that inspired the text:

People who claim to know jackrabbits will tell you they are primarily motivated by Fear, Stupidity, and Craziness. But I have spent enough time in jackrabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dull lives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now & then. No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheep thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenalin rush in crouching by the side of a road, waiting for the next set of headlights to come along, ten streaking out of the bushes with split-second timing and making it across to the other side just inches in front of the speeding front wheels.

Why not? Anything that gets the adrenalin moving like a 440 volt blast in a copper bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps the veins free of cholesterol but too many adrenalin rushes in any give time-span has the same bad effect on the nervous system as too many electro-shock treatments are said to have on the brain: after a while you start burning out the circuits. When a jackrabbit gets addicted to road-running, it is only a matter of time before he gets smashed – and when a journalist turns into a political junkie he will sooner or later start raving and babbling in print about things that only a person who has Been There can possibly understand.

From Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72 by Hunter S. Thompson, p.17.