Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005
Oh my god. I was just getting ready to post on something completely different, when I checked in at MSNBC, to be faced with this tragic headline:
Needless to say, posts are subject to change up to press-time.
I’ve gotten uncomfortably used to depressing headlines the last four years, but I was ill prepared for that one. I expect a bazillion tributes to Thompson on the blogosphere in the coming days—he was a universal figure, one-of-a-kind, and hero to many—so I wanted to get my brief one in at the front of the stampede.
Few people have had a greater psychological impact on me than the good Doctor. Looking back, I figure I spent a good chunk of the years 1997 and 1998 tweaking my reality to apply the Fear and Loathing aesthetic, as I saw it, as I could try to implement it. This was both a conscious and unconscious act, I suppose. A trip to Arizona in the summer of '97 (cue Bryan Adams) with Jamie D to visit Stan and Matt at recording school—my eighty hours without sleep—ended up a conscious, if clumsy, tribute. Oh, the stories I could tell!
June and July and part of August of the next summer found me in DC, working an internship on the Hill. Much of my off-hours time I spent bumming around various quarters of the city in my then ubiquitous hat and leather satchel, all Huntered-up—my emulation was so blatant, I’m surprised I didn’t take to smoking my Camels through a cigarette holder.
Cheesy, naïve, a tad embarrassing? Oh yes, without a doubt. Yet I feel that those years I spent emulating the cartoon image of Thompson were vitally important to my growth as a human being somehow, though it’s not a thing easily explained.
Neither is there an easy way of summing up this man’s life, a blurred cocktail of reality and fiction and self-invention and gonzo journalism. In a way, he was the last of the outlaws, fully embodying Dylan’s aphorism that “to live outside the law you must be honest.” You can’t read his work and not wonder how he got away with it all. In the end, I suppose, he didn’t. I guess what’s amazing is that he managed to make it this long.
Yet that is what depresses me most about Thompson’s demise. Like Keith Richards, he was a survivor. Having cheated death so often, he seemed invincible. His was a life-affirming tale.
I’ll never forget sitting around the old house on Division Street during the great snow-in of January ’98, listening to Thompson’s 1996 spoken-word adaptation of his most popular work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or going to the opening of the film later that year, heavily, heavily under the influence. Much as I enjoyed the movie, I like the disc better. Here is its final track.
Hunter S. Thompson – End of the Road…
So pour out a little liquor for one of the true greats of our time. Whatever he finds in the afterlife, we can be assured that he’ll make the place twice as interesting.
N/P
Dock Boggs – Country Blues
Sleep - Dopesmoker
'Gonzo journalist' dies: 'Fear and Loathing' author Hunter S. Thompson shoots himself at 67, son says.
Needless to say, posts are subject to change up to press-time.
I’ve gotten uncomfortably used to depressing headlines the last four years, but I was ill prepared for that one. I expect a bazillion tributes to Thompson on the blogosphere in the coming days—he was a universal figure, one-of-a-kind, and hero to many—so I wanted to get my brief one in at the front of the stampede.
“I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.”
Few people have had a greater psychological impact on me than the good Doctor. Looking back, I figure I spent a good chunk of the years 1997 and 1998 tweaking my reality to apply the Fear and Loathing aesthetic, as I saw it, as I could try to implement it. This was both a conscious and unconscious act, I suppose. A trip to Arizona in the summer of '97 (cue Bryan Adams) with Jamie D to visit Stan and Matt at recording school—my eighty hours without sleep—ended up a conscious, if clumsy, tribute. Oh, the stories I could tell!
June and July and part of August of the next summer found me in DC, working an internship on the Hill. Much of my off-hours time I spent bumming around various quarters of the city in my then ubiquitous hat and leather satchel, all Huntered-up—my emulation was so blatant, I’m surprised I didn’t take to smoking my Camels through a cigarette holder. Cheesy, naïve, a tad embarrassing? Oh yes, without a doubt. Yet I feel that those years I spent emulating the cartoon image of Thompson were vitally important to my growth as a human being somehow, though it’s not a thing easily explained.
“He who makes a beast of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
Neither is there an easy way of summing up this man’s life, a blurred cocktail of reality and fiction and self-invention and gonzo journalism. In a way, he was the last of the outlaws, fully embodying Dylan’s aphorism that “to live outside the law you must be honest.” You can’t read his work and not wonder how he got away with it all. In the end, I suppose, he didn’t. I guess what’s amazing is that he managed to make it this long.
Yet that is what depresses me most about Thompson’s demise. Like Keith Richards, he was a survivor. Having cheated death so often, he seemed invincible. His was a life-affirming tale.
I’ll never forget sitting around the old house on Division Street during the great snow-in of January ’98, listening to Thompson’s 1996 spoken-word adaptation of his most popular work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or going to the opening of the film later that year, heavily, heavily under the influence. Much as I enjoyed the movie, I like the disc better. Here is its final track.So pour out a little liquor for one of the true greats of our time. Whatever he finds in the afterlife, we can be assured that he’ll make the place twice as interesting.
N/P
Dock Boggs – Country Blues
Sleep - Dopesmoker
posted by Jonathan Wright at 12:14 AM EMAIL POST
