Late Respects: Hunter S Thompson (1937-2005)
Do my experiences date from yesterday? It is a long time since I experienced the reasons from my opinions. Should I not have to be a barrel of memory, if I wanted to carry my reasons, too, about me?—Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche
Though he may have hummed “let me forget about my day until tomorrow,” I don’t think that Hunter S Thompson was the sort of character who would allow himself to forget. Call it an occupational hazard, but to understand a system as well as Hunter did, to the point of making brilliant satire, one must be a never ending gluttonous greedy whore of a history junkie. Though he had admitted that he lived much longer than he had gambled on, he had an aspect to him that made him more than just one of “the mad ones.” His, “Shit, why not?” hid deep-seeded terror, and yet he pushed and dedicated himself to ever-tracing that “edge.”
But now, can one truly believe his claim that “it never got weird enough for [him]?”
HUNTER STOCKTON THOMPSON, 67, DEAD OF SELF INFLICTED GUNSHOT WOUND, FEB 20, 2005.
These were heavy words that echoed in my head on that rainy Monday of the 21st. How would Steadman illustrate the suicide of a senior-citizen Raoul Duke? I didn’t really want ponder these awful near-realities…
Though none of us had actually met him, within a large group of my friends there was a very real sense that we had lost one of our own, a hero, an older brother, a teacher. Globally, with phone calls, instant messaging, emails, and blogging, an entire community of people united through Thompson’s works was abuzz, sending each other words of condolences, laments, conspiracies, disbeliefs, and favorite anecdotes.
The Good Doctor’s ashes were blasted-out of a cannon, shaped like his iconic Gonzo fist, this past August at his
Though a self-declared failed novelist, Thompson has been the subject of two major motion pictures, is given much credit for Rolling Stone’s style and voice, and, though disapproving, the inspiration for the Doonesbury character “Uncle Duke.” And he ran for Sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket.
Hunter is credited for birthing a new style of journalism, Gonzo journalism, in his first collaboration with English cartoonist Ralph Steadman, “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.” But even before this desperate faxing of field notes, Thompson’s work on the Hell’s Angels helped make the modern investigative report a popular undertaking. He has become the source inspiration of too many terrible knock-offs; myself included.
He is said to have copied The Great Gatsby, in order to learn how to write a great novel; though not a novel, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a masterpiece. What Fitzgerald was for the Jazz Age, Thompson was for the Freak/Hippie/Acid/Drug Culture. It wouldn’t surprise me if a Bruccoli-type character surfaces, obsessed with analyzing Hunter’s work. He was more than the mirror-shaded aviators, the fishing hat, the aqua-filter, the drugs, the nihilism, the idiosyncratic behavior and speech.
He was, in fact, friends with actors and rock ‘n’ rollers and politicos; and he was loved—Johnny Depp (who starred as “Raoul Duke” in Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) funded most of the funeral, just so his “pal’s” last wishes were fulfilled. He rubbed elbows with big names; and with more than a few, he wasn’t afraid of rubbing them raw—a sad rarity today. Though perhaps hell-bent on toppling ivory towers because of anarchic psychosis expressed in violence, he did so with a sense of dedication and professionalism; he was, after all, a “doctor of journalism.” Thompson was and will remain a hero to Freaks everywhere; even as he was a critic of all Freaks, himself included.
Great art encompasses, represents, comes to define, and yet contrasts with an era, a life style, an ethos. Having read Thompson, I find it hard to read Wolfe’s Acid Test. Though Tom Wolfe is unquestionably a great American writer, his dealings with the Pranksters had a sort of soft blurred awe—his portrayal is perhaps less dark than what was required...no mention, as it were, of the “grim meat-hook realities.” In contrast, Thompson makes it blatantly clear that the Hippies failed, from an insider’s point of view. In real time, he brought the Madness that came to define the 60’s and 70’s into sharp focus. He made it the hip thing to hate Nixon, his arch-enemy, representative of all the evils Hunter saw permeating US politics; redeemed only for being a football fan. Even after the Crook keeled-over, Thompson wrote in an obituary that his body should be burned in a dumpster.
Sadly, as his celebrity grew and as the effects of his life-style began to take a toll on him, Thompson seemed to become a water-down version of Raoul Duke, minus Steadman’s illustrations. In a 1978 interview, he laments on the fact that he is never sure who people want him to be, Duke or Thompson; that his celebrity made it impossible for him to do his job. Though his peak was most certainly his work from the 70’s, Thompson remained a major figure in media. One can still weed through the Hollywood-naming-dropping-dribble of his ESPN.com “Hey Rube” posts to find examples of true artistry.
There’s something truly American about charging head long at high speed out of touch with reality toward one’s own demise. Where as Hemingway may have enjoyed his danger from the safety of the stands, Thompson would have painted himself red and run stark-ass naked through Pamplona howling blood-curdling screams through the thick of things, kicking bulls in their balls and laughing, probably on some sort of substance, guaranteed drunk, and he would be the first one through the gates to taunt the brave men with their swords…suggesting perhaps that they box the bulls to death, like real men, if they weren’t scared chicken shit. Thompson kept himself seeking “the edge.” Sometimes, he high-sided. Most times, he skated through with some karmic version of dumb-luck. But at all times, he accepted the challenge. “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Indeed, Good Doctor.
Granted, the hammer has to fall, but it’s the dichotomy that makes his death so hard to take... Had the decades of doom saying finally taken their toll on him? Did it have to do with Walter Cronkite moonlighting as MC at Bohemian Grove? Could it be his mind cracked when, just days before, Karl Rove and Jeff Gannon were named starting pitcher and catcher for the GOP intra-party softball team that summer? Was it related to his speculative claims that the Bush Administration isn’t totally innocent in the September attacks? Could it be his obsession with discovering what mutants killed off the Kennedy’s led him to it? What about the physical evidence? Where’s a goddamn autopsy report?
Regardless, Hunter S. Thompson will be known as one of the few who chronicled the “Death of the American Dream,” as it was happening. Though the persona may have done him in, it allowed him to get away with what he did: pure Gonzo. His intuitive knowledge of the political system and American society in general gave him the ability to, in the midst of chemically-fueled rhetorical neurosis, turn on a dime to make sobering, heart-breakingly accurate assessments of our culture. His professional obsession for facts allowed him to make light of some interesting points of
So, here’s to the hope that Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 will make it as summer reading here, one day soon. Mahalo, Doc.
