by Charles
Having long ago read and enjoyed his Fear and Loathing books (among others), it’s a painful thing to hear that he committed suicide yesterday (here’s an article from the New York Times). One of my favorite stories was about his initiative to rename the hamlet of Aspen to Fat City. There’s a website about him here. More lengthy commentaries have been written by Tom Paine, Dean Esmay and Julian Sanchez.
Update: A bleat from James Lileks.
He never would have “turned his life around” – that’s a hard thing to try when the room’s been spinning for 40 years. Depression? Wouldn’t be surprising. A bad verdict from the doc? Wouldn’t be surprising. A great writer in his prime, but the DVD of his career would have the last two decades on the disc reserved for outtakes and bloopers. It was all bile and spittle at the end, and it was hard to read the work without smelling the dank sweat of someone consumed by confusion, anger, sudden drunken certainties and the horrible fear that when he sat down to write, he could only muster a pale parody of someone else’s satirical version of his infamous middle period. I feel sorry for him, but I’ve felt sorry for him for years. File under Capote, Truman – meaning, whatever you thought of the latter-day persona, don’t forget that there was a reason he had a reputation. Read "Hell’s Angels." That was a man who could hit the keys right.
Another update: One writer about an another, Tom Wolfe pens a warm remembrance of Hunter S. Thompson. My favorite lines:
In Hunter’s scheme of things, there were curtains . . . and there were curtains. In the summer of 1988 I happened to be at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland one afternoon when an agitated but otherwise dignified, silver-haired old Scotsman came up to me and said, "I understand you’re a friend of the American writer Hunter Thompson."
I said yes.
"By God–your Mr. Thompson is supposed to deliver a lecture at the Festival this evening–and I’ve just received a telephone call from him saying he’s in Kennedy Airport and has run into an old friend. What’s wrong with this man? He’s run into an old friend? There’s no possible way he can get here by this evening!"
"Sir," I said, "when you book Hunter Thompson for a lecture, you have to realize it’s not actually going too be a lecture. It’s an event–and I’m afraid you’ve just had yours.
Sad day for all. Added Wings to Heretik What I Read in the Waiting Room of Hell
Read “Hell’s Angels” when it first came out.
Surprises me how many on the right appear to appreciate the guy. His apparent politics and life style have to be somewhat unappealing. But thinking about “Hell’s Angels”, appearances can be deceiving;HRT was very simpatico with the Oakland bikers. The mind of a leftist hippie with the heart of a redneck rebel. And he loved America, warts and all. I can imagine Tom Wolfe or Bill Buckley fitting into a London or Paris crowd but not the Doctor. American.
When they write the book about the “Outlaw” in American mythology, Hunter Thompson deserves a chapter. Guns, whiskey and a fast car trying to outrace the cops, the devil, and death. He belongs to every American.
A Hero Has Fallen: Hunter S. Thompson, 1937-2005
Hunter S. Thompson is dead. Killed by his own hand in Aspen, Colorodo February 20, 2005. The Gonzo journalist so good at being bad is gone now. Gonzo journalism? “Nobody really knows what it means, but it sounds like an epithet,” he said in an inter…
A Hero Has Fallen: Hunter S. Thompson, 1937-2005
Hunter S. Thompson is dead. Killed by his own hand in Aspen, Colorodo February 20, 2005. The Gonzo journalist so good at being bad is gone now. Gonzo journalism? “Nobody really knows what it means, but it sounds like an epithet,” he said in an inter…
Too bad an honest man has passed away, his kind are far and few in between.
disagree with lileks. his sports-writing was fantastic.
Lileks:
Dr Hunter S. Thompson:
I think that though Lilek’s obsessively partisan glasses, leftist writers like Thompson are iconic thirty years ago when they were pulling down an arrogant, incompetent president and stopping an unjust war. Attempting the same today and they’re just vile bitter moonbats.
Lileks is a pathetic hack of a writer who isn’t worthy of licking Thompsons’ spittle off his shoes, much less critisize his work in his characteristic pompous manner.
Must have been disheartening, watching Nixon’s crooks from the 70s running the country all over again.
Lileks is from the Michael Medved school of criticism: if I disagree with someone’s politics, his art is bad. It’s the right’s version of the left’s PC police, sifting through stuff to find Incorrect Politics, and just as dreary, and worse because the right is running the show for the time being.
We’ll just have to compare the outpouring of grief and appreciation around the Internet when Lileks kicks the bucket.
His books on food and interior decorating were pretty funny, though. Lileks, not Thompson. I never read any of Thompson’s interior decorating books.
Lileks’ sense of style and design are wonderful. His political analysis and writing are grotesque.
Boy, the lefties are mean around here. I welcome Republicans reading HRT, if only the early stuff. Thompson was iconoclastic and anti-authoritarian at every stage of his career.
I share HST’s anger, ok rage, at the vicious bastards who are running and ruining this country.
Too bad Thompson wasted so much of his energy getting wasted. Some experience of all that is eye-opening but not his level. Too much of his stuff was gonzo in the direction of self-indulgence and just stupid shit. It’s hard to make a revolution while your head is spinning.
Crank up White Rabbit and toss a radio in the bathtub. It’s all Gonzo now.
Boy, the lefties are mean around here.
Not usually. To me, Lileks represents a lot of what is wrong with certain hawkish corners of the blogosphere in general, and he has a snotty tone of writing. Which brings out the worst in me. I dislike his content so much that I generally avoid looking at his blog at all, which is too bad because I love the imagery, designs, and fonts.
Hmmm…I guess mileage does vary, substantially. I got the distinct sense that he mourns Thompson’s passing, and indeed has mourned his passing as a writer for quite some time.
What I remember about Thompson was an article that, IIRC, he wrote exclusively for Playboy magazine (see, I told you I only read it for the articles) called The Blue Hand. Something having to do with mistakenly thinking a bust was on, flushing his stash down the airline john, and then attempting to retrieve it. Followed by the fending off of curious, revolted attention.
I got the distinct sense that he mourns Thompson’s passing, and indeed has mourned his passing as a writer for quite some time.
It’s the judgement that his writing “passed away” some time ago that’s the partisan bit, Slarti. Passed away about the same time they started conflicting with Lileks’ political beliefs, I’m guessing.
Having read Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail” about a dozen times, I’d have to say that his recent stuff was no more “bile and spittle” than what he wrote when he was supposedly still good – I mean, Jesus, he called Hubert Humphery “a treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler who should be put in a goddamn bottle and sent out with the Japanese Current.” Bile and spittle indeed, but certainly far more memorable than Lileks prissy use of the f-bomb over Salam Pax’s political opinions.
“Too much of his stuff was gonzo in the direction of self-indulgence and just stupid shit. It’s hard to make a revolution while your head is spinning.”
Slightly before my time, by only a year or two, but that is exactly how many on the West Coast thought the Revolution would be made. “Tune in, turn on, drop out”
Stop being a productive unit, right or left. Creative self-destruction.
The year or two is important, because we are talking 66-67 here, and 1968 crashed down on everybody and it was over. Read the end of “Las Vegas.” After 1968 it was just getting loaded, we weren’t going to change the world, and “Las Vegas” is the work of a disillusioned freak.
Doing pot & psychedelics and other drugs started as a political act of defiance & rebellion. Maybe it still is, I got straight in 1980. But tho I think Thompson exaggerated his drug use (I mean, he lived til he was 67), his public flaunting of his behavior leads me to believe he still felt some of that old hippie optimism.
Or nostalgic desperation.
I’m surprised at how sad this makes me feel..after all, in a way it’s amazing he lived this long. I’m trying to think of any “heroes” of mine that are still alive..Ed Abbey, my very favorite, has been dead for years. He was a wild, angry (angry about the right things) person, too.
I doubt the anti-Bush invective was nearly as shocking as his cuddling up to Kerry. And you could replace Kerry’s name with that of nearly any other politician and little would be lost.
I doubt the anti-Bush invective was nearly as shocking as his cuddling up to Kerry. And you could replace Kerry’s name with that of nearly any other politician and little would be lost.
The man knew and admired Kerry for years. Do you think it was out of place for him to say so? And as for replacing Kerry’s name with any other, I really have no clue what you mean by that.
It is sad to see him go. But while we’re remembering his fantastic writing let’s not forget the best obituary ever written:
If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.
“And as for replacing Kerry’s name with any other, I really have no clue what you mean by that.”
Thought the point was HST’s dislike of the establishment, the system, the politckers, the whatchamacallit.
Yeah, but ++ug, Humphrey was a Dem.
rilkefan has it. Hunter Thompson being best buddies with anyone in a position of power in D.C. just looks way out of whack to me. If it’d been anyone else the oddness couldn’t increase all that much.
Thompson’s politics have always been interesting. You would think with his love of guns and rebel mind set he would flirt with libertarians or greens sometime. But AFAIK, he was always a yellow-dog Democrat. He is out of 68 politics, which compares in some ways to how Goldwater Republicans felt about Rockefeller. Umm, a little younger, but although we hated the old-union war-loving hippie-hating establishment like Daley & Humphrey with a literally violent passion in 69-72…
Nixon, with the “Southern Strategy”, “Law & Order”, and “Secret Plan” was incomparably worse. Nixon, for you informed Republicans, felt like you would have felt if Henry Wallace had made a comeback and won a landslide Presidency in 1960. Goes beyond shock and horror into severe brain damage.
I’m still struggling to put my thoughts together about the good Doctor of Journalism. But, I feel the need to respond to Slarti. The endorsement of Kerry makes sense in light of the shared bit of both men’s histories, to wit:
The truly odd thing was that Kerry ended up walking in the halls of power. HST was nobody’s fool when it came to politics, but he was was, oddly, a sucker for traditional values – honor chief amongst them. Given the situation, Thompson’s choice between “a good man with a brave heart” and a “natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers” seems unsurprising.
Too bad an honest man has passed
Passed away? No. He left, gave up, skedaddled. I’ve got friends and loved ones fighting, battling to see one more glimpse of their children, hear one more note of music, taste one more sip of wine. They’ll “Pass Away”. HST put a gun to his own head and blew his brains out. I feel for his son, so uncared for at the end of his father’s life but will spare no more thought for HST, despite how much I enjoyed reading his work.
I’ll miss him. He provided a kind of continuity between radical journalism of the 60s and today. He remained a surprising stylist to the end: I consider myself to be roughly on his side, yet he always managed to shock me. His style of journalism always provoked me to think: yeah, so you’re nervous of X culture–go on and try seeing it from the other side–how sure are you that you’ve got it right?
I’m sorry he’s gone–but I won’t presume to judge his reasons for going. Please, everyone, respect his death. We can’t know the calculus, we can’t judge the decision, and we can’t presume to speak for the bereaved. Thompson put a gun to his head; that’s all we know, and it’s not, in the end, our business.
Someone accused me of being “gladdened” by his death – and I thought about it, and said, no, not glad he’s dead. But I regarded his still being alive with utter indifference, and I’m certainly not sorry he died.
Thompson on gang rape.
Pharyngula on Lileks on Thompson:
“Lileks…feels…:sorry…for Hunter S. Thompson? The wimp best known for feeble witterings about domestic trivia feels sorry for the gonzo reporter who was legendary for his epic furies and cosmic rages, his profoundly optimistic dreams and his deep disappointment at our failures?
I feel sorry for Lileks. He could live a thousand years and never claw his way up out of the banal. Lileks is the anti-Thompson.”
“Thompson on gang rape.”
Link did not work well, but it have been the passage from “Vegas” about grabbing the little Christian proselytizer, tying her naked to a bed in a room filled with crosses and pictures of Jesus, filling her fill of acid, and calling the Hell’s Angels.
Yup, pretty outrageous and offensive and transgressive and all. Gotta say I laughed a lot at that passage, and remember it clearly after thirty years. It would be wrong to do such a thing, and really wicked to laugh at it. Wrong, wrong. Bad Bob.
Made me think of William Burroughs, and “Junkie” “Queer” “Naked Lunch”. Thompson appears to have a debt there.
Link did not work well,
I was afraid of that. Damn Amazon.
No, it was the passage from Hells Angels where he describes the Angels ritual for gang-banging disobedient women to bring them into line.
Gotta say I laughed a lot at that passage,
*shrug* Well, not having read the book, I can’t say how intrinsically funny I’d find it (I’ve laughed at some sick jokes and been horrified at how funny I found them, so I won’t play holier-than-thou), but your description makes it sound disgusting, not “outrageous and offensive and transgressive” – drug a woman helpless, call in some friends to gang-rape her? Not something I’d have expected you to find amusing, Bob.
No, it was the passage from Hells Angels where he describes the Angels ritual for gang-banging disobedient women to bring them into line.
Jes, I’m not sure if you have actually read Hell’s Angels or just works that refer to it, like the one you linked to. The book was published in 1967 and reflected both HST’s experience living with the Angels as well as the mores and standards of the times. As I recall, the passage is one of many in the book that make clear that the Angels often used sexual humiliation and violence as both a form of punishment and a means to maintain order within the group. I’m not sure what your issue is with Thompson documenting this behavior.
JerryN: I’m not sure what your issue is with Thompson documenting this behavior.
That he wrote about it approvingly at the time, and never once said later that he was wrong to do so. So, he died as someone who approved of gang-rape. It was “the mores and standards of the times”, was it? Well, I was born in 1967, but it’s news to me that in the 1960s it was considered suitable to gang-rape disobedient women to bring them into line.
… but it’s news to me that in the 1960s it was considered suitable to gang-rape disobedient women to bring them into line.
Well, it was certainly considered suitable by the Hell’s Angels. And, since you seem to have missed the point, was considered outrageous and shocking to society at large. Thompson’s book came out at a time when bikers were about the most threatening white folks around in the USA. His was one of the first reasonably accurate accounts of their life.
That Thompson was alternately repelled and attracted to them is obvious if you read the book. I don’t think that “he wrote about it approvingly at the time”, rather that he wrote about the rapes almost clinically. That he “never once said later that he was wrong to do so” makes no sense in that context.
Your cites, I see, are from “Against Our Will”. Might I suggest that the author has a thesis to prove and quotes Thompson’s work to her advantage. She connects passages that are unconnected in the book and often attributes to Thompson the attitudes expressed by those that he is reporting on. If you haven’t read the source material, you have no way to judge the accuracy of Brownmiller’s assertions.
That said, I have no illusion that anything I say will change your opinion of the man, nor you mine.
Jes, I understand your feelings about that passage, but I find it hard to personify the entire body of his work based on that, in the same way that his fascination with guns and violence doesn’t diminish other qualities of his work, for me at least.
Similarily, I find that Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas a similarily drunken, stoned, frat-boyish road-trip book that celebrates the same kind of male flight from responsibility that On The Road by Kerouac exemplified (see Off the Road: My Years With Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg by Carolyn Casssidy, Kerouc’s ex-wife, for a revealing take on the other side of the aforementioned male flight from responsibility).
However, they are still very much worth reading, and are iconic works.
D-P-U-G: However, they are still very much worth reading, and are iconic works.
Each to their own religion. I don’t think Thompson ever wrote an icon I’d want to worship.
Now, Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will – that’s an iconic work, very much worth reading. But someone who enjoyed Thompson on rape wouldn’t enjoy Brownmiller, I think it’s fair to bet.
Now, Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will – that’s an iconic work, very much worth reading. But someone who enjoyed Thompson on rape wouldn’t enjoy Brownmiller, I think it’s fair to bet.
By my reckoning, Jes, based on your recent revelations about your birthdate, I read Against Our Will when you were twelve. I read my first HST book about the same time.
“Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas a similarily drunken, stoned, frat-boyish road-trip book that celebrates the same kind of male flight from responsibility that On The Road by Kerouac exemplified”
Wrong, they are opposites.
I don’t think Thompson is necessarily a better writer than Kerouac, but he possibly was a better man. “Las Vegas” is ironic to the core and is intended, implicitly and at the end explicitly, to show the people and generations following the “Summer of Love” that era of romanticized drug use was over.
And Jes, I never said I “found it amusing” I said I “laughed a lot”. I also laughed at “Trainspotting” “Ginger Snaps” and “Wag-the-Dog”. The rest of that comment shows I think that you understand that different mechanisms can produce laughter. OTOH, I have never been able to read Cervantes. Too cruel.
think this is probably worth a read for those interested in HST’s motiviations. Its an account of HST passing by Ralph Steadman.