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There he goes—one of God's own prototypes—a high powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live and too rare to die. |
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—Hunter S. Thompson
from Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas |
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It's hard to put into words how much Hunter S. Thompson's writing impacted the career choices of yours truly (and many other writers I know). When news of his suicide broke, I heard from all sorts of former colleagues who wanted to trade favorite lines and reminisce about how his writing changed their lives. I understood.
But the fact is, Thompson was a gentleman, a man of letters, not just some idiot drug-gobbling machine. That's a part of the whole thing that some of his imitators seem to have missed. It doesn't take much talent to get loaded, but to write like Thompson straight or sober is a tough trick. (This also applies to the people who try to copy Lester Bangs or Charles Bukowski) Part of his appeal came from his early rejection of the stuffy world of "straight" journalism. His early attempts at newspaper work ended in frustration. "There was no room in their complacent world for a man who despised mediocrity—who would let nothing stand in the way of the truth The great American press was a babbling joke—an empire built on gossip and clichés—a final resting place for rumor-mongers and pompous boobs," he wrote. And people wonder why Thompson is a hero to journalists everywhere? There are few people who have worked in the newsroom of a daily paper who won't recognize some truth in that. He had a different relationship with the Truth than that of many journalists. Most journalists don't frame things in terms of good or evil, but Thompson was comfortable operating like that. "Some of the things I called Nixon obviously were not accurate. Nixon does not, as far as I know, fuck pigs and sell used cars with cracked blocks. Nor is he corrupt beyond the ability of modern man to describe it. Those are exaggerations to make a point. My concern with accuracy is on a higher level than nickels and dimes, in a word, line by line," he wrote. And by freeing himself up to use those exaggerations to make a point, he gave his readers a better sense of the experience, tapping into a larger truth that's not easily nailed down by fact-checkers. In his last column for ESPN.com, Thompson wrote of a new sport he wanted to invent with Bill Murray—Shotgun Golf (which, suitably, is a cross between golf and skeet shooting). He wrote "So there it is. Shotgun Golf will soon take America by storm. I see it as the first truly violent leisure sport. Millions will crave it." It was hilarious and showed that his writing skills hadn't dulled. My favorite piece of writing he ever did was a description of midnight rides down the Coast Highway on his big motorcycle after he was done with the Hell's Angels. "But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right…and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms," he wrote. "The Edge….There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others—the living—are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later." Godspeed, Doc. You never did choose Later, and we're richer for it. And here's hoping that where you are now, you haven't run into Nixon (because that means one of you is in the wrong place).
Unfortunately the brutal odyssey of an outlaw journalist came to an end on what have been Kurt Cobain's birthday. Two punk rock heroes that decided to go out with a bang. "He ruined journalism for everybody," my friend Casey once said, referring to the good doctor. And in a way he was right; he at least ruined it for the members of the future generations that at least got it. Thompson made the boorish world of journalism seem somehow romantic. His work was, as Kurt Vonnegut, JR. put it, "the literary equivalent of Cubism: all rules are broken." "If, as Paul Valèry put it, 'the true poet is the one who inspires,' Hunter Thompson is a true poet," Timothy Ferris wrote in the forward to Thompson's Kingdom of Fear. And how right Mr. Ferris was. Thompson was a revolutionary and an inspiration, right up until the day he wrote about George W. Bush, citing "he talked like a donkey with no brains at all... I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him 'Mister President,' and then I felt ashamed." You're gone now, HST, and as you said in your adios to Nixon, we are poorer for it. Amen, Mahalo…
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