The Good Doctor is Out A Hunter S. Thompson Random Reader

UPDATE: Links from selected blogs have been added.

The Summer is over
the harvest is in,
and we are not saved.
-- Jeremiah 8:20

In the whole eastern dark wall of the divide this night there was silence and the whisper of the wind, except in the ravine where we roared... All in darkness now as we fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America, and all we could do was yell, I guess. -– Jack Kerouac, On The Road

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. "What the hell are you yelling about?" he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. "Never mind," I said. "It's your turn to drive." I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough. -- From Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

ARTICLES BY HUNTER S. THOMPSON

• Shotgun Golf with Bill Murray
  
• The Pain of Losing
  
• Honolulu Marathon Decadent, Depraved
  
• When War Drums Roll
  
• He Was a Crook
  
• Security
  
• Call to the Derby Post
  
• Ugly, Tasteless, Terrifying and Wild ... Count Me In!
  
• Welcome to the Big Darkness

ABOUT HUNTER S. THOMPSON

• Writer Left the World the Way He Lived -- With a Bang by Bruce VanWyngarden
  
• AP Obit via NYT
  
• Epistle Whipped by Rick Levin
  
• The Salon Interview by John Glassie
  
• Strange Pollen: Dr. Thompson and the Spirit of the Age by Steven Birkerts
  
• Rolling Stone, Air Force Journalism, On Humphrey and Muskie, Origin of Fear and Loathing, Smuggling Currency, and Why Go to Vietnam? [Various audio from The Paris Review.]
  
• All Things Considered interview with Thompson in 1997
  
• Still Gonzo After All These Years by Richard Keil
  
• Halftime for Gonzo by Jonathan Yardley

FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE

• Digby: Rest In Peace You Brilliant Goddamned Beast
  
• Fafblog: Hunter Thompson is not dead
  
• A Welsh Born Icon: Hunter Thompson RIP
  
• Schizophelia Jones: Meat Hook Reality
  
• Mouse Musings: In Memorium: Hunter S. Thompson
  
• Blogcritics: The Doctor is Out
  
• Jesus' General: Hunter Thompson is Dead
  
• Bottle of Blog: Aaawww, Mama, Can This Really Be The End?
  
• RBC.net: RIP HST
  
• Mouse Words: Being Bummed All Day

Rest in peace, crazy man.

Comments

[GraceD]

Whew, Rox. I'm in shock. Will be in mourning for a while. And I'm still trying to get over Warren Zevon's loss too. Too much.

Excellent excerpts above. I loved the stories of when the Good Doctor was in charge of security at, of all places, Esalen.

I feel bad. I think I'll go inhale some ether now.

[sylamore]

As long as we're touting Thompsoniana, let me add my own (co-authored) tome, "Aquarius Revisited," (MacMillan, 1989) which has a nice history of Hunter's early literary days, relates a mad encounter with him in Key West, and places him firmly in context with other 60s icons, Kesey, Leary, et. al.

[PZ Myers]

You do not want to read Lilek's Bleat today. I feel like driving east a few hours and kicking him repeatedly.

[Roxanne]

PZ: I don't pay much attention to the faux "style" commentators in the nation's best newspapers, let alone those who hack at the worst. I didn't even know this Lileks character existed until about a year ago.

[Richard Bellikoff]

The first volume of his collected letters, "The Proud Highway" is revelatory, especially his correspondence with William Kennedy. You can see the genesis of the famous Thompson prose style.

[PJ]

Damn it Hunter, why? You made it through Nixon, Reagan, Bush/North and you would have made it through Bush Lite. Yes, the swine are running amok. All the more need for you.

But, according to reports, you took yourself. My hope is that they find that it was a tragic accident. I can mourn that. This just pi@#es me off.

Lest anyone misconstrue...major fan, ardent admirer and reader for many, many years. Damn.

[marc b]

'tis a sad day when, in the land of the blind, and the one eyed man is sold out, the only sunabitch with both eyes open decides to get the fuck outta town. all the more reason to throw a sack of dead rats over the white house fence- in memorium. ride on forever, bro, twist the grip hard and let the wind carry away your troubles- right off the high side.

[Lee Bloggins]

I knew Thompson for years and I have jotted down some memories for you and your readers.

See my blog, Remembering Hunter Thompson:

http://thecuriousblogger.blogspot.com/2005/02/remembering-hunter-s-thompson.html

[Pamela Karr]

He influenced my life after my first reading of 'Fear and Loathing'..., and I never thought the same way again.

[Cliff Michell]

Hunter S Thompson – a personal memorial

Hunter really was the cat who broke journalism wide open. Before him - publishing what a journalist gave or didn’t give a shit about - in their own terms - would have been usually unprintable, unacceptable – or worse - repressed. His work helped break the power of the editor and the editor’s puppet-masters and opened a door that the politicians and other power-mongers have never really been able to shut since – despite the fact that very few journalists have the guts or the power in these lately less enlightened times to kick out the political jambs. But a true few do – in part thanks to Hunter’s legacy.

It’s my own speculation - but maybe without Hunter and Wolfe and a few other ground-breakers in the Washington press circa early sixties – there might never have been a Watergate. It’s purely personal supposition, but my bet is that the key journalists at the time (Woodward and Bernstein) would surely have been inspired by the example of the generation just prior to them. How could they not – these guys - and Hunter in particular – must have been their mentors – if not their stylists. In any case I’m absolutely certain that Hunter would have been proud and not a little envious of their work at the time. He just loved sticking it to injustice - especially Nixon.

There were others who could and did hold candles – Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese (among others - see Tom’s The New Journalism circa 1973) - Journalists who had enough chutzpah to call a spade anything up to and including a front-end loader when and as they saw it, even got down and lived some of it - but they were - to my mind - concerned about style as much as content.

Hunter had style – but it wasn’t about being avant-garde in any way I could discern. Yoko once said that if it was called avant-garde – it was already passé. She was right where Hunter was concerned. He was too serious about his work to give a fuck about how others saw him - or so it seemed to me.

This was the man who went where no journalist had been game to go before – inside the scene – inside himself – inside his own ego - in situ - in a way that laid it all open. There were American writers and poets – Kerouac - Ginsberg – (William) Burroughs to name just some of his early contemporaries - who had written their own equally candid truths about their own and political scenes - but they were writers - with nothing of Hunter’s immediacy - his journalism. Hunter put you there – in the passenger seat – right along with poor Ralph.

And as for actual journalism about drug use – before Hunter (at least between 1960 and 1970+) there was nobody credible. There were books - Timothy Leary – the guy who tried to somehow legitimise a drug into a semi religion – there were references – mainly from rock’n’rollers who were too sly or politically correct to do more than allude to that scene - all pussies as far as I was concerned. The whole turned-on world already knew that using stuff was whatever you wanted to make it. Hunter actually told you his truth. He got trashed and did whatever he did while he was trashed – but he never once – except to protect someone – told other than the facts as he saw it. At worst - maybe he pumped in some literary embellishment for the reader’s benefit– but so the fuck what.

Funny how now his work is so commonly read in universities now – at the time of publication most of his stuff was considered subversive - at least here in Australia. Some of it was banned briefly. But we got Rolling Stone – and his books got published here – in all states after Federal Labor (read Democrats if you happen to be American) managed to get up.

I was sixteen when I first read Hells Angels in 1967. He blew me away then and he kept doing just that all the way to the end. And I give him credit – he did then what he had always done – made his own judgement.

Good on you - you fearless groundbreaking bastard – and may there be many more who follow your footsteps - because you broke the ground for anyone with the fire to tell it like they see it.

My world will be a lesser place without you

Valé

Cliff Michell
1/05/2005
Australia
Mimusic53@curl.aunz.net

[J Erskine]

Juan Thompson and the Aspen Institute hosted a symposium on July 21, 2007 on the work of the late writer Hunter S. Thompson who created his own genre of writing with Gonzo Journalism and changed American political reporting forever with his book Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

Thirty-five years later journalists Carl Bernstein, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Loren Jenkins of NPR, John Nichols of The Nation and others came together in a symposium moderated by Professor Douglas Brinkley to discuss the effect of Hunter's work on political reporting and American politics.

The hour and half event is exclusively available at www.HunterThompsonFilms.com in nineteen clips of free, streaming video produced by Wayne Ewing.

Jennifer Erskine

Associate Producer