Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist, 1939-2005

I'm unhappy and disappointed.

Hunter was a lion.

I discovered Hunter S. Thompson when I was 19 years old and had picked up a worn dog-earred paperback of Fear and loathing in Las Vegas.

I remember being taken immediately by the dark, hilarious lunacy that challenges you to take the running start to jump the bullet train and join in the ride:

"We were somewhere around Barstow at the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feeling a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...." And suddenly there was a horrible roar all around us and the sky was filled with 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 all these goddamn animals?"

Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer and his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. "What the hell are you yelling about?" he muttered, starring 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.

These two paragraphs open a book that I've read five or six times and have given to at least a dozen friends as a gift over the years. It's a remarkable piece of literature that is alive. You may open it to any page, and it's immediately dark and fun.

Last spring I saw 3 or 4 of the first typed pages of the book at an exhibit at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland... the freaky thing about it was that there was maybe two copy edits... it was all first draft. That's impossible, and that's genius.

side note: I write every entry in this blog first draft, and maybe edit myself as I go. When I occasionally look back at old entrys, I usually see a lot of shit that I would've edited out or written in a different way... or could have written better. regardless, my point being that to get it all down 100% correct the first time is an inhuman act of achievement.

I think that the renegade spirit of HST's writing was a real positive and negative influence on me at that age, and well into (and possibly throughout) my 20's.

I'd always enjoyed writing, and had decided in college that I wanted to write for a living. I didn't want to be one of those fuck-o's you see with a laptop (and probably a h-mo black turtle neck and scarf) recording their never ending novel over a chi tea and clove cigarettes at Starbucks.

I regarded, and continue to regard, this sort as "hacks." Writing takes talent and balls, and to get paid for this (as in writing is your only job), you have to have a good measure of both.

Anybody who walks around telling people "I'm a writer" more often than not writes the most long-winded uninteresting psuedo intellectual shit you could ever waste your time reading. If you're a writer, shut the fuck up and write. And make it interesting. And if you can't do that, fucking give it up and accept the fact that you're an accountant,.. or a soccer mom,.. or that you work at Hardees.

HST had mad talent and huge balls, and served as a rebel hero to my young idealist aspirations. To stroke my own shit, I went the professional route and got myself involved in, and in a position to be, an advertising copywriter, and am now working my sixth year without having to pick up work on the side.

HST's works inspired me to believe that anything that I created during my daily inner-arguments was possible on paper. You can fucking say anything you want on paper, and these ideas can have true effect and meaning on the reader. It's fucking fun... and occasionally it's powerful.

The bravado persona, the chemical abusing machoism, the aggressive paranoid intellectualism was another aspect that crept in... the fuck em all attitude that seemed like such a natural fit during my piss and vinegar youth. In hindsight, it was age appropriate and super fuckin fun.

I've felt a kinship with anyone (of any age) that I found to be a HST fan. We all seem to be the same kind of people with same sense of humor (because HST is fucking funny), and we all shared a deep enthusiasm and interest in the scenerios, ideas and morals of HST's work. If you're a fan, you're not a casual fan. And beyond all that, HST ideas and creations are quite simply fun.

I haven't really got a point to make, and this isn't much of a memorial to one of my heroes, so I'm going to cut this short. Hunter Thompson was a patriot, an American original, and a writer of such strikingly honest and creative work that his body of work could not be mimicked. My sister forwarded me a section of the New York Times dedicated to Thompson that I recommend.

Fortunately Hunter Thompson leaves a cannon of work that would take even the casual fan several years to cut through. And it's time well spent.

Goodbye Hunter, I'm sorry that you left us.