MONDAY,
FEBRUARY 21, 2005, stands as the second consecutive Black Monday
of the month. Hunter S. Thompson took his own life with a shotgun in his
fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado. There
is an eerie resemblance to the passing of another great American writer,
Ernest Hemingway. I’ve often been dissuaded from a life of writing because
of the epilogue written by too many talented writers. Hemingway, Kerouac
(to a lesser extent) and now HST all faced their demons and wrote an abrupt
final chapter on their well-documented lives.
These men were writers in every sense of the word. There are many who write, but will never be writers. HST possessed an innate skill for the narrative, a rare talent visible even in early letters from his teenage years. His words flowed together like music. Kerouac developed a melodic spontaneous prose, but HST paralleled Hemingway with powerful, succinct sentences.
  HST
wrote about life as we know it or the life we would love to know. He didn’t
write fluffy pastoral pieces about unrequited love, but rather jumped on
a Vincent Black Shadow to research outlaw motorcycle gangs, talked college
football with Richard Nixon to chronicle the campaign trail and found it
all to appropriate to betray the confidences of Rolling Stone Magazine to
create the real story behind the Mint 400, "The richest off-road race
for motorcycles and dune- buggies in the history of organized sport!".
Thompson abandoned journalistic ethics and conventions in developing gonzo journalism, which put him unwittingly at the forefront of the piece he was developing. He will hopefully be remembered and regarded as one of the great 20th century American writers for his ability to uncover the savage and sublime intricacies of politics, sports and life as we know it in America. He lived his life with an insatiable vitality that led most of us to believe he’d outlive us all, despite the long nights and the panoply of stimulants he experienced his entire life. What makes him so successful is his ability to transfer this vigor into his writing. He was a prolific writer and a tireless journalist by nature --> in the sense that he did not choose to become a writer, writing chose him.
So why did he have to commit suicide? Did he simply want to go out on his terms? Several emails I received included "This doesn’t surprise me! " in the concise message. Is this the curse of the great American writer? Is every journalist and novelist an unpredictable social alcoholic, besieged with trouble with women and compelled inextricably towards a cataclysmic denouement? Is this why we are no longer surprised when a writer of Thompson’s caliber quietly and decisively takes his own life?
"If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism." - HST |
Through Thompson's exploration of the darker side of the world that every American lives in, he illustrated the diminution and corruption of American idealism. In Las Vegas, a popular weekend vacation spot for the rich and poor from all over the United States, he abused all the rules the city lived by - "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help. The only chance now, I felt, was the possibility that we'd gone to such excess that nobody in the position to bring the hammer down on us could possibility believe it." This is all performed under the clever guise of researching a sporting event, but ultimately consigned to the impossible task of divining the American Dream. This is a dream far removed from that of the idealism of this county’s colonists and founding fathers, one that elevated him to the status of an outlaw social scientist. In his closing words in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he writes, " We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force – is tending the light at the end of the tunnel."
Thompson was a man among writers. Like Hemingway, he loved his guns and loved to hunt. His thirst for the drink and predilection towards mind-altering substances was well known in the literary community – and beyond – but the ironic truth is that HST was more in command, more insightful and more capable both clean and sober in Big Sur, at a Labor Day rally with the Hell’s Angels or on Day 3 with Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, than any other writer of his generation. Thompson, like London, lived a life in full and documented it brilliantly through his semi-autobiographical fiction style employed by Hemingway and Kerouac. HST possessed an instinctive ability to assimilate into – and often help create – these fantastic vignettes illuminating the depths and depravity of the American Dream.
His death brings to a sad close a legacy of gonzo journalism. Perhaps his style will survive, but undoubtedly without the panache and savoire-faire that Thompson exhibited outside and inside his broad range or writing. His work will surely stand as an inspiration for readers and writers for generations to come. This should not be limited to college students in Los Angeles looking for an alternative experience in Vegas, but a new school of fearless, unintimidatable writers. To borrow a line from a letter he wrote to a friend in his early 20’s, "A toast, to the Good Life, wherever it is, and to whoever may have it.".
When the going gets strange,
the strange turn pro...
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