39 Comments

1. mcg:

OK, this is why I like reading your site. That you and I would have such different life histories—yours, with all due respect intended, a bit longer than mine—and yet we come to agreement on so many political issues… well, I don’t know what it demosntrates. But it’s why I enjoy your blog.

Feb 21, 2005 - 10:06 am 2. Kyda Sylvester:

I wouldn’t recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

Hunter S. Thompson

Another great story, Roger (do you know everyone?). PJ O’Rourke had a very funny piece in The Atlantic a fews years back about when Rolling Stone sent him, Thompson and 2 other journalists down to Arkansas in 1992 to answer the question “Is Bill Clinton Cool?”. (So far the only link I can find is at Atlantic’s subscribers only site.) The Thompson of 1992 sounded a whole lot like the Thompson of 1972. I’ll say this for him, he sure didn’t suffer fools, gladly or otherwise. RIP

Feb 21, 2005 - 10:20 am 3. Knucklehead:

I won’t claim to remember much from those days, but I do remember laughing a great deal while reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I don’t believe I ever laughed as much while reading a book until I read Lucky Jim by Kingsely Amis (to this day the funniest book I’ve ever read). I revisited Lucky Jim some years later and still found it enormously humorous. I don’t believe Fear and Loathing would have stood up to a second reading, but I admit I never gave it the chance.

Feb 21, 2005 - 10:23 am 4. lindenen:

Kyda Sylvester, I found that article via google. Man, Clinton’s a dork.

“And then he turned to Hunter Thompson, of all people, and said with wholehearted fervor, “We’re going to put one hundred thousand new police officers on the street.”

I was up all night persuading Hunter that this was not a personal threat. Well, with Hunter one is going to be up all night anyway. But that was not a cool thing to say to the good Doctor, or a hip thing. Churchill was cooler than that. FDR was hipper. And if they had made this mistake, they would have noticed, and would have bowled for the spare. Churchill would have bought drinks until dawn. FDR would have swapped cigarette holders and let Hunter play with his wheelchair. Clinton went home to the governor’s mansion, probably to check polling data.”

I’ve never even met Hunter Thompson, but even I know how he’d respond to a remark like that.

Feb 21, 2005 - 10:33 am 5. Knucklehead:

Lindenen,

Thanks for the PJ link. He’s an entertaining sumanavitch.

Feb 21, 2005 - 10:48 am 6. Byron00:

I don’t remember laughing harder at any book than “Fear and Loathing”. I’ll never forget the beginning, with Thompson and his giant Samoan lawyer both higher than kites, the trunk filled with drugs, booze, sheets of blotter acid, somewhere on the highway near Barstow. Thompson decides to let the lawyer take over the wheel because the car is being attacked by giant bats. The lawyer doesn’t see any bats, but Thompson merely notes that “he’d be seeing them soon enough.” Didn’t we all…

Feb 21, 2005 - 10:59 am 7. Mark Poling:

Tim Blair has a really good take on The Doctor:

http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/hunter_s_thompson/

Feb 21, 2005 - 11:00 am 8. Patrick Tyson:

There are significant differences in the story as I remember hearing it (in the next topic) but there is no doubt that Clinton hadn’t been elected President when the interview took place and that I didn’t read about it in Thompson’s book (or article) or in O’Rourke’s account written at the end of the Clinton presidency so…everything I “remember” is suspect.

That being written, I would like to spell “devastated” correctly and I would like think that I would have been devastated had what I described below actually occurred.

For the record, I last used recreational drugs in 1984. I quit because I was becoming more and more paranoid while high and that took all the fun out of it. Some months later I had a panic attack. Eventually the panic attacks became routine. After a long period of trying to ride it out and/or cure myself, I admitted defeat and got professional help (but no drugs.) Nonetheless, I’m an outspoken opponent of the “War on Drugs.”

RIP, Hunter. Thanks, Roger.

Feb 21, 2005 - 11:16 am 9. LouMinatti:

Roger,

Despite the fact that my politics evolved over the years, I have never quit being a fan of HST’s early books. Hell’s Angels and F&LILV are to this day two of my favorite books. Unfortunately, HST hit his prime in 1971 and for the past 20 years he was a rather pathetic caricature of something from F&LILV.

Comments about my (im)personal experience with him:

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

I’ve never understood why the Left worships Thompson, when he suffered the worst case of GunLust I have ever seen.

Feb 21, 2005 - 12:08 pm 10. Wallace:

It is always a mystery to me, why someone decides to end his own life. However after delving into melancholy with thoughts of my own mortality after recent serious surgery, I start to have a clue. Life nearer the dull end than the exciting beginning can bring upon us some morose thoughts. I hope Hunter rests in peace ……..

Feb 21, 2005 - 12:10 pm 11. Mark Poling:

HST’s heaven:

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nightsóor very early morningsówhen I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherderís jacket … booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end … but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was … You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning …

I hope he finds it.

Feb 21, 2005 - 12:27 pm 12. Laurence Simon:

How did HST feel about “Wild Turkey?” Did his opinions of your characterization of him change over time?

Feb 21, 2005 - 12:54 pm 13. Terrye:

Maybe he just did not want to grow old.

None of us do, but I think maybe Hunter Thompson just decided it was time to go.

Feb 21, 2005 - 12:59 pm 14. Kyda Sylvester:

Thanks, lindenen–just the passage I was going for. Can’t you just picture Thompson freaking out over Clinton’s 100,000 cops.

Feb 21, 2005 - 1:12 pm 15. chuck:

but I think maybe Hunter Thompson just decided it was time to go.

Perhaps he had cancer or some such, but my guess is that he was a very unhappy man. Nobody who can get satisfaction out of life is going to live the life Thompson did, always reaching for that elusive bit of excitement. Long ago I noticed how many gurus of happiness were miserable folks making a living at publishing rationalizations and quack cures — Erich Fromm comes to mind. At least Thompson lived his life without preaching.

Feb 21, 2005 - 1:28 pm 16. Charlie (Colorado):

Chuck, I have to admit that my first thought on hearing about Thompson was “well, hell, he’s been suicidal for 40 years….”

Feb 21, 2005 - 2:38 pm 17. Jay Stranahan:

What rotten news. What a rotten way to start off the morning… like getting slapped in the face with a cold wet towel. One of the great surviving wordsmiths of our age bites the big one, by his own hand no less…

…and, yes, it put me at once in the mind of the obit he wrote for Ernest Hemingway (goes and fumbles around, returns with dog-eared copy of The Great Shark Hunt, clears throat):

“From such a vantage point a man tends to feel it is not so difficult, after all, to see the world clear and as a whole. Like many another writer, Hemingway did his best work when he felt he was standing on something solid — like an Idaho mountainside, or a sense of conviction.

“Perhaps he found what he came here for, but the odds are huge that he didn’t. He was an old, sick, and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him — not even when his friends came up from Cuba and played bullfight with him in the Tram. So finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun.”

– National Observer, May 25th, 1964

Res Ipsa Loquitur.

Feb 21, 2005 - 3:16 pm 18. Vexorg:

About the only exposure I’ve had to Hunter S. Thompson stuff was the stuff he wrote on ESPN Page 2, most of which reads like standard bitter lefty tripe more commonly found in your local alternative weekly. Am I missing something here?

Feb 21, 2005 - 4:52 pm 19. triticale:

I tried reading F&LILV, got as far as the notion that the cops don’t respect you if you don’t run from them, and gave up on it and him. This despite the fact that this was before I discovered the deeply hidden secret that getting straight was the key to enjoying getting high.

Feb 21, 2005 - 5:17 pm 20. Mork:

I wonder what Dr. Thompson would think of what Roger Simon has become today ….

“Let’s face it, the yo-yo president of the U.S.A. knows nothing. He is a dunce. He does what he is told to do, says what he is told to say, poses the way he is told to pose. He is a fool.

No. Nonsense. The president cannot be a Fool. Not at this moment in time, when the last living vestiges of the American Dream are on the line. This is not the time to have a bogus rich kid in charge of the White House.

Which is, after all, our house. That is our headquarters, it is where the heart of America lives. So if the president lies and acts giddy about other people’s lives, if he wantonly and stupidly endorses mass murder by definition, a loud and meaningless animal with no functional intelligence and no balls.

To say this goofy child president is looking more and more like Richard Nixon in the summer of 1974 would be a flagrant insult to Nixon.

Whoops! Did I say that? Is it even vaguely possible that some New Age Republican whore-beast of a false president could actually make Richard Nixon look like a Liberal?

The capacity of these vicious assholes we elected to be in charge of our lives for four years to commit terminal damage to our lives and our souls and our loved ones is far beyond Nixon’s. Shit! Nixon was the creator of many of the once-proud historical landmarks that these dumb bastards are savagely destroying now: the Clean Air Act of 1970; Campaign Finance Reform; the endangered species act; a Real-Politik dialogue with China; and on and on.

The prevailing quality of life in America-by any accepted methods of measuring-was inarguably freer and more politically open under Nixon than it is today in this evil year of our Lord 2002.

The Boss was a certified monster who deserved to be impeached and banished. He was a truthless creature of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, a foul human monument to corruption and depravity on a scale that dwarfs any other public official in American history. But Nixon was at least smart enough to understand why so many honorable patriotic U.S. citizens despised him. He was a Liar. The truth was not in him.

Nixon believed, as he said many times, that if the president of the United States does it, it can’t be illegal. But Nixon never understood the much higher and meaner truth of Bob Dylan’s warning that “To live outside the law you must be honest.”

The difference between an outlaw and a war criminal is the difference between a pedophile and a Pederast: The pedophile is a person who thinks about sexual behavior with children, and the Pederast does these things. He lays hands on innocent children, he penetrates them and changes their lives forever.

Being the object of a pedophile’s warped affections is a Routine feature of growing up in America, and being a victim of a Pederast’s crazed “love” is part of dying. Innocence is no longer an option. Once penetrated, the child becomes a Queer in his own mind, and that is not much different than murder.

Richard Nixon crossed the line when he began murdering foreigners in the name of “family values”- and George Bush crossed it when he sneaked into office and began killing brown skinned children in the name of Jesus and the American people.

When Muhammad Ali declined to be drafted and forced to kill “gooks” in Vietnam he said, “I ain’t got nothin’ against them Viet Cong. No Cong ever called me Nigger.”

I agreed with him, according to my own personal ethics and values. He was right.

If we all had a dash of Muhammad Ali’s eloquent courage, this country and the world would be a better place today because of it. Okay. That’s it for now. Read it and weep….See you tomorrow, folks. You haven’t heard the last of me. I am the one who speaks for the spirit of freedom and decency in you. Shit. Somebody has to do it.

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world-a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us… No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you.

Well, shit on that dumbness. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn’t vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today- and we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever.

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill “gooks”. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are racists and hate mongers among us-they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.”

Indeed.

Feb 21, 2005 - 5:25 pm 21. PeterUK:

Mork my little antipodean cut and paster,Roger L.Simon has talent, a lovely family and the guts to stay alive.

There is a myth from the sixties that somehow getting old is a failure,in fact it is the opposite, for we poor mortals it is,despite its frailties and failings,a glorious triumph.

The shooting stars that flash across the firmament build neither cathedral nor great city,they observe,comment and burn out in a flash of withering criticism,but that my friend is not what the human race is about.

Feb 21, 2005 - 6:36 pm 22. Eric Deamer:

Tim Blair has a really good take on The Doctor

I much prefer Gerard van der Leun’s

The whole thing is quite good, but I particularly liked the ending:

Yesterday, it would seem, he left in the same way that he lived — gun-crazy, thoughtless, self-obsessed and selfish to the last second. A gunshot suicide at home, leaving his wife and son to discover and deal with his ruined corpse and clean up the room. What a man.

Feb 21, 2005 - 7:04 pm 23. richard mcenroe:

I read Hunter Thompson at the perfect time in my 20’s. I devoured Hell’s Agence, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72…they showed me the kinds of things that were possible with language.

But…

I would read his stuff later over the years. When the subject of the story was something else, as in the Hemingway piece above, the fire and the language was there. But too often, when the subject of the story was really Thompson, still peddling his New Journalism riff, the one thought that occured to me, again and again, was I’ve heard this before.

Thompson was very much of his time, and like so much of my generation, he never grew out of it. Perhaps he never suffered fools gladly, but who, really, did he celebrate? In the end, he was all about the rush of the journey and ran his tank dry before he could name a destination.

Feb 21, 2005 - 7:27 pm 24. Macker:

…no, when he took himself out he named his destination.

HELL.

Feb 21, 2005 - 7:43 pm 25. Brian:

Vexorg: Am I missing something here?

Yup.

Someone today said judging Thompson by his ESPN stuff is like Judging the Stones by Steel Wheels.

For one thing he had a genius for vituperation:

HUMPHREY: “A treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler…He looks like he died in 1959 and has been frozen ever since.”

MUSKIE: “He talked like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow money on next year’s crop.”

NIXON: “If there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark.”

CLINTON: “Bill Clinton would have played the Jew’s harp stark naked on 60 Minutes if he thought it would help him get elected.”

BUSH: “Four more years of George Bush is like four more years of syphilus.”

And who can forget the immortal opening lines of F&LILVegas:

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.

If none of that does it for you then pass on by.

Did you know his favorite writer was Henry Fielding?

Feb 21, 2005 - 7:47 pm 26. Eric Deamer:

I certainly didn’t know him personally and I’m not of the right generation. To me he was little more than an inspiration of lots of bad writing and bad behavior.

Feb 21, 2005 - 8:20 pm 27. Mork:

To me he was little more than an inspiration of lots of bad writing and bad behavior.

As ugly a burden as it is to bear, Eric, I think you need to take responsibilty for all your bad writing yourself, rather than trying to blame it on the departed Doctor.

And if HST were the inspiration for your (claimed) bad behavior, well, wouldn’t you be a little more interesting?

Feb 21, 2005 - 8:58 pm 28. chuck:

Richard:

In the end, he was all about the rush of the journey and ran his tank dry before he could name a destination.

In the end, I think he was bored.

Mork:

Interesting is not a attribute I think you understand.

Feb 21, 2005 - 9:03 pm 29. Pat Curley:

Great and very funny writer, but in the end, he was most like George Carlin, old and bitter.

One thing I did like about him was his refusal to romanticize the youth culture of the late 1960s-early 1970s. I remember him griping about the Revolutionary Drug Brothers handshakes which were common at the time.

Feb 21, 2005 - 9:26 pm 30. Mork:

Interesting is not a attribute I think you understand.

Is that a sentence?

Feb 21, 2005 - 9:50 pm 31. richard mcenroe:

Mark ó Yes, it is.

Chuck ó Maybe Mark would be happier if you worked your bad writing up in stages… you know, start by blaming it on Stan Lee, then Harlan Ellison, then Bret Easton Ellis and then Thompson…

Feb 21, 2005 - 10:33 pm 32. Keith_Indy:

I think the only suprising thing about HSTs suicide is that it hadn’t happened sooner.

HST seemed to be a man stuck in time, and not trying to find a relevant place in todays world.

Old and bitter, indeed.

Feb 22, 2005 - 5:59 am 33. Stacy's Mom:

The man had more effect on modern journalism than he knew. Two quotes from an “appreciation” in the local rag today:

“…showed no pretense of objectivity in his work.”

“Anybody with any intelligence could read it and know it was made up. What he did was in the service of a greater truth”

Feb 22, 2005 - 7:31 am 34. richard mcenroe:

This from the Boston Globe. If true, what a contemptible man.

Feb 22, 2005 - 7:35 am 35. Kyda Sylvester:

At the very least, a contemptible act. Tom Wolfe has his Thompson reminiscence in todays WSJ. Perhaps he staged his death as another “event”.

Feb 22, 2005 - 11:17 am 36. maryatexitzero:

I admire Charles Lindbergh?s talents as a pilot, although his political beliefs were grotesque. Lindbergh inspired a generation.

I admire Hunter Thomson?s skills as a writer while still disagreeing with his politics. He also inspired a generation. That?s something.

Feb 22, 2005 - 11:30 am 37. wangateur:

I will miss him … BIG HUG for Juan, Jen, Willam and AnitaÖ who will never be able to fill the hole left in there lives by the man in spite of the myth and legend attached to his life..

I am a long time friend of Juan we went to the Aspen Community School together I have been using the blogs to try to send a message of love to him and the family but I know he is totally swamped because of the media attention at Owl farm and I need to let him know that we care for Him, Anita and the whole family in this time of tragedy while respecting his privacy

Let’s see if we can get the word out …

He was first THE MANÖ.

He became the myth and legend

To me he was several people.

He was my best friendís dad although he always called his dad Hunter

(At Juanís wedding he said to a friend about me ìLook thereís another little bastard I raised that turned out OKî)

He was Hunter S. Thompson retiring shy southerner who loved guns and his freedom

And

He was the Dr. Gonzo who we all know who would be in your face and try to kill you if you attempted to try to take away his guns, drugs, freedom, privacy and the god given right to go into an explosive tirade about it.

To be such a person required him to have a unique emotional support structure. These people now need our support, love and understanding in this time of grief.

Bradley Laboe

Feb 22, 2005 - 3:33 pm 38. wangateur:

I will miss him … BIG HUG for Juan, Jen, Willam and AnitaÖ who will never be able to fill the hole left in there lives by the man in spite of the myth and legend attached to his life..

I am a long time friend of Juan we went to the Aspen Community School together I have been using the blogs to try to send a message of love to him and the family but I know he is totally swamped because of the media attention at Owl farm and I need to let him know that we care for Him, Anita and the whole family in this time of tragedy while respecting his privacy

Let’s see if we can get the word out …

He was first THE MANÖ.

He became the myth and legend

To me he was several people.

He was my best friendís dad although he always called his dad Hunter

(At Juanís wedding he said to a friend about me ìLook thereís another little bastard I raised that turned out OKî)

He was Hunter S. Thompson retiring shy southerner who loved guns and his freedom

And

He was the Dr. Gonzo who we all know who would be in your face and try to kill you if you attempted to try to take away his guns, drugs, freedom, privacy and the god given right to go into an explosive tirade about it.

To be such a person required him to have a unique emotional support structure. These people now need our support, love and understanding in this time of grief.

Bradley Laboe

Feb 22, 2005 - 3:35 pm 39. Ray:

Growing up is hard to do.

He went from being a hero of mine to a burned out jerk.

I think he found the shotgun trigger with his toe as a final frustration over his mistakes on Iraq and the fall of liberalism. He may have hoped that some may mistake him for Hemingway.

Growing up is hard to do.

Feb 22, 2005 - 7:37 pm

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