Someone explain Hunter S. Thompson to me

I've always loved the Nixon obituary, it's a particular favorite of mine.

This is totally OTM.

He is also unabashedly and unmistakably American. Whatever that means.

Also: I'm with TH re: HST "speaking to me." I love the guy, and regret never having made it up to Woody Creek Tavern for a beer, even though I only lived 15 minutes away. Living in Aspen at the time of his suicide was a little weird, too; everyone in town seemed to have some sort of personal story to tell.

The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved

Possibly, though, I am just down on his, owing to this guy in my office opining this morning that he was "like a modern-day Jack Kerouac," which seems like bad taste and bad math both.

Too true. Most people forget that he served his time on airforce and local papers learning to write very straight copy and even wrote a fairly poor and rejected novel. Most people who try to ape him forget to learn how to write properly first before attempting to innovate or ape his innovation.

In some ways, his political philosophy fits the description of the "Libertarian Democrat" on DailyKos today:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/6/7/131550/7297

as did Lester Bangs...

I wouldn't say HST's bad habits sprang from political philosophy.

Like blaming Led Zeppelin for Warrant. Irrelevant.

Tombot is the most OTM so far, by far.

i think he typed out a whole novel by f. scott fitzgerald, and a whole novel by hemingway. i forget which ones. i also remember reading about him typing out whole pages of faulkner.

OTOH maybe he just like to get fucked up.

Has anyone else read this this oral biography yet? Unlike the collections of letters and his own published work, it has a range of interviews that really put his life into perspective as it was, not as he saw it.

I'd say it's worth reading for anyone who found his letters interesting, especially in light of the fact that many of the people interviewed are those that he wrote letters to, but didn't want that correspondence published. On the other hand, since it's chronological, the last few sections of the book really highlight how post-1980 Hunter was really grasping to keep his professional life together.

his widow is upset about the inaccuracies in the book

Oddly enough, that would fit right into the narrative flows of the interviews. You end up getting a picture of the assistant-to-girlfriend relationships that he went through from right before his divorce until his death, and how each time things would break apart with some pretty epic arguments. Even if there were some inaccuracies about his health or their relationship, it's pretty much what you'd expect her to say.

she says he is portrayed as losing his mind towards the end of his life and that just isn't the case.

there was an excerpt (or summary maybe) of that book in the rolling stone from a few months ago w/ HST on the cover. it seemed alright enough, if not kind of awfully lapdoggy in typical wenner fashionn.

Should a writer's politics (or perceived politics) influence your enjoyment of their writing style... I don't personally share all the views of Thompson, or someone like Hemingway, but it doesn't stop me reading, appreciating and enjoying their work.

Thompson, particularly, created a myth and then proceeded to attempt to live up to it, and it overshadowed his work to an extent. But people seem to forget that the whole "Gonzo" idea was about doing that. Could he have really have written some of the stuff about being out of his head while actually beingout of his head - or was his skill that of being able to make it seem like he could?
An iconoclast is bound to inspire inferior immitators - is this necessarily a reason to dislike the originator or depreciate the original work?

HST isnt my favorite writer but the rum diary is without a doubt my favorite novel of all time.

oh crap: theyre making a movie

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0376136/

oh crap?

bruce robinson is making it w. depp - high hopes?

Check out the Letters volumes ... great shit

this sort of thing always ends badly
xpost

but i'll still hope

I don't know why I think this, but I'm pretty sure very little -- if any -- of his writing was actually written while off his head.

It depends how you define "off his head." He was pretty much drunk and coked up for the last thirty years of his life.

He was a man who wore many hats. Those and the cigarette holder were a good look for him.

I agree with Tracer. I feel like he was able to let loose a lot of things within himself that seemed on the surface to be drug/alcohol fueled, that were just a natural part of his forceful, energetic and vitriolic writing style. I think that him being tied so inextricably with coke and booze actually detracts and diminishes how good a writer he was. Maybe he wanted it that way. Who knows. Anyway, I can't really give a good reason for saying any of this, it just feels true...you know?

forget hunter, I don't think there is any better beat album than Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels. If you disagree, tell me a better book.

*book

a part of Desolation Angels, Jack goes to a poetry reading and dips out for a drink after the first line:

"The duodenal abyss that brings me to the margin consuming my flesh"
and such, some line that I hear, and don't want to hear more, because in it I hear the craft of his carefully arranged thoughts and not the uncontrollable involuntary thoughts themselves, dig-- Altho myself in those days I wouldn't have the nerve to stand up there and read even the Diamond Sutra.

really, the liquidity of Jack's writing and probably Hunter's (I haven't read any of his work.. I don't know if you caught that by my prior post here) is one of the reasons I enjoy reading it so much.

HST came around the RS offices a couple times when I worked there in the 80s, and TBH he seemed wasted in a bad way, a burnt-out husk, a empty shell w/cigarette holder and sunglasses. I respect him more than I ever appreciated his writing, even as a hippie-worshipping 15 y.o. his shtick seemed like druggy bullshit to me.

sorry.

Ebert reviews the "Gonzo" documentary but ends up reviewing Thompson himself. Kind of a must read.

Haha the Nixon obituary thing:

The historians were strongly represented by the No. 2 speaker, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's secretary of state and himself a zealous revisionist with many axes to grind. He set the tone for the day with a maudlin and spectacularly self-serving portrait of Nixon as even more saintly than his mother and as a president of many godlike accomplishments--most of them put together in secret by Kissinger, who came to California as part of a huge publicity tour for his new book on diplomacy, genius, Stalin, H.P. Lovecraft and other great minds of our time, including himself and Richard Nixon.

LOL a friend of a friend put this up on the youtube. apparently he worked in the electronics store Thompson is calling in the clip. ending is priceless:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOhvSvKIhc

Check out the Letters volumes ... great shit
^Second this.

Had a discussion with a friend last week who just recently got around to the Las Vegas book after having read Hell's Angels and the F&L Campaign Trail book. He claims he probably wouldn't have continued on if he'd read LV first, since it's not really indicative of the more insightful levels HST could get to. I'm not so sure, but it can seem a little cartoony.

I think his Kentucky Derby story, the first time he tried the style and had Steadman along, always deserves praise. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas refines that style to a blurry point, and then he uses it to present smart commentary from there on out, with it being there as an excuse for bad behavior if he gets caught in the act of strong drink and violence.

he pulled the 12-gauge from his golf bag and fired over the geese

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a44784/accidental-life-terry-mcdonnell-excerpt/

i wish hunter thompson was still around to cover the trump campaign

― jason waterfalls (gbx), Friday, August 5, 2016

Oh, I think he'd also let HRC have it with both barrels too. (He hated Humphrey, and she's ours.) 1997:

MH: Clinton had a vision for a Great Society when he was elected. What do you think has happened since then?

HST: Well, the things that Clinton has been accused of are prima facie worse than what Nixon was run out of office for. Nixon was never even accused of things like Clinton is being accused of now. Bringing the Chinese into the political process, selling out to the Indonesians, selling the Lincoln bedroom at night, dropping his pants, trying to hustle little girls in Little Rock. God, what a degenerate town that is. Phew....

I would say that I am more into politics now than I was in '92. Yeah, I was mesmerized a little bit by the access [Clinton] offered me -- like total access. "Come on down," you know? "Go out drinkin' with Hillary." Yeah, they did a good job on me. But I was set on beating Bush. I thought we were going to beat Bush at the Iran-Contra hearings, and I worked overtime. He was guilty as fifteen hyenas, and he got off, and it really bothered me. So I would have been for anybody in '92, just to beat Bush. And that's a dangerous trap to fall into -- you know, the lesser of two evils.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/unbound/graffiti/hunter.htm

he was an innovater who ended up influencing a lot of terrible writing.

otm. no writer can justly be taxed for the flaws of their bad imitators. his prose style had some easily imitated tics which get imitated too much. more to the point, he reshapes himself as a fictional character in his own writing. trying to become the next HST by imitating that invented character is a profound misapprehension of his artifice.

even HST had a hard time living in his self-created legend. mark twain had a similar problem of inhabiting a created persona the public believed in and wanted him to fulfill, but in twain's case the persona was a bit less wearing.

for parallels, Lester Bangs, Led Zeppelin

HST on 9/12

http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?id=1250751

The Battle of the World Trade Center lasted about 99 minutes and cost 20,000 lives in two hours (according to unofficial estimates as of midnight Tuesday)

i didn't know that people thought the death toll was this high initially

Nobody knew, so they just totalled up how many people are typically in the WTC at that time of day and subtracted a few hundred

Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. ... This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why.

@dick_nixon
Knowing Dr. Thompson as I do, I have to believe he'd throw a chair through the window.

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/take-a-trip-to-the-70s-at-this-new-hunter-s-thompson-themed-bar-in-nyc-110117