The Writing Life: THE HUNTER IN US ALL

When the responses, within minutes, to my hastily assembled HST Obit ( a collage-obit in memory of Hunter by n. blei --long live the Gonzo journalism of fear and loathing in America ) began to invade the e-mail that day of his departure (2.21.05), that afternoon, night, and into the next two days, it was evident that the death of Hunter had struck a nerve in the rebel heart of America.

I read. I watched. I listened. I continue to think about it.

Somebody who meant something to this country, said something significant to many, had left the room--for good.. And his growing absence (to some) seemed more immediately profound, in a national, celebratory level, than the recent loss of Johnny Carson, Arthur Miller, or anyone else in the American culture. Including Ronald Regan. A minor portion of the major media outlets seemed to take note of this-without truly acknowledging it. On PBS’ Nightly Newshour, Hunter’s obit was almost an aside, seconds of a goodbye threesome (Hunter, Sandra Dee, John Raitt) on the same day. One wonders what Bill Moyer might have done.

But back to the triumph of good over evil in America. Or vice versa..

Just what the hell did Hunter do?

I looked into my old copy of FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS for some clues--the times, the gonzo journalist re-visited. The first thing that hit me visually-the cover. So hot you can hardly handle it. The burning desert. The scorched psyches. Those nightmare drawings by Ralph Steadman that come screaming at you right off the page. Was there ever a more perfect marriage of writer, artist…angst?

And who remembers that Hunter had dedicated the book, in part, to: “Bob Dylan for Mister Tambourine Man.” Hunter, Dylan, and the Tambourine Man. Now that’s interesting…

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me…

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees…
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow…
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Also interesting, the epigraph Hunter quotes just before his story begins:

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
-Dr. Johnson.

Dr. Johnson…meet Dr. Thompson. Or had Hunter not yet reached the level of self-doctoring…prescribing body and mind with the proper chemicals to achieve the hallucinatory balance he needed to survive?

There’s a musty smell to paperback. The pages are yellowed, speckled with age-spots. How many copies have I owned since its publication in 1972? Loaned? Lost? Given away? Where’s my hardback? When the hell did I first read it? How many times have I read it since then? Only twice? Again, right after the film came out?

In the 208 total pages of the old paperback, I’m surprised to discover I underlined only one passage, near the very beginning of his story:

“The only way to prepare for a trip like this, I felt, was to dress up like human peacocks and get crazy, then screech off across the desert and cover the story. Never lose sight of the primary responsibility.
“But what was the story? Nobody had bothered to say. So we would have to drum it up on our own. Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism.”

“But what was the story?”

My touchstone, perhaps, to the new journalism of the times. Which I had entered, almost anonymously in the Sixties--without fear and loathing. But with wonder, desire, the need to see and know and tell the story through both the “eye” and the “I”.
"You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it." --Hunter
I never realized till now that I was taking notes from Hunter…”we would have to drum it up on our own.” Mailer, of course, I knew was out there, doing back-flips and headstands in first person (I-Norman) narrative prose. (See, ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF). Tom Wolfe and Talese too. First-person journalism was the new name of the game, the way of the word. And it fit me perfectly, from fiction (where I was already cutting my teeth on the sanctity of the autobiographical) to nonfiction, where I realized the potential of merging first with third. Hunter was writing the story before we grasped the truth of the telling..
"Gonzo journalism is a style of "reporting" based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism…” -Hunter
So there was that: another anonymous writer’s debt owed. And then he bids goodbye (to his wife, to us all) over the phone. With a BANG!
Son of a bitch!
Mailer (an old rebel heart) signed in early: “He had more to say about what was wrong with America than George W. Bush can ever tell us about what is right,"he said upon hearing of Thompson's suicide.
I put the Hunter word out quickly, in cyber-gonzo space, to friends and correspondents, to remind them what we, as writers, as a country had lost.
Many of the grieving responses that quickly bounced back to me had something to do with variations on that ancient imponderable theme: “WHY?” Why did he kill himself?” Of course it didn’t make any sense. Artists were never put on this planet to make sense. Remember: we’re talking Hunter Thompson here. Give Gonzo a break.
Anonymous excerpts from some of the messages received:

“Doesn't it seem that sad news, when it is not unexpected, is all the sadder?
I worry for all the creative souls I know . . .The delete key, the eraser - just too damned nearby.”

“An inspiration to all of us. May he rest in peace. Leave me your notes so I can write: Blei: Fear and Loathing from Womb to Tomb. TNX for the memories.”

“And then there’s one of my favorites: “I’ve never met Gary Trudeau personally, but if I ever do, I’m going to set him on fire.”
“You figure he's braved Nixon, Reagan, disco, Vietnam, Jerry Falwell and 9/11 and finally succumbed to his darker temptations. If this isn't the final proof that Dubya has three sixes tattooed just under the hairline, then I don't know what is.
RIP. One of the giants.”

“Back at UWSP, "we" had arranged for Thompson to speak, along with someone else, but...he didn't show up! The other guy did and who the hell was it?”

“What a beautiful piece....the world has lost a great imagination, it is very sad and I loved HST's works...my only thought: How can someone who live in the beautiful mountains of Colorado kill himself? The scenery alone should be enough to sustain ones will to live.”

“Hard to believe that the Hunter is dead. I remember reading Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and thinking what a correct picture it was of my own life, many others' lives at that time, although none of us was in Las Vegas. Then, when I finally got to Las Vegas, I was even more impressed. What a lot of serious security there was at the casinos-people who did not joke about anything, dressed in dark suits rather than uniforms, arched their thick pony necks and adjusted themselves a lot while they murmured and watched. I am a bit surprised that he didn't manage to make someone else finally angry enough to shoot him-but then they might have botched the job, at the mercy of some vague thought, and that would have been even more horrific.”

“With all his addictions, you don't think he was a tortured soul? You don't
think he wanted to free himself of alcoholism shackles? His name and his works
-- isn't he more than that? I know that lots of artists view their work/contributions as the true meaning to life…
Don't you want to beat the death out of Thompson? Who can know what demons he was facing and if I were facing the same ones would I have handled it any differently? “

“Ah…That was a good one, on Hunter Thompson - he joins the others
here in the ghostly streets of SF, I think - London, Hammet, Norris,
Bierce, Stevenson, Kerouac. I hope the city sees its way to giving him a
street, as they have some of the above.”

“I saw a short article in the paper quoting David Brinkley that they
are going to do their best to shoot Thompson's ashes from a
cannon--along with a fireworks display etc a big send off. Appropriate.”

fini

All romanticism aside, I am one with that small band of believers who do not look upon that parting shot, that last goodbye of Hunter’s, as an act of cowardice, regardless of who or how many are left holding the heavy bag of ‘Why?’

You will hear the cry “foul” from the critics, the confused, a chorus of concerned Christians. But nobody will ever know the state of the mind of the man behind the gun…savage? surreal? serene?

As a sometimes writing teacher who spends at least one session grounding student writers with a favorite Hemingway story, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” I’ve been challenged, more than once, for defending his code of courage, his honoring death, rather than calling his act of suicide cowardly.

Hunter saw it this way too, in a piece he wrote back in 1964: “What Lured Hemingway to Ketchum?”:

“He was an old, sick and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him…So finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun.”

Just what did Hunter do? I ask myself again. What raw, American nerve did he touch both in his writing and his final act?

I suspect his legacy to us all was simply this: honor the outlaw in your soul. Or you’re already dead.

I’ll leave the final words to his friend and artist I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. Of all the things I’ve read since Hunter’s death, Steadman’s tribute seems most honest and bright.
“Since it happened my feet haven't touched the ground. It's like I can still speak to Hunter beyond the grave. Like he is saying, 'Don't fuck up on this one, Ralph! Tell it like you knew it, but don't bad mouth me!! You always knew I was going to do it, so it wasn't 'if' but 'when'. It was my call, Ralph and now you will have to deal with the flood. Après moi, Ralph- the deluge!! Did you think it was going to be an easy ride? You knew what you were doing when you bought a ticket. You were there most of the time, but towards the end you couldn't handle the heat, but you made the Role of Honor by the skin of your teeth. So long Ralph, and thanks for the laughs. And remember- The Crazy Never Die! Look after Anita'.

”So there we are. I always knew that one day Hunter would make that journey, but I did not know yesterday that it would be today. He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell- rest assured he will check out the both, find out which one Richard Milhaus Nixon went to- and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too- and Peacocks. I thank everyone who has sent condolences, but spare a long thought for his wife Anita, who has had to balance their lives on a knife edge these last few years to keep them sane. She is a lovely lady. Bless her heart....
Ralph Steadman,
February 22, 2005
+++

*
Coop Dispatch, Monday, February 21, 2005:
Hunter S. Thompson Dies at 67 of Self-Inflicted Wound(s):

“THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN DREAM - HUNTER & Other Fictitious Truths”

Hunter S. Thompson, whose life and writing, vivid and quirky reflections of each other, made him one of the principal symbols of the American
counterculture, shot and killed himself yesterday at his home near Aspen.

“America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.” --Hunter

Thompson, 67, was celebrated as a practitioner of an outraged form of
personal journalism, offering off-beat ideas and observations in a style
that was wildly and vividly his own and that brought him cult-like status
and widespread recognition.

“Call on God, but row away from the rocks.” -Hunter
His books on politics and society were regarded as groundbreaking among journalists and other students of current affairs in their irreverence and often angry insights.

Among those for which he was famed are "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail." He rode for almost a year with the Hell's Angels motorcycle outfit for research on another book. In all he wrote at least a dozen.

Jonathan Yardley, writing last year in The Washington Post, called him "a genuinely unique figure in American journalism," citing his comic writing and social criticism.

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.” -Hunter

Thompson, often seen wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap and with a
cigarette dangling from his lips, showed up frequently as Uncle Duke in
"Doonesbury," the Garry Trudeau comic strip.

Part of what created his image of outlaw independence and defiance of norms
and conventions was his claim to intimate familiarity with a variety of
drugs and mind altering chemicals.

“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.” --Hunter

Pitkin County, Colo., Sheriff Bob Braudis said in a brief telephone
interview that Thompson was alone in his kitchen of his Woody Creek home
when he shot himself with a handgun. His wife was at a gym, Braudis said.

The sheriff said Thompson had seemed "still on top of his game."

“The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.”--Hunter

But Braudis's wife, Louisa Davidson, said "he was not going to age
gracefully, he was going to go out with a bang. He was tormented."

“A word to the wise is infuriating.”-Hunter
The
Thompson was known for a style that he described as "gonzo journalism," a
form of "new journalism." It was based on the idea that fidelity to fact did
not always blaze the way to truth.

Instead, "gonzo journalism" and its practitioners suggested that a deeper
truth could be found in the ambiguous zones between fact and fiction.

"Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has
been allowed to be so corrupt for so long," Thompson told interviewers in a
characteristic pronouncement on both institutions.

"You can't be objective about Nixon," he said. "How can you be objective
about Clinton?"

“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”-Hunter

Among the writers and works he cited as major influences were most of the
classic American authors, including Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, many or
most read early in life. He also named the Biblical book of Revelation.

“No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.”-Hunter

He was born in Louisville, and after a wild youth entered the Air Force,
according to one account, as part of a parole agreement.

His writing career is traced to the 1950s, when he contributed to a base
newspaper while in the Air Force.

He later wrote unpublished fiction, reported for the mainstream media from
Latin America, and made his name with his Hell's Angels article in Harper's
magazine.

His star rose while he worked for Rolling Stone magazine, where the "Fear
and Loathing" books first appeared.

His beat, he once said was "the death of the American dream." Interviewers
later suggested to him that he in a way embodied that dream. They said he
exploded in profanity, but conceded that perhaps he did.

“The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” -Hunter

(Sources: Martin Weil and Allan Lengel, The Washington Post; Hunter Thompson’s works;
Quotation Reference Books; the Internet-at-large…)