Hunter S. Thompson Dead, Suicide

[embalmer42]

Originally posted by Agathon
Terrible.

Does anyone know if he was sick. He wasn't the kind of man to go quietly if that was the case.

His Nixon obituary was the best obituary ever written.

He will be missed.

Apparently he had a broken leg and had recently undergone hip surgery from which he was in a lot of pain. As for other problems he might have been suffering from, who knows?

[-Jrabbit]

Both overrated and unfairly maligned as a writer, he was an intrepid trailblazer took no quarter and asked none. He revolutionized participatory journalism with his drug-fueled rants, organized into stream-of-consciousness impressionism that left no doubt as to the point he was making.

Hunter S. Thompson made a huge impact on those of us who read him as the long-time political(and sports) editor of the early (cool) years of Rolling Stone Magazine, then followed him faithfully through his books. There is huge irony to the fact that this misanthropic observations on the political scene fueled the anti-(Vietnam)-war movement and rise of the investigative journalism, while coming from a man who was personally about as fiercely conservative (though I would suggest "classically libertarian" as more accurate) as they come. His novel about his experiences in pre-Castro Cuba (the name now escapes me) offers an insight into the man, and a preview of his future path. Most recently, he wrote for the Page 2 section of ESPN.com.

For those who (sadly) are unaware of this larger-than-life figue, think of Hunter S. Thompson as an id without a lid -- a man constantly chafing at the restrictions of reality throughout his adult life, expressing himself through the written word. He was brilliant, profound, honest, and damaged. Not unlike a lot of us, but without a leash.

Hunter Thompson is one of the few men that I honestly regret never having met. I long to have spent an evening with him.

The world is a lesser place without him. May his always-restless soul, finally, rest in peace.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
Both overrated and unfairly maligned as a writer, he was an intrepid trailblazer took no quarter and asked none. He revolutionized participatory journalism with his drug-fueled rants, organized into stream-of-consciousness impressionism that left no doubt as to the point he was making.

Hunter S. Thompson made a huge impact on those of us who read him as the long-time political(and sports) editor of the early (cool) years of Rolling Stone Magazine, then followed him faithfully through his books. There is huge irony to the fact that this misanthropic observations on the political scene fueled the anti-(Vietnam)-war movement and rise of the investigative journalism, while coming from a man who was personally about as fiercely conservative (though I would suggest "classically libertarian" as more accurate) as they come. His novel about his experiences in pre-Castro Cuba (the name now escapes me) offers an insight into the man, and a preview of his future path. Most recently, he wrote for the Page 2 section of ESPN.com.

For those who (sadly) are unaware of this larger-than-life figue, think of Hunter S. Thompson as an id without a lid -- a man constantly chafing at the restrictions of reality throughout his adult life, expressing himself through the written word. He was brilliant, profound, honest, and damaged. Not unlike a lot of us, but without a leash.

Hunter Thompson is one of the few men that I honestly regret never having met. I long to have spent an evening with him.

The world is a lesser place without him. May his always-restless soul, finally, rest in peace.

Well written!

[-Jrabbit]

Thx...

[Ramo]

Dunno if I'd call him a libertarian capitalist (classical libertarianism would be libertarian socialism), though. He's strong on certain personal freedoms that are considered right-wing due to the weirdness of American politics (i.e. gun control), but for instance, when running for Sheriff, his platform included banning cars in downtown Aspen.

[-Jrabbit]

I was thinking in terms of his early years. After he settled into his bunker in Aspen, things got pretty idiosyncratic by all indications. but your point is a good one.

[embalmer42]

So he (supposedly) wants to be cremated and have his ashes shot out of a cannon. Somehow that doesn't surprise me.

Here's hoping he gets his wish.

[Dis]

I want my ashes spread over Jenifer Aniston, I just don't think that's going to happen though.

[Agathon]

-JRabbit - that was excellent.

[Pekka]

JRabbit, good read

Anyway, I'm pretty familiar with this character too, though I must admit I only took interest in him when I saw Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas right when it came here, as I was in this freaky mode of liking these drug movies. It gets better every time I see it. SO, I then saw the BBC documentary about him made in the 70s and OMG! He was the exact image of Johnny Depp's character, well, I mean Depp was able to do a great imitation. And he was such an interesting person, I mean how can you not look at it and wonder 'wow', but it's not negative or positive, it's just 'wow' .. you distance yourself from reality and what you see as normal and not normal, because you can't think of him with those terms... he was just a rare man, a man of his own, definitely interesting, inspiring and with a ... curious mind.

Well, ANyway, to my point, has anyone read Hell's Angels he wrote? I want to read it so I was thinking what you guys think of it..

[Traianvs]

Damn..

but hey, could it have ended in any other way? A person like him I can't imagine dying of old age.. you know

[Pekka]

Trajanus, right.. hey it's a wonder he lived that long to begin with... I guess he was one of those God's on prototypes.. too *something* to live, too rare to die, quoting his own words.

I keep imagining him just doing it, saying somethin original like Mmmmmm **** it, let's do it and BANG without giving it that much more thought to it. Well there must have been reasons behind it but the end must of been quick and.. original.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by embalmer42
So he (supposedly) wants to be cremated and have his ashes shot out of a cannon.

At whom?

[embalmer42]

Originally posted by Pekka
JWell, ANyway, to my point, has anyone read Hell's Angels he wrote? I want to read it so I was thinking what you guys think of it..

I thought it was interesting although I would rate "The Great Shark Hunt" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" as better books. However, reading it would be time well wasted IMO (even if you read it while you're wasted).

[The Mad Monk]

A less-than-glowing obit:

The Suicide of Counter-Culture
By Stephen Schwartz
Weekly Standard | February 23, 2005

The suicide of Hunter S. Thompson, aged 65, according to the New York Times, or 67, according to the Washington Post, at his home in Aspen, may definitively mark the conclusion of the chaotic "baby-boomer" rebellion that began in the 1950s and crested in the 1960s, and which was dignified with the title of "the counter-culture."

"Counter" it was, as an expression of defiance toward everything normal and reliable in society. "Culture" it was not, any more than Thompson's incoherent scribblings constituted, as they were so often indulgently described, a form of journalism.

When a major representative of any dramatic period in history dies, it is tempting to proclaim the end of an epoch, but the lonely death of Thompson--he shot himself in his kitchen--seems more emblematic than any other associated with the '60s. The incident might even have been accidental, brought on by one of Thompson's self-storied flings into the ingestion of garbage drugs. Who knows?

But Louisa Davidson, wife of the sheriff of Pitkin County, the jurisdiction wherein the death occurred, probably had it right: "he was not going to age gracefully. He was going to go out with a bang. He was tormented."

Whatever the actual circumstances, it is difficult to imagine a still-living personage, or even one who preceded him into eternal silence and collective forgetfulness, more representative of his time. William S. Burroughs, the prosewriter once hailed for allegedly reinventing the American novel, died at 83 in 1997. Allen Ginsberg, the versifier who had supposedly changed American poetry forever, expired the same year at 70. Ken Kesey, another overrated writer, joined them in 2001. The comedian Lenny Bruce and the author Jack Kerouac left the scene long, long before, in the '60s themselves. Who is left? No one but minor figures.

Thompson had much in common with Burroughs and Ginsberg. First, their products were mainly noise. Their books were reissued but now sit inertly on bookstore shelves, incapable of inspiring younger readers, or even nostalgic baby boomers, to purchase them. Thompson claimed credit for the invention of "gonzo journalism," epitomized by his great success, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, published in 1972. He will inevitably be hailed by newswriters as the creator of a genre. But if his work is taught to the young, it is as an exemplar of the madness of the '60s, not as literature or journalism. Aside from his own later works, including such trivia, bearing his signature, as The Great Shark Hunt, Generation of Swine, and Songs of the Doomed, of what did "gonzo" journalism consist? Thompson left no authorial legacy.

It has long been argued that lasting literature is an impossibility without imitation and emulation, and that although young authors often produce works ridiculously imitative of their idols, real writers grow out of such mimesis to gain recognition for their own, individual abilities. But who can imagine a youthful talent beginning with an exercise in the gonzo style? Thompson produced no others like him, for the same reason Burroughs and Ginsberg generated no schools of novel-writing or verse. One may go further and say they had nothing to teach the young, except to emit a cacophony.

Indeed, it would be one thing to say that Thompson and the others like him, such as Burroughs and Ginsberg, are dated. Even embarrassingly old-fashioned artistic works, bereft of immediacy for those who are not part of the environment from which they emerged, have the capacity for revival. But Thompson produced a clamor without content. Doubtlessly, the most pathetic aspect of the '60s phenomenon was the absolute conviction of Thompson and those who encouraged him that "living in the moment" really did count more than anything else in the world, that history never existed and that the future was their property.

His enablers included lefty journalist Warren Hinckle III, who first published Thompson's experiments in incoherent "reportage" in a forgotten magazine called Scanlan's, and pop huckster Jann S. Wenner, the grand ayatollah of Rolling Stone, a tabloid which began as a pop music paper, then tried to make itself over as a serious journal, and is now read by . . . who? For some commentators, the greatest compliment paid to Thompson was the incorporation of a dishonest, heartless figure modeled on him, and named Uncle Duke (after Raoul Duke, the narrator of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) into Doonesbury. But that strip is generally known for its tone of dishonesty and heartlessness, and, like the writings of Thompson, seems extremely dated, increasingly unread, and finally irrelevant in its mean-spiritedness.

Thompson, as I can say from personal witness, was not flattered by the Doonesbury valentine. "I don't steal from his stuff, do I?" Thompson grunted in a bar one afternoon in San Francisco. For him, imitation, or caricature, was the least sincere form of flattery, and in his bilious reaction there might have resided a microscopic element of self-awareness. He may well have understood that the drugs, gunfire, motorcycle mishaps, public rantings, and widespread adulation in which he was immersed were evanescent, and that his books were too thin to keep his memory alive for very long.

One must imagine that in his own middle '60s Hunter Thompson looked into the mirror and saw that nobody needed a gonzo interpretation of the world after September 11, that nobody was amused by his capacity to survive fatal doses of sinister concoctions, and that, increasingly, nobody knew or cared who he was.

He was flattered to be described as chronicler of "the death of the American dream." In reality, he described a nightmare from which America awoke years ago.
Stephen Schwartz, an author and journalist, is author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror. A vociferous critic of Wahhabism, Schwartz is a frequent contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications.

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