Gonzo Is Dead [Newly Updated]

From the final paragraph of  Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas:

"We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

The confluence tonight of two events seems to mark an historical transition. The Portland-like diluvia now bathing Los Angeles and the suicide of  Dr. Gonzo -- Hunter S. Thompson.  Just as we seem to be sliding into some new Age of Weather, the last standing legacy of the Sixties makes a surprise exit. Something on this planet is shifting-- and in the wrong direction.

I will be brief in eulogizing Hunter. I already wrote my definitive homage to him back in 1993 in a long piece titled "Fear and Lava in Las Vegas"  (sorry no digital link but it is  the anchor essay in Literary Las Vegas).  To call his suicide a surprise is, of course, a wild exaggeration. Hunter has been trying to kill himself for as long as he's been writing. It's a friggin' miracle he got to age 67. We know as of Sunday night he did himself in the way we would expect -- with a gun. We'll have to await a coroner's report to get the full print-out of what chemicals were coursing through his bloodstream.

I only met Hunter once face to face. And under circumstances I will keep to myself -- at least for the moment. But he was a huge influence on me and was, certainly, one of my last heroes.  A little bit of Hunter always seemed to be sitting on my shoulder every time I would go out to do some feature reporting. I don't think my talents measure up to 5% of what he had. But his pull on me was always just enough to tip me -- tip me toward kicking up my up-close writing another half-level.

Dr. Gonzo was a ferocious wit, and a brilliant and immensely entertaining writer. He was also a terrific reporter. His books on the Hell's Angels and La's Vegas were his big breakthroughs. Lesser known is the solid reporting career he had already racked up in the early 60S -- long before he became a counter-culture icon.

His insight into people and systems generated constant angst; the sort of pain he would blow off by blasting his guns, dropping some tabs and eating some screamers, or sweating out a marathon writing session (if not all three together).  The product  on paper was usually of stunning quality. How someone so visibly irrational could produce such literature and such steady reporting was -- by my limited imagination-- simply unfathomable. I've always wondered if this guy actually took notes. I asked him when I met him; but his answer took him off on a tanget that pin-balled between the relative quality of Brownings and the sweet oak after-taste of Wild Turkey.

Hearing of his death Sunday night as I hydroplaned down the Ventura Freeway, I tried to think of one writer/reporter under age 50 who comes even close to Hunter's legacy. Again no surprise: I drew a blank.
There isn't much room in our current world for journalists as out-sized as Hunter S. Thompson. They just
don't fit in anywhere anymore. I guess he came to the same conclusion.

A few choice HST quotes:   

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

• Source: Rolling Stone, June 1994

Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

       

Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Some relevant links:

http://www.gonzo.org/

http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/history/hsty3080/StudentWebSites/Nixon%20Obits/source9

http://www.wvu.edu/~journal2/west/docs/link_thompson.htm

http://www.ralphsteadman.com/

New Update: Some More Links:

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2005/02/an_appreciation.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009790.html#009790

http://www.davidcorn.com/2005/02/hunter_s_thomps.php.

http://aspendailynews.com/

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000809022

Comments

[Mork]

too many steves - the thing about HST that makes the quote you object to make sense is that he loved America as passionately and transparently as any writer has. When he railed against Nixon and the other assorted thugs and swine that crossed his path, the charge sheet always boiled down to a single high crime: offences against the American Dream. You might understand why a fellow who thinks that way took Abu Graib a little personally.

That, and he liked a little hyperbole.

[Jim Rockford]

Yes, HST loved America and the possibilities of the American Dream. He seemed a bitterly disapointed idealist in his biting critique of everyone from Nixon to Bush.

His high Highs and his low Lows emotionally seems to have formed the bedrock of his massive talents; yet caused so much personal pain. I'm sorry he wasn't happier with his life; I certainly enjoyed his writing. I miss him. I hope he's at peace.

[Peter K.]

I hated Nixon as much as anyone, and Thompson's quotes about him are classic, but it's funny how many clueless liberals like dailyKos are all reprinting his quotes on Bush but they aren't reprinting his quotes on Clinton. For instance :

"Bookpgsara: What do you think about Clinton? Where does he come in in the hieracrchy of bad presidents?

Hunter Thompson: Well, we still have a few years ago. Clinton already stands accused formally of worse things than Nixon would have been impeached for. I think Clinton is every bit as. . . he's not as crude as Nixon. But maybe he is. I mean: Paula Jones? "Come over here, little girl, I've got something for you" !? It's almost embarrassing to talk about Clinton as if he were important.

I'd almost prefer Nixon. I'd say Clinton is every bit as corrupt as Nixon, but a lot smoother."

http://fargonebooks.com/hunter.html

It is interesting that his Hell's Angel journalism was published in The Nation way back when.

Anway, as someone from a later generation (b. 1970) he was one of the 60s icons who really resonated with "free spirits" who came later. He was one of those people who didn't really give a f*ck, but did. And as Marc notes, Thompson knew when the 60s were over.

[Woody]

Peter K.--

Would you mind repeating that?

[Woody]

Forget my last post. When I made it, Peter K.'s same remark was displayed five times in a row. Now, it's not, so my comment makes no sense--unlike my other comments.

[rosedog]

Too Many Steves et al...

Don't sweat the small stuff. In the end, it was never about the content. HST's message was always really in the form. He was the trickster, the irritating, reckless god who shits in the punchbowl to get our attention. Once he had it, he said the same thing over and over. For me, it (partially) distills as follows:

The conspiracy of dunces is every bit as bad as you ever thought it was on your worst, most paranoid day, and both sides are in on it.

The truth is out there, but it's wearing a weird hat.

Safety gets you nowhere worth going.

Don’t let them take you alive.

[too many steves]

As may already be obvious, subtlety and nuance are not my strengths, I can't/don't employ them and most often miss them when offered to me.

Thanks rosedog, those ideals (in your last post) are ones I understand and agree with.

[reg]

Hey rosedog...you made it into The SF Chron today...check out Matier & Ross (2 local mediocrities anointed as columnists) at SFGate.com. They noted Jerry B's blog and state that one "celeste f" posted a comment offering to share some good herb with him. Of course, these doofuses mixed up your comment about the curfew with the one below it. Journos who can't decipher a blog. Uh, oh!

Funny...

[rosedog]

WTF???!!!

Okay. I just checked. Oh, great. Thanks for the...um... heads up, reg.

Good thing my mom lives in So Cal or the little 88-year-old mommie would've arrived at the Chron offices--walker and all---to have words with Messrs. Matier and Ross and, trust me, it wouldn't've been pretty.

(Rule for living: Never rile the grandma.)

[MD]

The story on NPR I'm listening to right now has some audio of Hunter S. Thompson talking about he could only have 'come up' in a place like America, how much he is a creature of this country.

rosedog - I like your anecdote about typing out prose from other writers so he could hear the poetry in the writing. It shows a certain humility, doesn't it?

[Randy Paul]

Great and heartfelt obit, Marc. Unfortunately, some can't resist a little dancing on the grave:

http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/05/0205/022105.html

[John Moore (Useful Fools)]

HST contributed a new approach to the practice of journalism/opinion writing. In a way, given the times, it was inevitable that someone would write with that style, but he was a master.

Others that come to mind as using some of his techniques in different ways include Lawrence Lipton (my onetime grandfather in law), Tom Wolfe (sometimes), Ken Kesey, and Harlan Ellison.

Marc, great obit. Sorry whenever such a create figure dies - even if he probably would as soon have spit on me and my ideas as anything else.

One observation - was he bipolar? Many creative people are, and the ups and downs comments may refer to that. Also, about 1 in 6 bipolars commit suicide, and self medicating with alcohol or other drugs is not unusual in that group (and I mean more than an occasional doobie or a glass of whiskey).

[Randy Paul]

The LA Times quotes a friend named Toby Hooper as saying that "Thompson had been in pain from back surgery and an artificial hip. And he had broken his leg on a recent trip to Hawaii."

Jeralyn Merritt has some memories of him worth reading, including a Thansgiving spent with Thompson:

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009790.html#009790

[rosedog]

John...re: "...he probably would as soon have spit on me and my ideas as anything else..."

Or not as the case may be.

Hunter S. was evidently good friends with Pat Buchanan. Here's an excerpt from a HST letter about Buchanan to writer Gary Wills:

"He's one of the few hit-men ... that I can really enjoy getting it on with. We disagree so violently on almost everything that it's a real pleasure to drink with him. If nothing else, he's absolutely honest in his lunacy ... I like the bastard."

[reg]

"Hunter S. was evidently good friends with Pat Buchanan."

Pat Buchanan is wrong about a ton of stuff, nails a couple of key issues and generally comes off as a good-natured, honest guy. Thompson could get on with him because even when Pat's at his kneejerk reactionary worst, he's not a weasel. When it came to weasels, HST got brutal. Here he is on his first impressions of GWB, who apparently showed up years ago, uninvited, at one of Thompson's SuperBowl parties:

"The first time I noticed George W Bush was when he passed out in my bathtub at the Hyatt Regency in Houston. He was with a guy who had come to sell—

"Look, I'm not going to put this next sentence on the record. Let's just say that 'a friend of mine' was buying cocaine. I have friends in Houston from all walks of life. Lawyers. Professional men. Bush was hanging around with this crowd of what you might call gilded coke dilettantes.

"I remember Bush as a kind of a butt-boy for the smart people. This was in the late 1970s, when he was in his drunken-fool period. He couldn't handle liquor. He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humour. He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn't pay much attention to him. But when he passed out in my bathtub, then I noticed him. I'd been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have him taken away.

"If George W Bush wins again, the United States faces utter disaster. If this president is re-elected, we are facing the total death of the American Dream as I know it, and I have spent a lot of time knowing it. I would tell them that if this gang of criminals get in once more, we will be in the position of a family who have sent the Hell's Angels written invitations to their Thanksgiving party.

"Such a decision represents a serious error of judgment. Because certain people never leave."

[Mark A. York]

He was the best of us.

[Mark York]

Hey Reg, where in hell did you pull those Bush quotes?

[reg]

Oh, and if anybody is operating on the assumption that HST's alarm at the crowd driving the Bush agenda is pure hyperbole, click this link and check out the insane gutter demagogy of the latest anti-AARP, pro-private accounts campaign. (Graphic ad on the right.)

http://www.spectator.org/

[reg]

Hey Reg, where in hell did you pull those Bush quotes?

It's from an interview with the British "Independent" last fall...
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/story.jsp?story=577323

[Green Dem]

Its so sad. And I was just thinking about him the other day - reverently - which is never a good sign.

I seem to be to the deaths of great iconoclastic Americans what small animals are to the arrival of imminent earthquakes, a kind of primitive barometer. Whenever I suddenly find myself thinking about one of them, and especially if I go out and buy something they've written or composed, they always seem to drop dead within a few days. I bought the collected poems of Ginsberg one day in 1997, went home and sat up that night reading it. The first thing I heard on WNYC the next morning was that he had died the night before. A similiar thing happened a few months later with Burroughs, although that one also involved large quantities of powdery substances, a possibly impregnated lesbian, a building that may or may not have been on fire, an AM jazz station that just may have been beamed in from another planet or at least Canada (its four in the morning and they interrupt the broadcast "to bring you a special news bulletin. William S Burroughs has died. We repeat. Williams S Burroughs has died. We now return to our regular broadcast") and a nice Korean lady warning against the "mary-ji-wanna."

But I digress.

For future reference, if I happen to mention that I have just collected everything you ever wrote Marc, I would suggest you stay indoors, avoid tall, unstable trees, and don't take up playing the electric guitar or blowdrying your hair in the bathtub.

[Matt Bell]

I'm young enough that this is my first death of a literary hero... R.I.P. Hunter. I think we still need you, but I guess we'll see what we're made of after all.

[John Moore (Useful Fools)]

rosedog,

I am hardly enamored of Buchanan. I believe his narcissism has overcome whatever judgement he had.

Previously, he had been a rock solid paleocon with a good education and good mind. But when he went to the extreme right, he left me behind. I have issues with our immigration policies, but Buchanan is a downright isolationist. He had to turn to his worst ideological enemies, the Communists, to put together his party after Perot (my former boss x 2 ) peed in the water and then left the pool.

BTW... Your book and Marc's Vegas book have arrived. I wish I had time to read them (No, actually, I don't. I'm having too good a time doing what I'm doing, so it would require getting sick to get enough time :-)

As to the "precursor quakes" idea - that's a perception that people tend to have when approaching their own midlife (or earlier or later) crises - their encounter with their own mortality. Elvis Presley's death did that to me (time #2 - first was almost dieing several times in the P-3 Orion).

[reg]

Tom Wolfe - whose dotage at least raises the question of whether suicide might be a more graceful way for a great writer to end his career than taking nearly a decade to write a bad book - weighs in at The Wall Street Journal:
(clip)
Hunter was something entirely new, something unique in our literary history. When I included an excerpt from "The Hell's Angels" in a 1973 anthology called "The New Journalism," he said he wasn't part of anybody's group. He wrote "gonzo." He was suigeneris. And that he was.

Yet he was also part of a century-old tradition in American letters, the tradition of Mark Twain, Artemus Ward and Petroleum V. Nasby, comic writers who mined the human comedy of a new chapter in the history of the West, namely, the American story, and wrote in a form that was part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention, and wilder rhetoric inspired by the bizarre exuberance of a young civilization. No one categorization covers this new form unless it is Hunter Thompson's own word, gonzo. If so, in the 19th century Mark Twain was king of all the gonzo-writers. In the 20th century it was Hunter Thompson, whom I would nominate as the century's greatest comic writer in the English language.

[Marc Cooper]

JM.. ur reading tastes distinguish you as a gentleman and a scholar!

[rosedog]

John M. What Marc said.

(BTW, I wasn't comparing you to Pat Buchanan. Only saying that Hunter S. got on with an interestingly checkered list of folks---including some with whom he violently disagreed. So you might've bonded around tornado chasing.)

reg, thanks for posting the Tom Wolfe clip---particularly the dead on observation that Mark Twain is HST's closest antecedent.