One of Thompson's early magazine pieces as a young freelance journalist was about the end of his major literary hero, Ernest Hemingway. In 1964 for The National Observer, he wrote, “ 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.”

Hunter S. Thompson

So, in the light of day, it only made tragic sense that HST would end his life the exact same way he modeled the rest of it, in Hemingway's image. Nonetheless, some will say and many already have, that "Gonzo Journalism" as the Thompson style was coined, powered by so much excess, was in no way even mentionable in the same sentence with the greatness of Hemingway. How wrong they are. Thompson not only defined his literary era of the New Journalists, he kicked down the balsa wood doors of gentleness and so-called objectivity that, for so long, only existed to protect a class that deserved neither. In the world of New Journalism, absence of opinion was akin to absence of the mind. The corrupt and thoroughly bad intentioned were not to be described with anything less than contempt, and in most cases with a tone of rage that strips the neurons raw and boils blood into hydrochloric acid. No one was immune to Thompson’s AK-47 masquerading as an IBM Selectric. It was Thompson who took the first person narrative New Journalism of Tom Wolfe and gunned it into the high velocity stratosphere of “Gonzo.”

Right Wingers, Left Wingers, and anyone in between would feel the bone-crushing rattle of his typewriter, but only if they crossed him. Dishonesty and a dried up smile were all that was required to offend his sensibilities. Bill Clinton, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush were all regular targets.

The characterizations of Thompson being an icon of "the left" are hard to reconcile with his life-long affection for guns. I had the chance to ask Michael Moore why he didn't include a segment with HST in his film "Bowling for Columbine." I thought that might've been an interesting exchange considering Moore and Thompson had radical views and matching NRA cards. Moore told me that he had actually thought of that idea himself but that he didn't know Hunter at the time of the filming and wasn't sure if it would've have been a safe idea to just show up at his Woody Creek house/fortified compound with a camera. My gut reaction to Moore ’s response was that he was a chicken-shit. After all, he certainly had the “balls” to interview an Alzheimer’s ridden Charlton Heston on camera.

To be fair, Moore went on to tell me that later he did in fact meet Thompson and went to his home to shoot guns and drink whiskey. To be even more fair, I have to admit that I chickened out of a similar idea.

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One summer, many years ago, my friends and I decided, over many rounds of Budweiser and Tequila shots, that it would be a great idea to rent a van and drive to the Woody Creek Tavern in Colorado . The plan was that we just go in there and order drinks, buy Thompson a Chivas, try to get a good conversation out of him, and tape it. After the meeting, I was then going to write my own “Gonzo”-style story about how we kidnapped Hunter S. Thompson and forced him to go back to Las Vegas one more time to relive the whole experience in the new role as captive tour guide. We all, including HST, would then be free to publish our own accounts of what did or didn’t happen, why not? In all honesty, the one thing I’m sure of is I would've have come up with was a beating, Hell's Angel's style, from the writer and his loyal compadres. I learned, a long time ago, that I was not cut out for that sort of thing. Very few really are. It's too bad that many will jump on the bandwagon of pious rants citing his tragic death as further evidence that the Sixties were nothing more than a pornographic fantasy and that we need more protection from ourselves, more forced kneeling before the God of someone else's choosing, more politically correct speech codes, more warning labels, more smoke-free bars, and more attempts at strangling our collective spirit in the name of social engineering and security. If you don’t believe me read Peter Bronson’s half-hearted attempt to admire the writer and despise the person, the kind of a typical baby-boomer, guilt ridden, do as I say not as I’ve done or continue to do load of shit. Hunter despised any and all outside attempts to restrain the individual from being an individual. That is what I loved about him.

His beat was the "Death of the American Dream" and chemicals, by his own admission, were the only way to cover that permanent assignment correctly. I do not fault him for this, nor do I wish he had found "the light." Instead I choose to view his death as follows: Hunter, like all of us, and contrary to the immortal moniker that had been hung around his neck, was condemned to die the day he was born. How he left us was his business. He bought the ticket and took the ride. He took the wave as far as it could go. Ours has not even begun to crest, and there is much more work to do.


Links
·  Aspen Times --- “ Hunter S. Thompson Dead”
·  Salon.com --- "The Duke of Hazard”
·  The Guardian --- “Tribute to Hunter S. Thompson ”
·  LA Times --- “'Gonzo' Journalist Remembered as 'Larger Than Life'”


Contact Information
· chrissc@queencityforum.com