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| As a young man |
Hunter S. Thompson inspires me. Every time I read his work it fills me with energy I didn’t know I had. But I feel that there are a few things that people often misconstrue about him and his work. This isn’t necessarily anyone’s fault in particular, but when you have a writer who puts himself as the main character there are bound to be a few errors.
During his life, Hunter often remarked that whenever he was going to give a speech to a class or any group, he thought whether they wanted to hear him speak, or his alter-ego Raoul Duke. Sometimes Mr. Thompson concerned himself about this, about how much space should be between the observer and the actual event. Should the observer be responsible for the said event?
These questions plagued him from his childhood until his death. Even as a young recruit in the army, he was summarized as: “This airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy.” Some might find it strange that he even served in the army in the first place, since his anti-conformist streak would’ve set off numerous red flags. Keep in mind this is before his creation of his true literary child, gonzo journalism.
In fact, when I type ‘gonzo’, I don’t see anything indicating that I had misspelled it in any way, shape or form. By spell checking acknowledging it as an actual word, it shows how far Thompson’s original intent has gotten.
Originally he created gonzo journalism when he realized that he couldn’t see anything at the Kentucky Derby. Rather than ruing this misfortunate that the cruel hand of fate shoved towards him, he shook that hand. For several days he and his illustrator Ralph Steadman got debauched and wrote about getting debauched.
What most know about Hunter S. Thompson comes from his famous book “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. If you read the book, you got the clear picture of someone coming to terms with the end of the hippie era. Sadly, the movie about this book ruined most of what made the book so special. Instead, the film focused exclusively on him abusing all sorts of drugs seeking something that never got explicitly mentioned. By editing out the thought behind it, the movie shows Hunter as an empty husk of a man in desperate need of mind-altering substances.
Hunter S. Thompson wrote so well not because he did drugs on a fairly frequent basis, but because he was an actually accomplished writer. Gavin McInnes, someone who I normally avoid discussing, phrased it best: writing while on drugs makes you a terrible writer and editor in general. Those who think that simply producing content (writing, typing, etc.) while not in the right mind will produce excellent content are dead wrong. Writers known for their various habits and addictions (like Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs) suggest that you should write about what you know. Mind altering substances don’t automatically do that for you, it requires actual practice, re-writes, and so on. So there’s one misconception of Hunter removed.
Another one that I hear so much about was how difficult he could be. This isn’t true. In his stories he over-exaggerates things to make them more engaging for the reader. Watching interviews with him, you get the distinct impression that he actually thought before he spoke. Compare his disdain for Nixon or George W. Bush with the absolute cruel vitriol that Keith Olbermann has for the same people. No contest, Thompson definitely used a little thing called restraint when dealing with people he didn’t see eye to eye with.
Examples of each abound even within his writing. Writing in “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72” he writes that how despite Nixon being a disgusting excuse of a human being, he knew a lot about football. So he’s willing to actually grant his ideological enemies some leeway. Writing about Bush, he wishes the “child” President some luck in finding the 9/11 attackers in a blog post. It’s interesting to note how in that same blog post, he mentions how the US will almost immediately think of attacking places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, which now comes across as particularly wise of him. So not only is he soft on someone he considers much worse than his hated Nixon, but even hopes the best for him.
Thompson belonged to a bizarre fringe of pure freedom believers. Intensely against all forms of government control (if he ever made it to Sheriff, he promised to renamed Aspen “Fat City” and remove all roads, leaving only grassy knolls. He almost won), gun-loving, and pure privacy, something now lost on us. His generation wondered what happened to all that energy released in the late 60s and where those people had gone, what they had become, and what they were going to be. Most people remained content with what they had around them and felt confined by their limitations. Even in his death Thompson remained true to his belief that only you could define how you live.
Perhaps sometime soon we might be fortunate enough to have another writer of his sheer verve and vigor bestowed upon us mere mortals.