Fear and Loathing
Hunter S. Thompson is dead.
A sad day in the Headosphere. HST was an icon of mine. He was an American Original.
At the end he was still writing. He had a regular column on ESPN's website where he would rant and rave on everything from football to politics to blasting things in his front yard. Oh, and a lot on gambling.
It's especially interesting to go reread some of his Nixon-era writings now. So many parallels between present day and then. With a divisive overseas war and a corrupt thug in the White House, it would be great to have HST at full speed now. Unfortunately, while he is credited with spawning "a whole new style of journalism", he basically spawned a bunch of cheap imitators. Nobody does it like he did.
R.I.P.
posted by The Head @ 10:40 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Those fuckers were all in chaos when Jerry Garcia died, but really, they should all be mourning this. HST embodied pure, raw living, and took with him the best elements of the 1960s which no one else, in opinion, has ever successfully done. Its a sad, sad day and the worst thing about it is that we dont know what drove him to his end. If he lost hope, how can we possibly find any?
I thought I felt a disturbance in the force...
Perhaps Hunter produced so many cheap imitators because he was, himself, cheap. The dead-end product of a dead-end culture (60s America) all snarling delirium and idiotic egotism, he was merely H.L. Mencken without the subtlety. You say he represents the best of the 60s, but he actually represents the worst -- the bubbling hate and self-centered obnoxiousness, the paranoia and self-parody. I'm not one to mourn when famous people die, even ones I admired, but I'm especially dyspeptic when I know a death will lead to greatly undeserved hosannas.
I find Mencken about as subtle as I find you Joshua. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Maybe Hunter's "cheapness" help him truly dive in and find the American Dream.
The point I was trying to make is that there's a shitload of imitators now trying to do the HST thing and they all suck.
And my point is, none of them are any worse than HST himself.
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