Long Live the Good Doctor

I've spent the last twelve hours, with a sick toddler attached to my hip, digging through boxes in the basement, trying to find the research paper I wrote on Hunter S. Thompson in 1995 for an Advanced Magazine Editing course at Ohio University. But our demented system of sorting and filing and stacking and stowing shit in that nether region of this house leaves much to be desired.

Instead, I'm holding an essay on The Gina Kolata NY Times scandal (written long before we'd ever heard of Jayson Blair), an annotated bibliography on nonverbal communication, and a long, dry paper on the balanced scorecard method of integrated management. Useless, all of it. Boring, useless academic crap in this time of mourning that requires sharp insight, vivid memories and imaginative scratchings on bar-room napkins.

To make matters worse, all of my books are still stowed away in boxes too. Since we've yet to build book shelves, we still have dozens and dozens of boxes filled with books, stacked to the ceiling, and all of my favorite HST writings, which I'd like to revisit tonight, are buried somewhere deep, deep within the heap.

Damn you, Hunter S. Thompson for putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger at a time when I can't even find the pieces of you that I most admire. Why can't I just go to the book shelf and pull out dog-eared copies of my favorite HST books, along with a few unauthorized biographies and some personal papers that summarize the madness and vigor and unrest of your life and writings, your contribution to the craft of reporting, and your influence on my own twisted education?

Instead, I'm stuck here in my cold, wet basement, surrounded by tattered boxes and theoretical masters' theses on empty, pointless topics. It's all garbage that hardly seems worth saving at this point. Who's going to die next and leave me without the proper filing system to write a salient and proper send-off? Ken Kesey? Spalding Gray? The Brown Buffalo? Oh shit - they're all dead too and I've already lost my chance.

Here's what I have after a deep, mad dive into the basement of doom: only a pile of reviews written by my peers after I presented my theories on how to edit challenging writers for that J-school course -- with HST as my example. So I'll leave you with their comments, which summarize something, I think ... something about young, adventure-starved writerly types who dream of road trips to Vegas, bylines in Rolling Stone and Tetradactyls in flight:

Fear and Loathing has been on my reading list for years ... now I'm putting it at the top of my priority summer reading list. I like the concept of Gonzo journalism, blending fact and fiction to get to the heart of things. I think I need to do more drugs. - Lynn

I haven't read any HST STILL, even though he was first recommended to me when I was 13 or 14. But he continues to pervade my life and seems to be a very power-full, energy-full person. He's on my list of books to take with me to Europe now .. I've always feared reading him to tell the truth, because I've secretely been afraid that I'd find him too male and too drug-oriented. In any case, I guess it's finally time for me to get around to him. - Mary

The easy thing to do with a writer like Hunter Thompson is study his quirks, laugh or gasp a bit and be done with it. You, however, did something much more subtle, trying to understand why other professionals put up with him. What does he have that's worth the trouble? The answer is in the writing, and I think you gave us a flavor of his thinking and prose. But more than that, you gave us a deeper appreciation of what editing is. It's putting up with some real crap sometimes, and that's worth thinking about. Terrific presentation. It was funny, well-supported with examples and very subtle. - Professor Westfall.

I still think you should have gone up there and said, "In the strong tradition of HST, let's screw the presentation and go get some peoyte!" I wish we all could get away with what Hunter does. - Anonymous

An absolute extremist, Thompson approached his writing the same way he did his life -- driving himself straight into the storm of it with the windows down, the radio blaring and the accelerator glued to the floor. Thank God he took us all along for the ride.

p.s. Thanks to Gabe for the title of this post. I'll pay you back this weekend in peyote and mezcal.

p.p.s. In case it needs explaining, this post was written in true Gonzo spirit with an intentionally singular point of view and just a few liberties taken in the description of events.

Comments

[gabe]

very nice. he was a nut who could show more truth through fiction than most others could show through fact. the charm of the man is that he meant every bit of it, he was not a gimmick or a lunch box. now good god man, get out of your basement.

[Stan]

This passage from Fear&Loathing comes to mind and seems fitting:

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."

[Mich]

Another dead psychadelic cowboy poet. Who's left? Dylan, Robert Hunter? Kesey, Garcia, Cassady, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and now Thompson -- gone. Where do you think they are?

Somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of a carnival, swirling like desert dust? Maybe Thompson has finally been elected sheriff of Peyote County. Hopefully they have found themselves far away from the dark corners they must have discovered in this world.

"So much then, for The Road -- and for the last possibilities of running amok in Las Vegas & living to tell the tale. But maybe we won't really miss it. Maybe Law & Order is really the best way to go, after all. Yeah ... maybe so, and if that's the way it happens ... well, at least I'll know I was THERE, neck deep in the madness, before the deal went down, and I got so high and wild that I felt like a two-ton Manta Ray jumping all the way across the Bay of Bengal." -- Jacket Copy for Fear and Loathing

[jen]

never blame the tequila.

I read your Gonzo journalism ANSWERS and they make no sense to me. Guess that's why I not a journalist. Maybe we'll have a discussion someday . . .

Wonder if he was doing "his thing" when he pulled the trigger. Was HST a renounced druggie or did he still like to get his groove on?

Sometimes you think people are o.k. till you look back at some photos and really look at their eyes. Wonder how his eyes were looking lately?

Now I feel like watching the F&LILV again and reading his books. Life happens tooo fast. Maybe it's so we'll appreciate eternity.