With my English research essay deadline looming nine hours ahead of me, I was desperately searching for some inspiration. I had selected the infamous Island Poet Milton Acorn as my subject for my autobiographical project. My research had been negligible, and I was desperately trying to compose an angle of attack. Jane, my ever ready research sidekick, had become exasperated and suggested strongly that I find something I was more comfortable with. I had just picked up the Hunter S Thompson memorial edition of Rolling Stone that same day, and it was packed with biographical goodness. Without further ado, I cleaned my bookshelves of all my HST, rolled two for the night and got smokin. The finished version was passed in at 9 am, after a sleepless night and many hours of reading, reflection and writing. This marathon session brought me much closer to understanding who Hunter S Thompson really was as a revolutionary writer, and a fully faceted human being.
On February 21st of this year, the renegade journalist Hunter S. Thompson ended his life, fulfilled. The universe, however, has always afforded extra life to those individuals who burned the brightest. Through Thompson’s insightful perspective on politics and the insidious side of human behaviour, his writings have an impact that few other authors can achieve. Thompson’s intelligence, charm and renegade style of journalism have influenced the way I view my world.
While covering the anti-war demonstrations in 1967, Thompson was clubbed and thrown through a window, where he lay and watched as the police brutally repelled the crowd (Gilmore 46). The intense political fervour and social experimentation that changed America during the late 1960’s and well into the 1970’s, provided much inspiration for Thompson’s writing. It was during this period that Thompson wrote an in-depth documentary on the Hells Angels - his research ending with a brutal stomping as he was discharged from the gang’s ranks. He soon thereafter moved to Denver, Colorado with his wife Sondi and young son Juan (Gilmore 46).
One of his most widely acknowledged works was "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", a self proclaimed, “savage journey to the heart of the American Dream,” published in 1971 by Rolling Stone magazine and later adapted into a major movie production. In this book the journey takes many shapes, and often the lines between reality and drug addled hallucinations are blurred indefinitely. No consensus regarding the American Dream was found, among these characters there is only disillusionment, and at times complete depravity. Thompson fills the reader with the energy that was the created from this social upheaval; he writes about the seemingly inevitable victory by the masses over the “forces of Old and Evil.” In a stirring metaphor he evokes the image of a beautiful wave of energy, rising upward in 1965 and sweeping over the American landscape. Then just as quickly receding, invisible by 1971 unless you looked and “…with the right kind of eyes you [could] almost see the high-water mark-- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back” (68).
It was during the 1972 Presidential race between McGovern and Nixon, that Thompson’s uncanny political insight was discovered. His experiences during this heated race while working in the McGovern camp were documented in his book "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" (Gilmore 47).
During this period Thompson was continually adapting his writing and reporting styles. Thompson had begun reporting from within the story itself and documenting his own revelations. It was a style he had developed while working with the now famous British illustrator Ralph Steadman. In 1970, Thompson had asked to cover the Kentucky Derby, and had received an offer from Scanlan’s magazine. Ralph Steadman, was eager to accept Thompson’s invitation to illustrate for this article. All Thompson managed to return from this adventure, however, was a mess of thoughts scribbled loosely on paper. The editors at Scanlan’s put the article "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" together from these manuscripts. Thompson’s unique brand of first person journalism was highly touted and nicknamed “Gonzo journalism” by one editor. It was with his evolving “Gonzo” style that Thompson found a unique and revealing voice (Gilmore 46). From reading Thompson’s work, I have gained the abilities to better live within the first person, to be aware of my environment, to always question and allowing my thoughts to digress and carry me to new springs of revelation.
Hunter S. Thompson was more than the mythic figure projected from movies and comic strips. It is important to read Thompson’s work to fully understand the type of human he was. Johnny Depp described him as “a Southern Gentleman, all chivalry and charm, hilarious and rascally little boy. A truth seeker. He was a hypersensitive medium who channelled the underlying currents of truth, concealed in veils of silken lies that we have become accustomed to swallowing” (49). Thompson’s greatest gift was said to be his ability to match-make, and network within his diverse group of friends. He felt no restraint in phoning Bill Murray at 3:33 am to discuss how best to launch the sport of shotgun golf (Thompson 1). He was deeply conflicted, and tormented on one end of his personality, and loving and tender on the other side of the spectrum. His first wife, Sondi Wright, described him as being, at times “extremely cruel.” She wrote that Thompson was tormented by this alter personality, and according to his family he had always had this monster. Indeed Thompson’s relationships were hardly one sided, he depended on the people around him, and he was lucky to have family and friends who truly supported and understood his needs (Wright 52).
The dark side of his personality showed up frequently in his writings, often in the form of self destruction and other violence. Thompson wrote this personal opinion in The Great Shark Hunt: “I have already lived and finished the life I planned to live – 13 years longer, in fact – and everything from now on will be A New Life, a different thing, a gig that ends tonight and starts tomorrow morning. So if I decide to leap for the Fountain when I finish this memo, I want to make one thing perfectly clear – I would love to make that leap, and if I don’t I will always consider it a mistake and a failed opportunity, one of the very few serious mistakes of my First Life that .. is now ending” (17). While reporting on Hemmingway’s suicide and the events leading up to it, Thompson spoke of an artist as someone who tries to bring order from the chaos. The problem, he pointed out, with trying to make static a world of chaos, is that eventually the vibrations will shake you completely off. He described Hemmingway in his final days as an old, sick and very troubled man. Who no longer cared for the illusion of peace and contentment and chose to end his life with a shotgun (Thompson 372-373).
Physically incapacitated by a multitude of ailments, and mentally depressed by his declining condition, Thompson also turned to the reality of suicide. Thompson had descended even deeper into his personal abyss with the re-election of George W Bush, a politician whom Thompson had publicly denounced. His sense of humour had always been a mainstay in his life, yet in his final days humour was replaced with incessant talk about his life goals and unfinished projects. Thompson was thorough in settling his affairs, ensuring that those he cared for would receive his prized possessions. Shortly thereafter, Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a polished .45 calibre revolver (Brinkley 42).
In a world of homogenization, Thompson was a revolutionary. He told the truth, and exposed the meaning beneath the political whitewash so that we could all understand more clearly the world we inhabit. I respect the courage that he displayed in his fight against the forces of Old and Evil. Hunter lived life by his own rules, and he died by his own will. Hunter S. Thompson’s influence continues to extend as his stories are made into new movies, and his ideas proliferated through new publications. I believe it was Thompson’s wish that one day he might help, in some way, the wave of human intention to once again hit that high water mark, and continue without receding… In time we see how ideas and individuals have shaped our society and I am certain that Hunter S. Thompson will continue to guide our awareness for many years to come.
References
Brinkley, Douglas. “Contentment Was Not Enough: The final Days At Owl Farm.”
Rolling Stone Mar. 2005:36-42.
Depp, Johnny. “A Pair of Deviant Bookends.” Rolling Stone Mar. 2005: 48-49.
Gilmore, Mikal. “ The Last Outlaw.” Rolling Stone Mar. 2005: 44-47.
Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Toronto: Random House, 1971.
---. “Shotgun Golf with Bill Murray.” ESPN Sports. Feb 15, 2005. Mar 28, 2005.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?id=1992213&num=2
---. The Great Shark Hunt. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992.
Wright, Sondi. “He was Full Spectrum.” Rolling Stone Mar. 2005: 52.
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