The Strange and Terrible Legacy of Hunter S. Thompson
(Editorial from the American Association of Independent Voters Website)
Long before the New Media emerged into prominence, there was the New Journalism, a modernistic writing style that flourished in the Sixties. Writers like Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, and George Plimpton were establishing a new trend that was blurring the lines between journalism and literary fiction. At the time, there was also Hunter S. Thompson, who created his own unique genre that was so far outside the margin lines that it spawned its own definition: gonzo journalism.
Now that Thompson is gone, the cultural fusspots have taken a moment to wag their disapproving fingers at a man who seemed to have little regard for conventional niceties. It’s also given a chance for the fashionable literati to bestow reverence on his sardonic disdain for the American establishment. But any way you try to characterize him, Doctor Gonzo left an unmistakable mark that was completely his own.
I must confess that I have a soft spot in my heart for the good doctor. And as you might guess, I am of that generation—those baby boomers who were most predisposed to draw some meaning out of Thompson’s acerbic prose. “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro,” were inspiring words for fearless non-conformists of the Sixties. It was a glimmer of hope that one could maintain some measure of bold and reckless individualism and not wind up chronically unemployable. As Thompson once observed, “The trick is getting paid for it.”
It’s mainly the baby-boomer generation who will remember Thompson. For many of us, he was a classic counter-culture archetype; an outlaw journalist who could blend rebellion and irreverence and render it into a savage portrait of our national character. Like his alter-ego Raoul Duke, he was “Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs” furiously plundering into the heart of the American dream.
Thompson may never get inducted into the hallowed hall of most memorable American writers, but the style he created is already firmly established in literary nomenclature. “Gonzo,” a word that became synonymous with Thompson’s work, can be found in both the Oxford English Dictionary, and Webster’s New World Dictionary. And if you happen to have a copy of Webster’s New World Dictionary of Media and Communications, you’ll find this entry under gonzo journalism: “reporting filled with bizarre or extremely subjective ideas or commentary; a term originated in the early 1970s by journalist Hunter Thompson…”
Self-indulgent, anarchic, and prone to excess in everything he did, Thompson spent a career and a lifetime destroying the boundaries between the safe confines of the status quo and the dangerous possibilities of unchecked revolt. Needless to say, respectable society was never Hunter S. Thompson’s domain, much less his concern. He was politically incorrect long before anyone knew that there was such a thing.
Although Thompson’s literary career spanned decades, his writings most worthy of note are relatively few. Hell’s Angels (1967) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) are examples of Hunter S. Thompson at his best. Both contain fascinating microcosms of the Sixties culture, full of insightful and hilarious perspectives of the generation that embraced him.
His shining moment may have been brief, but it was a moment that burned brightly while it lasted. Thompson’s early fame elevated him to a kind of rock-star status that transformed him into a pop-culture icon. But fame can be something hard to live up to, and Thompson gradually turned into a self-conscious caricature. His literary work began to take a back seat to his notorious lifestyle.
Thompson’s cutting edge style dulled over the years. Frankly, his work of the past two decades is mostly forgettable, consisting mainly of letters, memoirs, and essays, filled with mean spirited invectives and hostile rants. Long gone was that sharp and cynical wit he displayed in 1972 with his political chronicle-of-the-absurd, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Thompson aged most ungracefully. So it wasn’t much of a surprise to me when I learned that he had shot himself—a man profanely self-absorbed to the bitter end.
In spite of his uneven career and lifelong commitment to over-indulgence, I’ll always remember Hunter S. Thompson as one of the truly colorful figures from the Sixties. In that dubious era of phony psychedelic bohemians and inane pseudo-revolutionaries, Thompson was a genuine iconoclast who rose above the counter-culture flotsam.
Nowadays, you don’t hear the stories much, but a lot of boomers have them; strange and terrible Thompson-esque tales of depraved and irresponsible misadventures of a bygone age; untold sagas of drug induced escapades, outrageous public scenes, and unfortunate confrontations with the authorities. Not always as wild and out of control perhaps, but you might be surprised. For many of us, Thompson’s intemperate antics tread on pretty familiar ground.
I guess you had to have been there. Perhaps the real appeal of Thompson’s work is that it often reads like an inside joke for those of us who survived our own savage journeys. His fables allowed us to laugh at our youthfully naïve anti-establishment postures and ultimately showed us something about our own self-indulgent follies.