Like most of the thinking world, we were shocked and saddened by the news of Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide Sunday at his home in Colorado. Theories abound — maybe he was ill and didn’t want to fade away gracefully like his fri/files/storyimages/Warren Zevon. Maybe the ascendancy of G.W. Bush and Co. is just too damned depressing. Maybe the mind-altering chemicals finally caused a meltdown.
In a way none of that matters. Nor does the revisionist nitpicking that’s gone on for the last 15 or 20 years. The man was a giant. He did it his way. He invented a style. He left a mark. And he came from Louisville.
 Hunter Thompson was in typical form during an event to honor him in Louisville in December 1996. (photo courtesy of Ron Whitehead) |
Nickole Brown was Thompson’s editorial assistant in 1997, helping put together a (thus far unpublished) collection called “Polo Is My Life,” and assist with production of the film “Fear & Loathing” and with writer Douglas Brinkley’s collection of Thompson’s letters.
Ron Whitehead knew Thompson and hung out with him on many occasions, while Paul McDonald admired him from a safer distance; Paul Kopasz revered Thompson’s original, fearless style, while c d kaplan felt that way but also felt sadness about missed opportunities.
It will be years before anyone nails the last word on Hunter S. Thompson. For now, then, we just say, “So long, you crazy fucker.”
Hunger, sheer will
by Nickole Brown
Once, after working 52 hours straight, Hunter sent me out into the early morning fog to meet an elk eye to eye. The creature was unflinching, and with the antler span of a Cadillac, could have split me with a single charge. I would have run back into the cabin if not for pure, unadulterated exhaustion, the kind that comes from a lunatic obsession with work, the kind that makes you feel like you’re breathing static electricity and assures you that nothing could hurt you. That’s the energy Hunter ran on for 67 years. Fearlessness wasn’t the guardrail that kept his car from flying off the mountain bends of Woody Creek as we drove through them at 90 miles per hour; involuntary musculature wasn’t what kept him alive, despite whatever he put into his system. It was hunger, sheer will, determination that almost foams at the mouth. Go ahead. Read “The Art of War” and it will tell you. Because it wasn’t just luck that never seemed to run out on him, even when he didn’t want it anymore.
by Ron Whitehead
After a visit here in 1996 where he was awarded the key to the city), Hunter said he wasn’t going to come back to Louisville again. He had a love-hate relationship with Louisville, and said he didn’t want to come back again. He loved Louisville, but he felt like people here continued to treat him like they did when he was a young juvenile delinquent and didn’t respect his work because of his lifestyle.
As far as I’m concerned, Hunter is one of America’s and the world’s greatest journalists, a groundbreaking journalist. But a growing number of people are recognizing that Hunter is one of our greatest literary figures. And anybody who looks deeper into his work beyond the outrageous stories, the drugs and alcohol, will see a masterfully written text. Hunter, in my eyes, stands shoulder to shoulder with Mark Twain. And in time, he will be recognized as one of America’s and one of the world’s greatest writers. He is a visionary writer.
Some people have a more sensitive nature, and Hunter was a complex person. On the one hand, he was a Southern gentleman. He was such a well-mannered, big-hearted, sensitive person, that I think — and yes, he was the madman, the creative genius, and I saw him switch back and forth many times — he had to do the drugs and alcohol just to numb himself enough, his sensitive nature enough, to stay in this world as long as he did. He absorbed all the pain and suffering that he saw in the world into him.
A near miss
by Paul McDonald
It was December 1996 at Louisville Memorial Auditorium when I encountered Hunter S. Thompson. The event was a tribute to the good doctor, and Thompson was screaming, swilling whisky from a glass jar and blasting anyone within close range with a fire extinguisher. He wandered over in my direction and instead of shooting, handed it to me, saying, “Go on! Do it! It’s fun!” I was nervous and discharged a couple of lame bursts in no particular direction before I aimed it at him, and then thought, “Uh, oh. Not smart. I’d better let someone do this who can get away with it.” His son Juan was standing next to me, so I handed him the musket. Juan then blasted his father with a steam of frozen CO2 while Dr. Thompson danced around like a Labrador Retriever under a hose.
It was a wild evening, with Johnny Depp chugging a bottle of Chivas Regal, Warren Zevon playing his litany of Hunter-inspired tunes, Roxanne Pulitzer dressed tightly in black, Hunter’s mother Virginia puffing on a cigar from her wheelchair, and just about anyone in Louisville who ever knew Hunter or lived through him vicariously. The one thing I will never forget was Thompson’s energy. He was mad, raving; barking his words rather than speaking, but at his core was a pure unmitigated joy. He was alive and loving every moment of it.
One of the reasons I attended that evening was to try and get Hunter to sign my copy of “Hell’s Angels.” I knew Thompson hated signing autographs, but this book had already been signed by Sonny Barger and a soon-to-be killed president of the Oakland Hell’s Angels. Yet even with that kind of clout I decided Thompson would probably chew it up and spit it out at me. Given his state I knew it was too dangerous. I thought it best that he remain happy. Juan was still standing next to me, and after we chatted a while I impulsively asked him if he would be willing to sign it. Juan was totally surprised that anyone would ask him for his autograph but graciously took my pen and scribbled, “Juan Thompson, in the spirit of HST.” That was my only encounter with Hunter Thompson — and believe me that was enough — but I could tell he loved his life. Today I pulled my copy of “Hell’s Angels” off the shelf and read Juan’s inscription. His words read like a comforting epitaph.
One less warrior
by Paul Kopasz
It only makes sense that Hunter S. Thompson checked out of Hotel Earth last week by using his own gun. For a man who never let anyone tell him what to do in 67 years of life, it seems perfectly logical he would only accept death on terms he himself set. He was clearly one of the two or three most incisive political satirists to grace us with his rebellious ideas since WW II. He was too big for Louisville. His expansive imagination and free-spiritedness demanded open road. He also was too big to be contained by the Hippy Counterculture or Rolling Stone magazine or the publishing industry or American culture as a whole. Apparently he was too large to be contained by this world, and it makes perfect sense he himself chose his time and method of exit. Like most everything in his life, his final act was one born of anger, a refusal to accept a world that — after all these decades of social change — would brook no dissent. It’s strange, but when William Burroughs — the only other seriously artistic voice of the counterculture ’60s — died, it seemed like a relief. With Thompson’s death there is no relief; things seem a good deal more gloomy, like one of the last voices of anger and resistance has been silenced. This is a far more depressing event than, for example, John Kerry not winning the presidency. And Hunter had a choice — he could have allowed nature to take its course but instead he killed himself. We needed him to keep fighting and his loss is significant and life isn’t really that awful, is it? Apparently he thought so, and now we have one less warrior on our side. That’s our world today, and it’s a good deal less colorful for Dr. Thompson’s vanished presence.
A tad trite
by c d kaplan, the culture maven
OK, Hunter, here’s the deal.
You’re sitting down there with an endless supply of Wild Turkey, watching your old nemesis Tricky Dick walk a beach in suit and tie. And you’re snickering. But not as much as when the two of you were still around here.
Because you came to realize that there were graver forms of evil. And that one of them is now sitting in Nixon’s chair in the Oval Office.
Maybe that’s what was too much for you.
Or maybe it was the endless run of acolytes who demanded their Hunter Thompson moments. And you were tired of continually cranking up the Dr. Gonzo Dog & Pony Show for them.
Or maybe it was the drugs and alcohol and resulting dementia that sucked your talent and soul dry, robbing you of humanity and a reason to stick around.
Whatever.
So you stick a gun in your mouth and plaster your kitchen walls with that brilliant brain of yours.
So I’m pissed. It’s just so trite.
