OUT OF MY HEAD: The Weird Never Die
Joe Killian
Issue date: 4/19/05 Section: Opinions
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"I have spent half my life trying to get away from journalism, but I am still mired in it - a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures."
- Hunter S. Thompson
When outlaw journalist Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide at the end of February The Carolinian wasn't yet up and running. I ended up writing a personal remembrance for GoTriad - the News and Record's weekly A&E magazine - but this week I'd like to correct the record and get something down in our pages about Hunter. I think he's earned it.
Thompson was hard to define. He was a gifted writer, inveterate gambler, admitted drug fiend and political junkie. He was probably best known as the author of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" - and he loved and loathed his celebrity. Unfortunately his public persona as the wild man of American letters came to overshadow his enormous talents and substantive contributions. He always wanted to be his generation's Hemingway - and in some respects (substance abuse, battles with fame, a cult of personality) he certainly succeeded. But like Hemingway the work itself is so much more important than the legend.
With Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin and Norman Mailer Thompson pioneered a first-person brand of "New Journalism" that cut the form's vaunted objectivity with the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain, the sneering contempt of H.L. Mencken and the crusading zeal of Upton Sinclair.
But of all the "New Journalists" of the late 1960s and '70s, Thompson remained the most pure and wild. Wolfe chased the Great American Novel, getting further and further from his goal as years wore on. Breslin devolved into a curmudgeon caricature. Mailer disappeared into his own pretentiousness - before becoming a guest star on "Gilmore Girls."
But Hunter was always Hunter, which is why he continued to appeal to and inspire new generations of young people who recognized his talent, who shared his passion and saw in him their most unbridled, brightly burning selves. His books have joined a sort of "right of passage" literary list along with "On the Road" and "A Clockwork Orange."
- Hunter S. Thompson
When outlaw journalist Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide at the end of February The Carolinian wasn't yet up and running. I ended up writing a personal remembrance for GoTriad - the News and Record's weekly A&E magazine - but this week I'd like to correct the record and get something down in our pages about Hunter. I think he's earned it.
Thompson was hard to define. He was a gifted writer, inveterate gambler, admitted drug fiend and political junkie. He was probably best known as the author of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" - and he loved and loathed his celebrity. Unfortunately his public persona as the wild man of American letters came to overshadow his enormous talents and substantive contributions. He always wanted to be his generation's Hemingway - and in some respects (substance abuse, battles with fame, a cult of personality) he certainly succeeded. But like Hemingway the work itself is so much more important than the legend.
With Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin and Norman Mailer Thompson pioneered a first-person brand of "New Journalism" that cut the form's vaunted objectivity with the wit and wisdom of Mark Twain, the sneering contempt of H.L. Mencken and the crusading zeal of Upton Sinclair.
But of all the "New Journalists" of the late 1960s and '70s, Thompson remained the most pure and wild. Wolfe chased the Great American Novel, getting further and further from his goal as years wore on. Breslin devolved into a curmudgeon caricature. Mailer disappeared into his own pretentiousness - before becoming a guest star on "Gilmore Girls."
But Hunter was always Hunter, which is why he continued to appeal to and inspire new generations of young people who recognized his talent, who shared his passion and saw in him their most unbridled, brightly burning selves. His books have joined a sort of "right of passage" literary list along with "On the Road" and "A Clockwork Orange."
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samuelpablo
samuelpablo
posted 4/21/05 @ 12:32 PM EST
Thanks you for the excellent article about Hunter. His writing style was an inspiration to so many, including myself. I would never have had the balls to say what I did in my novel, Why I Committed Suicide, without having first experienced his no-hold barred zest for capturing the passion of the people he wrote about. (Continued…)
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