Published: 22 February, 2009, 00:00
Edited: 22 February, 2009, 00:00
Four years ago, on February 20, 2005, Hunter Stockton Thompson passed away from a self-inflicted gunshot, just like he promised many a time during the course of his celebrated 47-year-long career.
Most people will probably remember him as the author of Fear and Loathing in Las-Vegas, which is of course a typical case of masses grasping the simplest and the hottest – in a tabloid sense – part of any culture, but Thompson was so much more.
This blog is titled Courage and Affection in Moscow for a reason, and this date is very special for me personally, as it indeed should be for anyone, who at a certain moment in time might be called a journalist. Luckily Thompson is immensely popular among the younger generation of Russian journos, which is a good sign.
Novellist, essayist, an adept of protest culture, a die-hard gun activist and a ‘fortified-compound-dweller’ HST was a beacon of common sense in a world, where “everyone is guilty, [and] the only crime is getting caught”. Probably, the last beacon intact.
Thompson had both the wit and the integrity to speak on the most complicated of issues, while keeping it simple, as if it was a minor baseball game. The vast majority of his pieces leave an aftertaste of a good talk over a bottle of whisky or whatever it is that you drink, eat or smoke.
His brilliant analogies contributed to this greatly, as well as the composition of his pieces, which is nothing short of exemplary. HST was one of the very few in the business, who always kept in mind that anyone who opens, turns on or even downloads any kind of media is essentially looking for a story. And a story he did deliver, with his ideas scattered around like sesame seeds on a Big Mac.
His vocabulary was that of power and energy, while his ideas were those of a pacifist and a liberal. Another peculiar combination in Thompson was his awareness of his social responsibility amid an array of acts of epic personal irresponsibility.
He never made a secret that politics disgusted him, with Richard Nixon his arch-nemesis, but he kept covering and covering those elections from 1972 to 2004 with his only purpose in mind to prevent America from making the wrong choices. This is the same Thompson who stole elk antlers hanging above the front door of Ernest Hemingway’s cabin and was, he claimed, a suspect for the first time at the delicate age of nine for abuse of state property following an incident with a mailbox.
But above all Hunter was the perfect cult figure: you could be a dedicated fan of his in your salad days, and then grow up and not be ashamed to admit it. He had that very rare thing indeed among writers: versatility, which made it impossible to ‘outgrow’ him in time.
At 17 you admired one thing about him, and at 21 a completely different thing, but it was still the good old Hunt doing the job. He was never a subject of “How on Earth could I have liked that mediocre idiot?!” after years, unlike the 90 per cent of other authors.
As far as favourite HST quotes go, mine are definitely mentioned here either in the main piece or in the commentaries.
Of those not mentioned I really liked the snake story, about how he left a snake in a box overnight in an editorial office – I think it was Rolling Stone’s, but it’s been awhile since I re-read that particular book, so I might be wrong – and the snake was accompanied by its supper, which happened to be a living mouse. The snake wasn’t hungry at the moment and the mouse took advantage of the situation to gnaw a hole in the box and flee. The snake followed suit and spent the night creeping on the various floors of the editorial office, until in the early hours of dawn it was encountered by an office guard, who virtually went insane, while clubbing the poor reptile to death. Hunter naturally was made responsible and for some time his relations with the magazine soured.
(NB. after finishing this passage I spent some time trying unsuccessfully to find that story, which I’m now hundred per cent sure was in The Great Shark Hunt; the following one was in the Kingdom of Fear, but the books don’t have any Ctrl+F, and I never bothered to make any bookmarks).
Another quote I remember is from his letter to Oscar Acosta (the prototype of Dr. Gonzo from Fear and Loathing in Las-Vegas, “As your attorney I advise you” etc.), who previously wrote to him about how he was going to have a ‘collumn’ in some newspaper and thus is no different from Thompson himself. In a response letter Thompson praised his friend, but also noted that ‘column’ is written with one ‘l’, and that noting it is just one of the dirty tricks that a professional journalist can perform on an amateur one.
Of course the famous ‘wave speech’ from Fear and Loathing in Las-Vegas deserves special mentioning. When I first read it back at school I hadn’t the vaguest idea what he was talking about – mind you, San-Francisco of the 1960s is not something taught at history lessons – and my English was not that good (it still isn’t now) but I was still able to feel the ultimate nostalgia of those lines, which Hunter himself considered some of his best.
Still no quotes could match a fully-fledged Hunter Thompson experience.
As your attorney I advise you to run to the nearest bookshop and attain a copy of The Great Shark Hunt or The Kingdom of Fear.
Good luck, and Mahalo.