RIP HST
It may just be contact paranoia, but my take on the celebrity deaths this week is that Hunter S. Thompson and Sandra Dee have snuck off to make a box-office juggernaut called Gidget Goes Gonzo.
I got a lot of pleasure out of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72. I think I read it sometime in the late 70s, and it was a good bit of corrective medicine for someone who, with his first-ever trip to the ballot box, voted for Nixon in ‘72 (fodder for another entry at another time - remind me). And I laughed until I bled out of every orifice reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I thrilled at the idea of New Journalism - it seemed like something I could do, maybe, after dabbling briefly and unsuccessfully in trying to write fiction. I read Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion and HST and huddled in my cocoon of optimistic procrastination (far preferable to the pessimistic procrastination of the days I thought I could write fiction). I guess it worked out that I didn’t have to do all that crazy shit cuz HST did.
I certainly can’t write a fitting obituary for him, but check out the terrific ones here and here. On the upside, maybe I can now get Ralph Stedman to illustrate my blog.
