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.