A couple of follow-up thoughts on late native son Hunter Thompson. First, Ann Althouse asks whether the NYT is justified in comparing HST to bloggers. Specifically, here’s what the Times wrote:
[T]his early work presaged some of the fundamental changes that have rocked journalism today. Mr. Thompson’s approach in many ways mirrors the style of modern-day bloggers, those self-styled social commentators who blend news, opinion and personal experience on Internet postings. Like bloggers, Mr. Thompson built his case for the state of America around the framework of his personal views and opinions.
The comparison is not without some justification, as many bloggers (including this one) do include personal experience with commentary and objective recitation of facts. Where the comparison falls flat is the inference that this style is something that started with Thompson, and it didn’t. Essayists have for time immemorial done much of the same thing. Thompson’s gonzo journalism was different because it documented and glorified a particular kind of lifestyle that the public has some interest in, but is unlikely to participate in directly. I could write up my experiences at the 2005 Derby in a style that mimics Thompson, but it wouldn’t be “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” and it wouldn’t be “gonzo.”
Author Warren Ellis put forth some of his thoughts on Thompson to his email list. As I said in my earlier post, this is particularly interesting because there is a good bit of Hunter S. Thompson in Ellis’ creation Spider Jerusalem. Ellis’ thoughts seem pretty close to the mark:
Hunter Thompson waited until his young wife left the house, and then shot himself in the head with a pistol. He must have been quite aware that either she, or his son, there in the house with his grandson, would find his corpse. Dead bodies don’t lay neatly. They splay, spastic and awful. There is often shit….[T]he numbness, in part, comes from now finding that he was the kind of man that’d let his family find him like that. I have a personal loathing for suicide. It’s stupid and selfish and ugly and cowardly and reeks of weakness….
But how you leave the stage is at least as important as how you enter it. And he left it alone in a kitchen with a .45, dying in — and wouldn’t it be nice if it were the last time these words were typed together? — dying in fear, and loathing.
I’d argue that the degree to which the deceased relied on chemicals to support himself is in itself a sign of some weakness, as well.
