Horizon

Oh dear, yes. There is a lot of lazy reportage going down. And more to come, no doubt.

I remember the first time I encountered the Good Doctor. It was in the grim aftermath of – well let’s just call it a binge and leave out the sordid detail. I had crashed out at a friend’s, in a small and unfamiliar spare room.

Late morning. I opened my eyes. Unable to move my head. All I could see were white walls, white ceiling, and there was a small window somewhere above me. Recollections of the night before were, as yet, dim, if not non-existent. I was worried. Was I in a cell? In a hospital ward? Bedlam?

Time passed. I regained the ability to move and, by and by, I reached over and casually picked up a book which lay beside the bed. It was Hells Angels and I had never realised that anyone wrote books like this. When I made my weary way home that Sunday afternoon the book was in my pocket. I still have it, in fact. I finished it the same day, reading non-stop.

Of course, I went on to buy Fear and Loathing and most of the other stuff which, lets admit it, tailed off pretty badly from somewhere in the mid-late 70’s. But when it’s good its very good. And to this Englishman, Thompson at his best could express what America could be about in a way that very few others have managed before or since.

Sometime last year I was browsing in a record shop and a CD caught my eye. ‘Memphis Underground’ by Herbie Mann. I remembered that Thompson raved about it several times in his writing. So I chanced my arm and it was well worth a tenner. Not least for the version of The Battle Hymn of the Republic which, I believe, HST used in radio ads during his notorious campaign to become Sheriff.

I don’t suppose a month passes where I don’t dip into one or other of Thompson’s books, for some of his lunacy, jagged honesty and wit. And like you, I hold a lot of that pre-Gonzo material collected in The Great Shark Hunt in high regard.

Hearing the news today, at 6.30 am, I wasn’t especially shocked or sad. Just full of weary foreboding at all the trash and nonsense that I knew was being written about him right at that moment.

I do not speculate on Why? But this afternoon I thought about one of those pieces in GSH, about a trip he made to visit Hemingway’s last home: ‘What Lured Hemingway to Ketchum’. So when I arrived back home this evening I reached the book down, read through and came to the final line: ‘So finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun.’

I don't want to knock the man's work (I only vaguely remember the Fear and Loathing books, although the image of John Chancellor splitting a tab of acid sticks), but Thompson seems to me another of those American success stories where the work and the man are indistinguishable. He grasped - I'm guessing - that celebrity sold, that whatever value his writing had was heightened, or rather was made more saleable, by the fact of his notoriety. If he did express what America is about, it was to show that it is, in Neal Gabler's words, the Republic of Entertainment.

The one that makes me laugh the most is the Kentucky Derby one. I remember being gripped by Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Absolutely gripped. That thing that Nigel says of 'wow, I didn't know it could be done like this.' I haven't read any Hunter for years though. He should have picked another exit method: this way he looks like Hemingway's understudy.

The Kentucky Derby really is almost that bad, too. If "bad" is the word. Maybe I mean "interesting."

Re: Hemingway I was just flipping through *The Great Shark Hunt* again to read the Derby essay and found another one was called "The Scum Also Rises." He must've been a huge Hemingway fan. Poor shmuck.

And of course the other thing that ought to be noted is that HST--like so many other cultural stand-outs: you can fill in the blanks to your own taste--inspired/licensed a lot of old shit; aspirant gonzos--i've been one myself--are a dodgy breed. I read a thing years ago by a gobby tabloid columnist who said: 'when I was starting out in newspapers, young journalists would come in an start raving about Hunter S Thomspon and the editor would say 'throw it in the bin and read Keith Waterhouse...'

Via Cursor, here's Ralph Steadman's side of the Kentucky Derby story.

He must've been a huge Hemingway fan. Poor shmuck.

Do you mean he was a poor shmuck because he was a Hemingway fan or because he used Hemingway as a life model?

Probably the latter but maybe the former. Hemingway could write but he was too self-intoxicated for his own good let alone anyone else's.

I found great irony in Thompson's insight that Hemingway rigored in youth in the Ketchum piece....I think, in the end, despite the fact that he railed against it, that he may have grudgingly come to a similar conclusion about his own work.

I agree with many of the posters here and elsewhere that Thompson's 'form' became cliche (and in fact it is so prevalent in the blogodome that I think it may be the only point of confluence between Left B'Stan and the Freepers), but that sure as heck isn't his fault.

Anyway, my thoughts on it all can be found over at my place if you wanna take a gander.