The Doctor is no longer on call….
Presidents Day, I had the day off of work. I woke up, was having coffee and surfing around on the computer, catching up on news, set lists and emails from the day before. There buried beneath the death of Sandra Dee, moe. playing “Bearsong” again last night in Wisconsin, mudslides in California, and President Bush admitting to smoking pot, was
Author Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide, dead at the age of 67. Fuck, are you kidding me. My first thought was this was some joke or hoax; there was no way that the good Doctor would go out like that. The man who had given a big middle finger to the rest of the world his whole life would never ends things in such a cowardly way. I was sure of it. I was pissed. But how could I be so sure, I had never met the man, all I knew of him had been gleaned from his books and writings. I knew the image, not the man and could never know the difference between the two. Hunter S. Thompson, godfather of gonzo journalism, author of masterpieces such as
Hells Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. An inspiration to journalists, writers and anyone who has ever scribbled on a napkin or a torn up a pack of cigarettes in the dark in some altered state of mind. A generation of outlaw writers and fringe characters owe Doctor Thompson a huge gratitude of thanks.
I was in college when I first discovered Thompson’s work. At a time when I wanted to question everything, knew it all and would not take no for answer, Thompson validated all my opinions and feelings. He gave me some one to identify with, an intelligent literary outlaw. Some one who could say, “Fuck you”, but with some style. He was not always a likeable character; he drank too much, smoked too much, did too many drugs and was given to fits of rage. He reveled in his flaws though, and that made it easier for me to accept my own. He questioned the status quo, never accepting the, “because I said so” line. But despite his eccentricities, he came across as a good hearted guy, someone you could sit and have a beer with and watch the football game with, have intelligent discussions about some great novel, albeit before he would lurch out the door on another mind-blowing adventure or quest. He showed me that there are always new horizons to be discovered, you just have to look a little harder to find them these days. Life to him was what happened while everyone else sat on the sidelines and thought about what they should do. He got up and did it and we all watched as he lived a life we could only dream about. He inspired me to join the game, and not worry about winning or losing, to take a chance, to pick up my pen and share my thoughts for better or worse.
The first thing I thought upon hearing the news this morning was a story Thompson had written after Ernest Hemmingway had killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head in Ketchum, Idaho. Thompson was a huge Hemmingway fan, and had openly expressed how much the great writer had influenced him. I went downstairs and tore through my bookshelf, till I found what was I looking for, my copy of
The Great Shark Hunt, the Gonzo Papers vol. 1. It was a collection of early HST writings. Somewhere in it was the story I was looking for. I finally found it on page 429, the short story
What Lured Hemmingway to Ketchum? It was about Thomson’s trip to Hemmingway’s final home in Idaho. The last paragraph said it all, “He was an old, sick and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him – not even when his friends came up from Cuba and played bullfight with him in the Tram. So finally and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun.” The headline grabbed me again.
Author Hunter S. Thompson dead from self-inflicted shotgun blast. It all just seems so cliché, Hunter S. Thompson checking out the same way as his literary hero.
Another quote I found that Thompson had made about Hemmingway seemed to ring true to me as well, “I think he killed himself because he couldn’t write anymore. He couldn’t write, he was too sick to hunt. He just didn’t have it anymore, so he decide to end it.” Thompson’s work in recent years lacked some of the venom and bite that defined his best-known works. He should have been flourishing now with the current political scene and administration, an administration he had openly criticized. This should have been a time of rebirth for him, with targets ripe for his venomous tongue and razor sharp criticism, but his lifelong muse, Richard Nixon, was gone and perhaps he found it difficult to redirect his anger. For so long it seemed that Nixon had fueled his existence, famously declaring, “Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand.” We all need a foil and with out his Thompson lost some of his inspiration. Maybe as he said about Hemingway he was upset with himself and could not write anymore. Like an aging athlete who cannot play at the same level he once did, he is still capable of moments of greatness, they just appear less frequently. Thompson still produced moments of greatness in his writing, but they too appeared less frequently. He was tired of the caricature that he had at times had become, Raul Duke, The Doctor, Uncle Duke, and did not want to live up to it anymore, or could not live up to it anymore.
Thompson frequently ended his writings with
res ipsa loquitur, a Latin phrase which means “The thing speaks for itself.” Nothing spoke that clearly for itself this cold morning. There are still too many unanswered questions. Why did he end his life by his own hand? We will never know for sure, we can only speculate. Perhaps his death was an accident, or was in response to his failing health. Maybe he was tired of living up to an image that he had out grown and knew no other way out. We will never know for sure, but I do know that the world lost a great voice, and that things got a lot less interesting. This game we call life lost one of its best players today, and I lost a hero. There is always that moment right after you lose someone where you ask yourself, “What now?” I do not know the answer to that question, but I do know one thing, there is still a game to be played and I plan to play it…win or lose, Hunter S. Thompson taught me that.
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