as originals go...
When you think of true originals, you might consider people like Nina Simone, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Charles Bukowski (sorry, by now you probably are sick of me mentioning Waits and Bukwoski, but for this discussion, it's a relevant point), Errol Morris, Satoshi Kon, and to lesser, genre-bursting degrees, Scorsese, Kurosawa and Kubrick, just to name a few more than a few. But as journalism goes, there are few true originals to be found. Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, sure, but they made do with a given format and turned it into a kingdom; Woodward and Bernstein may have brought down a whole administration once, but they aged straight-and-narrow into their own little niches as cogs in machines, never again to have the blasphemously incisive impact they did when they made Nixon cry. There is, truly, only one absolute original in journalism, and his name was Hunter S. Thompson. Yesterday he shot and killed himself, leaving a mile-wide chasm in the iceberg tip of counter-culture's heirarchy of mad literati.
"Gonzo" journalism was his oeuvre, so named for his own efforts to view the power structure and political process through a chemically-induced haze while thumbing his nose at not just politicians, but all authority figures, mad or sane. Thompson lived as he wrote, seemingly unapologetic for his methods and manner, and steadfast in his beliefs. About a year ago, I began reading his first novel, The Rum Diary, which he wrote in 1957. It was published over 40 years later. I set it aside as daily distractions and less hearty entertainments held sway, but now I will begin reading it again, just in memory of the guy.
Long before Johnny Depp played Thompson's alter-ego in Terry Gilliam's film of Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, Bill Murray rumbled and growled through a 1987 version of the writer's antics, titled Where The Buffalo Roam. I don't think a dozen people have seen the film, but I loved it at the time, having just read a string of Thompson's earliest books.
It was odd that, within a 24-hour period this weekend, I read about three very different celebrities passing away. Daniel Herlihy, a classy actor who younger folks would know best as The Old Man in Robocop, was in his eighties and died Saturday of natural causes. Sandra Dee, an icon of the fifties and sixties, died at the age of 62 (which seems youthful by comparison) of complications from kidney failure after weeks in the hospital. She had been on dialysis for several years. Thompson, by comparison, seems to have committed suicide at 67.
The papers aren't giving out any details, if any are yet known. But perhaps, like the samurai, he saw something dishonorable in the world that he just couldn't live with, that his writing couldn't touch; or worse, saw something in himself - and just decided to remove himself from the picture. It would be an understandable exit for a guy who never gave a damn what anyone else thought, and gave no quarter in his assaults on the establishment. Not that that makes it any easier to accept.
Or, consider this: longtime collaborator Ralph Steadman once described Thompson as a "man among reptiles". Maybe the doctor was finally fed up with all that goddam cold blood.
"Gonzo" journalism was his oeuvre, so named for his own efforts to view the power structure and political process through a chemically-induced haze while thumbing his nose at not just politicians, but all authority figures, mad or sane. Thompson lived as he wrote, seemingly unapologetic for his methods and manner, and steadfast in his beliefs. About a year ago, I began reading his first novel, The Rum Diary, which he wrote in 1957. It was published over 40 years later. I set it aside as daily distractions and less hearty entertainments held sway, but now I will begin reading it again, just in memory of the guy.
Long before Johnny Depp played Thompson's alter-ego in Terry Gilliam's film of Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, Bill Murray rumbled and growled through a 1987 version of the writer's antics, titled Where The Buffalo Roam. I don't think a dozen people have seen the film, but I loved it at the time, having just read a string of Thompson's earliest books.
It was odd that, within a 24-hour period this weekend, I read about three very different celebrities passing away. Daniel Herlihy, a classy actor who younger folks would know best as The Old Man in Robocop, was in his eighties and died Saturday of natural causes. Sandra Dee, an icon of the fifties and sixties, died at the age of 62 (which seems youthful by comparison) of complications from kidney failure after weeks in the hospital. She had been on dialysis for several years. Thompson, by comparison, seems to have committed suicide at 67.
The papers aren't giving out any details, if any are yet known. But perhaps, like the samurai, he saw something dishonorable in the world that he just couldn't live with, that his writing couldn't touch; or worse, saw something in himself - and just decided to remove himself from the picture. It would be an understandable exit for a guy who never gave a damn what anyone else thought, and gave no quarter in his assaults on the establishment. Not that that makes it any easier to accept.
Or, consider this: longtime collaborator Ralph Steadman once described Thompson as a "man among reptiles". Maybe the doctor was finally fed up with all that goddam cold blood.
posted by scn at 3:59 PM
<< Home