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Monday, February 21, 2005

Hunter S Thompson RIP

Hunter S. Thompson has shot himself dead at 67. Guardian Times Scotsman New York Times Times obituary
- The Great Thompson Hunt
- YOUNG DOCTOR THOMPSON, Esquire article, Excerpt from Hunter, The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson, by E. Jean Carroll

Literary Kicks: "Hunter S. Thompson, who carried the beat romanticism of Jack Kerouac, the political conviction of Allen Ginsberg and the acidic skepticism of William S. Burroughs into the world of popular journalism, died a Hemingway-esque death in Colorado on February 20, 2005."

- Guardian - Newsblog: A product of his own chutzpah: "According to his Wikipedia entry, Thompson "is generally regarded as the grandfather of the blogging movement" - a statement that's news to me but which, presumably, refers to blogs' tendency to place the author and his prejudices at the heart of the narrative, just as he did, rather than to any propensity on the part of bloggers to consume vast amounts of narcotics."
- Daily Kos's clarifies idea of HST as inspiration for bloggers
"Thompson was known for a style that he described as "gonzo journalism," a form of "new journalism." It was based on the idea that fidelity to fact did not always blaze the way to truth.
Instead, "gonzo journalism" and its practitioners suggested that a deeper truth could be found in the ambiguous zones between fact and fiction.
"Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long," Thompson told interviewers in a characteristic pronouncement on both institutions.
"You can't be objective about Nixon," he said. "How can you be objective about Clinton?"Hunter S. Thompson -- the world's first blogger."

*I suppose that makes you know who's Belle de Jour a work of pure gonzo.
**A book buyers guide to purchasing a work of gonzo non-fiction. THE SEARCH FOR HUNTER S. THOMPSON, S.E. Munday 1998.

- Blogcritics.org review of Hunter S. Thompson's Hey Rube : Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness Modern History from the Sports Desk

"The essays in Hey Rube are collected from his weekly column for ESPN Magazine over the last three years. They're very short essays, usually 300-500 words, and they're ostensibly about sports. In actuality they're about whatever Thomspon felt like writing about at the time, and basically weave together three threads of narrative, his personal life, his political observations, and his opinions on various aspects of sport.
Thompson had his start in journalism as a sports writer before he diverged into mostly politics and surrealistic personal narrative. To some degree these essays take him back to his roots, but heavily filtered through his gonzo style where everything is grist for his mill."

- ESPN Hunter S. Thompson Hey Rube Archive
- From Hunter S. Thompson's Hey Rube column "Jack Kerouac and the Football Hall of Fame"
"It was midnight on Sunday when my telephone rang. My nerves were raw, and my eyes were swollen from an overdose of pure Ozone, which had blinded me many hours earlier when I tampered with input-jets at the swimming pool.
But the phone kept ringing, and I recognized the singular voice of my friend James Irsay, who was calling to tell me not to worry about his star running back, Edgerrin James, not showing up for the Indianapolis Colts' summer football camp.
"It's nothing to worry about, Hunter," said Irsay, who owns the Colts and a few other things -- including the original scroll/manuscript of Jack Kerouac's legendary "Beat Generation" novel, On The Road. ... I had called him to check out some rumors about the "mysterious disappearance" of his 22-year-old NFL rushing champ, who is crucial to the Colts' Super Bowl plans for 2002(....)

Maybe I will wear a blue and white No. 32 jersey when football season rolls around this year. It will make me feel happy and confident.

Indeed. But that is another long story that we don't have time for now.
... Maybe later, when we talk about Jack Kerouac again. He was a football star, in his youth, just like me.
Some things never change, eh?
But time flies, and I am going blind again, from that evil Ozone water -- or maybe it's just the daylight. ... Of course! All Vampires go blind when the sun comes up.
So why worry? Everybody needs a few hours of good sleep now and then. And tonight I will be able to see everything that moves, from here to as far as the Crow flies. Ho ho. "

Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)
"America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."

Posted by Nick @ 10:55 GMT

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