The Daily Story—Category: Writers.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 1:21PM Hunter S. Thompson
A Great and Original Writer Who Melted Into a Caricature of Himself.
I think when most people think about Hunter S. Thompson they think about his drug-steeped book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s probably what he’s best known for and that only heightened when it was made into a great movie by Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the first time when I was a junior in high school in 1975, a few years after it had originally come out. I was doing lots of drugs back then, including acid whenever I could so naturally I loved the book. I think it’s probably the best book to describe the different frenzies and feelings that drugs can wrack your mind and body with. And it’s really got one of the best opening lines I’ve ever read: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. If that line doesn’t make you want to read the rest of the book, then you’re probably Nancy Reagan. And the closing line is a classic as well: I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger...a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident. That’s a genius line and a wonderful way to close a wildly original and inventive book.
When I first read it I really thought it was one hundred percent true and believed the whole book to be based on factual reporting. I thought that all that hilarious drug and acid induced high speed hijinks between Hunter Thompson (Raoul Duke) and his crazed Samoan Attorney (Dr. Gonzo) actually happened. Later on I realized the truth, that most of it is either made up or highly embellished.
I think it’s true that Hunter Thompson went to Las Vegas with his attorney to cover a motorcycle race for Sports Illustrated and that they brought and ingested enough drugs to make William Burroughs blush, but I think most of the mind-rattling incidents that happened, happened only in Hunter’s mind and then spilled out onto the pages that became, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I really doubt that anything happened with the maids in the hotel, that there was a hippy Jesus freak girl that Hunter’s attorney fed acid to, that there was a flare up in the coffee shop, and I think a lot of dialogue at the cop drug convention was embellished, if not made up all together. I even read that the copy editor who transcribed the taped-recorded section where they’re at the taco stand couldn’t understand it so she just made up her own dialogue. And she said she was amazed when she read the finished copy and it was still there, verbatim.
I think Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a great novel, but I prefer to think of it as fiction, based on Hunter’s trip to Las Vegas. It’s a gripping original book, but I don’t think it’s his best effort in print and I think he kind of painted himself into a corner with it. After that everything was Gonzo and a lot of his work afterwards paled in comparison. Within the comic strip, Doonesbury, he literally became a cartoon character. And he was never happy about that. Here’s a video where Thompson discusses the whole Hunter Thompson versus Raoul Duke persona problem with a reporter from the BBC:
I remember being wildly excited when the book, The Curse of Lono came out in 1983, because he hadn’t written much of anything for awhile and I bought the book as soon as it came out. And I was amazed when I was about halfway through that it really wasn’t very good. It kind of felt forced and disjointed and I never did finish it. I think he was doing a lot of cocaine back then and when you’re zoomed to the gills on devil’s dandruff the only thing you can do well, is more cocaine.
My favorite book by Hunter Thompson is his first published book, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. It came out in 1966 and established a foothold for the writer in the literary world. I read the book after I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and I’ve always preferred this book and I consider it my favorite work by Hunter Thompson.
The book came about after Hunter wrote an article about motorcycle gangs for the magazine, The Nation in 1965. He had several book offers and struck a deal with Random House to produce a tome about the legendary and infamous Motorcycle Gang, The Hell’s Angels.
Thompson was living in San Francisco at the time and struck up friendships with Angel’s from the San Bernadino and Oakland chapters of the Hell’s Angels. The book details a year in Thompson’s life where he rides, drinks, smokes pot, pops pills and hangs out in various bars and sundry joints with the rolling, greasy, grungy, leather menace collectively known as The Hell’s Angels. Thanks to Hunter’s article in the Nation and press in Life and Time magazine, the Angels were getting well known and had quite a reputation the year Hunter hung out with them. He even introduced them to acid, via fellow writer, Ken Kesey. That chapter alone is worth the price of the book. I’m sure there’s embellishments all through it, but all in all I believe it all to be a good and solid piece of entertaining and mind-gripping factual reporting. I do believe however, that the postscript to the book is pure performance art.
In the book Hunter hooks up with the some of the Angel’s after being away for months writing his book. It was at this meeting that Hunter Thompson gets stomped by a few Angels after what he writes was “a minor disagreement.” Later I read that this minor disagreement happened after Hunter berated an Angel for hitting his old lady and then kicking his dog. According to Hell’s Angel’s president, Sonny Barger and others, Hunter said something to the effect that, “Only a punk hits his old lady and kicks his dog.” Now that might sound like Hunter was just being noble and standing up for the woman and the defenseless dog, but Hunter Thompson has never been much of a feminist and had witnessed far more disturbing things in the course of the book than this and never questioned anything. Hunter Thompson was not only smart and a talented writer, he had plenty of street smarts. And anybody with street smarts knows that if you say something like that to a Hell’s Angel, you’ll get the everloving shit kicked out of you. They won’t kill you, but you’ll get hurt. And I think that’s exactly what he wanted for the end of his book. And he got it and he even took pictures of it. Here’s one that he took:
And here’s a video with one of the Angels confronting him on a talk show about it:
I’m sure up to his dying day he would’ve denied it, but I’m positive he planned to get stomped for the ending of that book and maybe had it planned from the get-go. But in the long run, when it comes to writing, does it really matter if it’s real or unreal? Staged or unstaged? To me it really doesn’t, as long as the story comes alive in your brain and it plays out like a great movie in your imagination. And when Hunter S. Thompson was running high on his game and the words were hopping like frogs in an amphetamine river, he could move your imagination in a truly staggering and mysterious way.
On 5:42 p.m. on February 20, 2005, things finally got too weird in this world for Hunter S. Thompson and he blew his brains out. He had been outspoken about how this country used September 11th to slowly take away our freedoms and start a war in Iraq that basically never should have been started. His health was giving out too and I think he had just had it. When all was said and done, Hunter Thompson was a realist who knew the shit was going down, he was in bad shape and Fun had come to an end. So he took a gun and vamoosh! The Good Doctor was gone. I think the epitaph he wrote for his book Hell’s Angels is a fitting epitaph for Hunter S. Thompson himself, so here it is:
On my way back to San Francisco I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz’ final words from the heart of darkness: “The horror! The horror!...Exterminate all the brutes!”
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Reader Comments (6)
Great story about Hunter Thompson! I've read Fear and Loathing and saw the movie, but not Hell's Angels. I'll have to go get it on Amazon.
that's gonna take a lot of extermination powder.
Wow that is truly fascinating! Thank you so much for sharing it and the video is so wild and obscure.
I read Fear and Loathing when I was in College and instantly fell in love with it. My favorite parts of the book were when his attorney was say something to the effect of: "As your attorney, I would advise you to take another hit of acid."
Welcome back, Marty! I saw the talk show interview with hunter you posted back before you went on vacation. He isn't quite the psychotic depicted by Johnny Depp or Bill Murry. Another movie that uses real Hells Angels is Roger Coreman's 'Wild Angels', which I recently aquired and saw for the first time over fourty years after it was made. The funeral scene with Bruce Dern was a classic 60's hoot!
manity dankas for reminding me of why I first fell in love with his maniacal scatological ramblings on the perversity of our resistant existence brother man...
My answer to the government about "smoking Kill" on my fucking cigarette packet is "Be right kill as well !" LOL
Great writings Marty !! Thanks ;)