More sun, a bit of a chill in the morning to remind us that in fact we are approaching autumn.
I watched a documentary about Hunter Thompson and it made me think of my Alaskan friends who loved him so much. Hunter Thompson gave name to Gonzo Journalism. Gonzo combined straight reporting with fantasy, screed, and straight up fiction and rolled it all into a hallucinatory satire of world events. Hunter Thompson started with a book about the Hell’s Angels who taught him an important life lesson which was before all else one must “freak out the squares.”
But now the internet has turned us all into hipsters, insiders and proto revolutionaries. Even the “squarest “ of us all.
I had one friend in Alaska who used to call me late at night mostly to rant about the local politicians in our dear little town. He sometimes called me simply to read long passages of “Fear and Loathing In Los Vegas.” My friend didn’t sleep well in fact he didn’t own a bed. He fell asleep every night in a broken down lounge chair. My friend, like any good admirer of Dr. Thompson, loved and owned plenty of guns. He loved to shoot large bore rifles at plastic jugs out at the firing range and used to scream epithets at the exploding jugs. “You don’t deserve to live you scum sucker,” was one I remember. His name was Ron, and Ron lived in a single wide trailer. Ron didn’t want to own a garbage can. Ron was careful to recycle almost all of his household waste and the rest he could easily put in a down town receptacle . It used to fry his ass to pay for garbage pick up on his utility bill every month and he made it his personal crusade.
Ron would call me and he loved to talk about the Wagnerian opera of his personal gripes with the city. He also waxed philisophical about the greatness of Hunter S. Thompson. He wanted to write like the good Doctor, imagining his fulsome and fiery letters to the editor and the great stir they would cause in the letters section of our local paper. It seemed that only Hunter S’s style could contain Ron’s spleen as far as the written word went. I would always advise him to be sure not to write any actual threats in his letters, for several of the messages he left on various city answering machines had already drawn the attention of the police.
After Dr T. blew his own brains out in Woody Creek, Ron took this action as kind of a taunt. He himself had often talked about going out in a blaze of glory but the truth was besides a few mental kinks Ron was in good health and he enjoyed his late night talks with this friends which included many of the towns beautiful, and patient women. He was mostly too shy to speak in person to women outside a bar, but he had a whole circle of friends who would talk with him for hours on the phone, for he was smart and well read and generally funny. He had actual wit, besides his ranting spleen. He was made to order for a Hunter Thompson fan.
As I have traveled around I’ve seen many people who essentially ask the same question, “Where is Hunter S. Thompson when we need him most?” Ron used to say he wished Hunter T. was still around so he could read him… just one more time… “lay it too the bastards.”
I was thinking about this tonight as Dot and I were on our walk. Where is Hunter, or at least where are his successors who carries his mantle? Late night comedians are too tame, too jokey and too predictable. The internet is too wild and full of pretenders: full of rant but no wit.
I think the problem is that the reason we don’t have any real Gonzo journalists is that the times themselves are too crazy. We don’t have Gonzo journalist because now we have Gonzo politicians. Here me out. The new breed of politicians don’t have any interest in governing or doing the real work of making things happen. They don’t want to set chairs up and take them down in small halls in Manchester New Hampshire. They simply want to be outrageous and draw attention to themselves.
Sadly this could be said of Dr. Thompson towards the end of his life. He had imploded on himself… Now hear me out… he was a genius but he was also a drug addict, an alcoholic and as he himself said, a “connoisseur of mind altering substances.” He became obsessed with himself. He became the story and truth didn’t matter. Old time ethics didn’t matter. Only he and his romantic figure center stage in the story mattered. Again, even at his worst he was a genius with the ability to carry our ire on to the next level. But in the end he was a narcissist.
Remind you of anyone? I believe now we have no new Hunter S. Thompson because they would be crowded out by the politicians. Now, instead of sophisticated satirists we have comedians and finger wagging scolds and I honestly believe its the finger wagging scolds who provide the targets and the spleen to the political debate. No one so much loves Donald Trump but genuinely hates the arrogance of the finger wagging Liberals.
But what to do? Should we liberals stop our finger wagging. moralizing? Not much chance of that. But we need fewer self righteous gags and more wit… the kind of wit that Dr. T had in his earlier work. I too would love to see him reappear in his white whale of a car and rip into everyone. He would have to rip into the moralizers and he was so good at that. That would suck some of the oxegen out of the far right hatred of the left, but then of course today Thompson would be drown out by the outrageous politicians who will say anything… believe anything so long as it gets their names in their favorite partizan outlets.
Let me be clear, I’m your worst case of a liberal and probably a finger wagger But I need real wit in the discourse if I’m to be motivated to write letters, give money or get excited. And we need that wit today. Wit, not gags, not clever insults but insight the way that Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hunter Thompson had. True intelligent critics who did more than draw attention to themselves but craftspeople who can can make you laugh as they cut through the bloated buffoonery of our times..
Dr. Thompson is dead and gone. He burned himself out slowly and painfully before our eyes until he blew up his skull like a water jug meeting a fat bore slug. But surely there are others out there who don’t want to pay their garbage bill and willing to tell you why.
Here is an old poem:
