CON GAMES: Does Hunter Thompson Really Matter?
July 23rd, 2007 at 05:08am Michael Conniff 2
For Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Jr., if it wasn't on the page then it was on the stage. And like a curtain that won't quite close, thereby hangs the great paradox of his career: the incomparable writer vying with the larger-than-life icon of the bastardized American dream.
John Colson writes with great insight about the symposium on Thompson's life at the Aspen Institute this weekend.
"But the event fell a little short of the mark," Colson says, "even as it satisfied a need to examine Thompson's works and world view."
The event raises the question: are such tributes always going to fall short because we learned what Hunter Thompson was trying to tell us a long time ago--that government is corrupt, that politicians are liars, and that drugs can be funny up to a point? Or will they fall short because Thompson himself fell short as a writer?
His great masterpiece, "Fear and Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72" will remain must- reading as a pillar of the New Journalism. So will his book on Las Vegas and the chilling breakthrough magazine piece on the Hell's Angels. But in terms of his body of work, Hunter Thompson simply did not get from the stage to the page nearly often enough. Even as he settled into iconography at Woody Creek here in the Roaring Fork Valley, his work lost the immediacy of real reporting that made it so rock-hard in The Seventies.
Put aside the "Fear and Loathing" books, and Thompson was never again able to master the longer form of firsthand reporting where he found his greatness. After "The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From A Strange Time," published in 1979, he was more or less done. Put another way, for the last twenty-five years of his career, Hunter Thompson lived on his reputation, with the stray collection coming forth like basement tapes. At least one of his sports columns for ESPN was literally written by one of the hangers-on at his house in Woody Creek.
As a point of comparison, I put forth the example of another of the New Journalists, the late David Halberstam, who kept reporting and writing until the day he died--in a car crash on the way to yet another interview for yet another book. Or you could consider the work of the far-less-prolific Gay Talese, slow as molasses, but sure to be working inch-by-inch on his next magnum opus. And Tom Wolfe, though he made a disastrous turn away from journalism to fiction, continues to pump out one big novel after another.
The other New Journalists never stopped working, but Thompson never really got it going again after The Seventies went by.
I think F. Scott Fitzgerald represents an even better point of comparison. Like Thompson, he came to stand for an era--the Jazz Age in his case. Like Thompson, he flared early and flamed out late. And like Thompson, he became just as well known for his excesses as for his writing.
Another telling example is Truman Capote, who produced "In Cold Blood," the most influential non-fiction book of the 20th Century, and then--racked by and riddled with addiction--never completed a real book again. "Answered Prayers" went unanswered.
After he wrote "The Last Tycoon," Fitzgerald wished he had another shot at it sober. But it was not to be. What could Hunter Thompson have accomplished if he had stayed clean and sober? Could he have been "Hunter Thompson" without the drugs and alcohol? We'll never know, because that's yet another one of his books that will never be written.
When all is said and done, is there anything else left to be said about Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Jr.'s career?
Entry Filed under: Books, Media, Aspen, Colorado, Con Games, Woody Creek, Pitkin County, The West, United Post
5 Comments Add your own
1. Mitch.Mulhall | July 23rd, 2007 at 10:01 pm
I say Hunter Stockton Thompson does matter.
I have always admired HST, and I’ve been trying to explain why for about twenty-five years, ever since I used his prose as an example of good writing when I was teaching freshman composition at CSU...
HST is still kind of an enigma to me, but his writing continues to strike me like a baseball bat between the eyes. When I consider the place of Thompson’s prose among 20th century writers, I am reminded of Potter Stewart’s remarks about hard-core pornography. I can’t tell you why HST was a great writer, but when I read his prose, I know he was…
I guess I’ll have another go at explaining my contention that HST was a great writer tonight…
I particularly liked the way Christopher Hitchens eulogized Thompson. Among other things, he wrote:
An honorable tribute, to be sure, and one with which I agree, though surely not in quite the same way Hitchens meant it.
In the late 80s, I looked forward to HST’s columns, even as their frequency grew few and far between. The fire in his belly never cooled. I think the political climate of the 70s that gave Thompson traction passed him by… Here’s why.
Back in the day, Thompson used words to rearrange the furniture in your head, and he didn’t give a shit about your intellectual feng shui:
Thompson was in his prime between ’67 and ’73. Politically and socially speaking, this was a violent, out-of-control time from which this nation has never fully recovered. In the wake of Bloody Sunday in 1965 came race riots no one could have imagined, followed by a segregationist power grab by George Wallace in 1966. Two years later in March, 1968, U.S. forces massacred hundreds in the village of My Lai. One month later, James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King, and two months later Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert F. Kennedy. These waters of instability rolled through the 60s and into the seventies with Wood Stock, Nixon, Watergate, Agnew… I think Thompson was an idealist who reacted to this disturbing time by doing the bravest thing a young writer could do: get as close to the depravity as he could and write about it with a brut force honesty no one could ignore.
It was clear to me after reading Generation of Swine in 1988 that Thompson’s best days as a political essayist were probably behind him, even if he did correctly predict the Democratic melt-down in the 1988 presidential race. Still, it had been just short of a decade since The Great Shark Hunt, and I thought maybe it was just a matter of shaking the rust off. As time went on, though, it became increasingly clear to me that times had changed, and in so doing had taken away an essential ingredient in the HST cocktail—epic political and social tumult.
While part of me held out hope HST would find a voice that suited him in his old age, deep down I knew he wouldn’t. After all, Thompson once wrote, “there is no honest way to explain [the Edge] because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” If Thompson had not been over the edge, I think he’d certainly gotten close enough to look down...
Cheers,
2. alpha6 | July 23rd, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Thompson could have mattered, Yeah he may have been a good writer at one point in his life, but the selfish jerk threw it all away and treated everyone around him like crap. In the end he was just a bitter old man way past his time with his mind clouded through long term drug use and heavy drinking. Even in the end he didn't care about anyone around him blowing his brains out in the kitchen for his son and grandson to see and someone else to clean up the mess.
I say good riddance to one less asshole in the Aspen area.
3. Mitch.Mulhall | July 23rd, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Gee, Alpha, sounds like your relationship with HST was far less superficial than mine.
Do tell.
Cheers,
4. B Jon Traylor | July 24th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Well done Mitch. Yet, I also agree with Alpha's take.
I've only read the two Fear and Loathing books. Interesting reads, they were. He had a sort of slap you in the face style unlike any other writer I've read. I also read his columns occasionally at what I think was ESPN.com.
But I guess, having only been in this valley seven years now... I never really understood why he was lickened to a hero's status.
I remember a Fourth of July gathering several years back, when I stood there and listened to him rant and rave and cuss in a drunken or perhaps drug induced obnoxious way. Everyone there seemed to be enjoying it. Yet, I had a young child and wife and in-laws there with me. So, I led them away from the scene.
A few other times I saw him at the J-Bar in Aspen, and even those times, he was loud, obnoxious, and wired up on whiskey or something.
And like Alpha points out... I, too, had a major problem with the local media's reporting of his suicide and all the endless follow-up stories. It was as though this guy wasn't just a cult hero, he was a dang'd HERO! Geez, this guy blew his brains out with his son and grandson in the next room.
How incredibly selfish, disrespectful and seriously unclassy was that?
Thats all I got for now. -- J
5. alpha6 | July 30th, 2007 at 7:07 am
I see that blood sucking wife of Hunter's is trying to cash in on him again with another book out attempting to re-write history of who the real "Hunter" was.
Nice, at least she waited till the corpse was cold before coming out with this one. Wonder if she will have another orgy fest like the farewell party she threw that others footed the bill for?
I didn't think much of Hunter, but I think a whole lot less of someone that muches off the dead.
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