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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
"Too weird to live, and too rare to die." Salon readers reflect on Hunter S. Thompson's life, death and legacy.
Feb 22, 2005 | [Read "The Duke of Hazard," by Cintra Wilson, and "Gonzo Gone," by Dana Cook.]
There have to be a million ways of saying it: The bell has tolled, the curtain has fallen, the bats have swooped and picked their prey clean, the weasels have won. We lost a legend. In the cold hollows of early Sunday/Monday, the crisp, silent Aspen air was shattered, as Hunter Thompson, The Shark, apparently killed himself. Not a single person reading this can say they weren't in some way inspired by the man, the myth, the madness. He is called the father of gonzo journalism, but alas, that is untrue. He was gonzo journalism, and that may be just as sad as the loss of the man himself. There is no one out there in the view scope with the nuts and brains to carry the flame, to stomp and sneer for the downtrodden, the counterculture, the anti-status quo. He stood in the face of a president who played on fears of attacks and peril to lure us into sacrificing our freedoms so his regime could watchdog the "unsavory" types -- the doomed, as the good doctor would call them -- and he lashed out at the president, Nixon, with all the fury of a warrior poet.
Who will do that now?
If ever there were a time when we as a society needed a counterweight to the overwhelming burden of apathy and apprehension that exist today, it is now. We are standing at the line ready to do battle, ready for the command so that we could begin it again, recreate the positive energies that Hunter and the nation yearned for, for so long. And our leader left us.
I want to know why, but I don't. I'm saddened but enraged. Full of so much feeling and yet totally hollow. Today and for several days to come, I feel we may all have the fear. The realization we may now be alone, our recognized voice silenced -- no one to speak for us now. It is bleak, my friends. But perhaps we can learn one final chapter from the good doctor. Perhaps it's time we stand for ourselves, and write, and speak out, stand out from the shadow of our fallen hero and be counted. That the silent minority shall be recognized and we will not sacrifice our principles of creativity, of satire, of individuality -- and let everyone from the FCC to the president himself know, now more than ever, that we are mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore. A great line from a great movie ("Network") that eerily revolved around a suicide.
In the end perhaps Hunter in fact described himself best, when he described his friend Lazlo: "There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
If only the latter were true as well.
Farewell, my good doctor. You will be sorely missed
-- Bryan Prior
Where have all the brave and fearful gone?
The social critic and clown of the last half of the 20th century is gone -- snatched from us by the only beast capable of tracking such an animal.
In the blaze of Vietnam he danced and spat at the lizards who fixed the fights. Now as the storms once again amass against all rational thinkers, when we are again fearful of the future, our brave warrior of letters has left the battlefield.
Maybe he knew the coming war would outlast him. Maybe he didn't want to leave halfway through the campaign -- better to leave at the opening salvo.
Who can say and who really cares?
Thompson has chosen the time of his departure and I am left to toast him and thank him for documenting the wave that came before. It must have been quite a ride.
In "The Fight," Norman Mailer characterized Thompson as nerves stacked upon nerves stacked upon nerves. That truly is what it took and that is who I toast.
-- Cole Drumb
I'd sorta hoped he'd do the deed in a white '71 Eldorado convertible with black interior, rushing, doom-spent, video-blanking, into a red, red cliff. Not off one. Into one. Like a cartoon coyote. Springing back, telling us it was all one long, horrible joke on us.
It was one long, horrible joke, which I think is what he knew.
Goodbye, Hunter. Goodbye.
-- Rob Oakley
So he is gone....
A blind pig in a world of fern bars,
A spew of truth, in a world of spin,
A confrontation with a reality unacknowledged,
A thoughtful wildness, sometimes without purpose,
Final deadlines met in ways undreamed.
-- Bob Patterson
