Hunter S. Thompson: Nothing to Lose
“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”-HST
I’ve been a fan of HST since I was a teenager, and read The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time and instantly succumbed to the overwhelming spell of that wild man known as Hunter S. Thompson. Writer, biker, outlaw, pain in the ass crazy man, with a hopeless romantic’s need for law and order, even as he doused himself with every drug and bad behavior known to man.
Reading him as a teenager, of course, he struck me as a fearless, brash man, reveling in his larger-than-life personality…and then, the world keeps spinning, you get a little older, amass your own (challenging) life experience, and start recognizing the man behind the myth. As I got older, I understood more about the role he was playing–in our lives, and his own–understanding the masks we all wear. But kill-your-heroes crap aside, I’ll always have a very special place for Hunter in my heart–his obit for President Nixon, still makes me chortle…and I’m a Nixonite.
He’s an author/man who heavily influenced me , so I can’t even express how painful it was for me to hear of his suicide. He passed in 2005, but I can honestly say that I felt as if I was losing a friend. I constantly re-read his books, and laugh, before thinking,”…oh, Hunter!” The groupie of my soul always presumed I’d have a chance to meet him one day, and kiss his hands, in thanks for the all joy he gave me. But no. Earlier this year, in fact, I went to Colorado, to meet with potential business investors, and I thought about schlepping out to Woody Creek, to pay homage…but it was too painful. (Yes. I know: NERD ALERT. This how seriously I take my famous authors: In 1996, while living in Moscow, I went to Chekhov’s grave and mortified my then boyfriend, by bursting into tears. For the record, Dr. Chekhov died in 1904. )
However, I remind myself, that as long as people still devour with delight his full-bodied Gonzo prose, that wonderful, crazy, exasperating, frustrating, liberating, hilarious literary raconteur remains as alive as you or I. If you’ve never read anything by Hunter, his Paris Review interview is an excellent place to start. Naturally, I always recommend Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, with its famous opening sentence: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”
I don’t know where you’re reading this, but here in NYC, it’s a rainy, muggy Saturday; we’ve been buffeted with pounding thunderstorms since morning. In other words, here in NYC, it’s the perfect day to curl up with a HST book, a tumbler or two of ” brown party liquor*, ” some classic 1970s country music and let the chips fall where they may.
“Sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whiskey and drive fast on empty streets, with nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested.”-Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson, 1937-2005.
*h/t to the wit and wisdom of Early Cuyler of Squidbillies.
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