Well, I just found out minutes ago that Hunter S Thompson is dead. This is terrible news for me because he was a god to me. I am sad and torn and will deal with this the way I deal with everything - writing to you about it.
Really, no one can be surprised by news of Hunter's death. Hunter lived a long a very crazy life... you know that. What is a freakish surprise to me is the news that it was a suicide. What the fuck is that about, Hunter? It seems a cowardly way to go for such a brave and fearless man. For the last month I have been reading his last tome Kingdom of Fear. I was on the web writing about Hunter on Blogcriticsthis afternoon (before I knew about his death). It was just today... about 6 hours ago I typed this very line "Hunter Thompson is the greatest living American writer".
Lemme tell you about my attachment and love of HST. If you have a working browser (like Mozilla) you have seen a black fist that says 'Gonzo' on the left under the links. That was an homage to Hunter for my site. In college, I had vanity plates on my Honda that said 'Lono'. This is a Hunter Thompson reference as well. Hunter is one of the reasons I moved to Colorado, seriously. I wanted to meet him, and knew eventually I would make my way to Woody Creek Tavern for an unpleasant drunken exchange with the man. In fact, if you could see that Atlas we used to drive to Colorado about 9 years ago... there is only one pen mark on the Colorado page. I circled Woody Creek to show my wife where Hunter lived, and where we would subsequently be stalking.
I am pleased to say I did get to finally see him in person. A year or two after we moved here he did a speaking engagement at the Fox Theatre in Boulder. It was a classic Hunter experience, and I was able to ask him a question personally. I'd have to say I am somewhere in the 'denial' stage still about this news. I keep refreshing my Google news search engine every few minutes hoping to see the word 'hoax' somewhere. It hasn't happened yet. There will be a million pages and writings dedicated to Hunter over the coming weeks and months. However, there is only one good internet site dedicated to Hunter for years, it is Christine's Great Thompson Hunt and that is where you should go for pictures and articles and news.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - RJ
Great post, LONO...
2 - Lono
thanks. I am pretty fraeked, and very embarrased to admit... but crying right now.
3 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
this is horrible, utterly unspeakable horrible. fucking hell, i didn't expect this for to greet me in the morning. awful, awful, awful. just fucking awful and sad and awful. thank you lono. fucking hell.
4 - Collin Baber
HST is now a martyr for the Gonzo cause. He was one journalist who dared speak the unfiltered truth.
5 - Roxy
I’m sorry to use this email address " I actually do receive mail at that address.
I’ve never posted on a blog before and I don’t want to open my ISP email address
up to the possibility of spam.
Ok, I just want to say think about this.
You can’t say “cowardly way”.
You can’t feel the way you’ve described about Hunter S Thompson and use such a cliché description of something you have no inside information about.
Cowardly
Main Entry: cow•ard
Pronunciation: 'kau(-&)rd
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French coart, from coe tail, from Latin cauda
: one who shows disgraceful fear or timidity
- coward adjective
“one who shows disgraceful fear or timidity”
Hey, think about it - there’s nothing fearful or timid about a man who decides he wants to check out, and actually has the balls to put a bullet in his own head and make it happen.
Cowardly people shoot unarmed people " not themselves.
Nothing disgraceful either " it was his life and his decision.
He died the same way he lived:
On his own terms.
He made his own decision and he didn’t give a damn about popular opinion.
Hunter S Thompson: Consistent to the end.
6 - Steve-O
Chicken shit way to go.
7 - Brett Foster
I know you won't be able to read the email I supplied to make this comment but, for the record, it's "HunterS@forpresident.com"
In essence, he was my president. He has guided me far more than any "legitimate" political leader ever could. He has taught me about truth, justice, corruption, depravity, loneliness, love, and shit the list could go on forever.. Above all he taught me Freedom. Truly unbridled freedom. A man who never stopped TRULY living life for one moment, constantly expanding (more like utterly annihilating)the boundaries of thought and literature. Hunter will be missed. His guidance will have to come elsewhere, from the spirit he has instilled in all of those who have ever read and appreciated his work. His character seems so clear in my mind, I can almost see how he'd react to this news had he read it himself, though I'll hardly get into that here.
His life exists for all of us to view and appreciate. He is immortal. Appropriately, this may have been his final spoof to us all. He'll never die, and we're damn fools who deserve to be publically humiliated for thinking such ridiculous things.
RIP HST
Selah,
Mahalo,
Res Ipsa Loquitor.
8 - Chambiac
he went out with a ZANG!
9 - Disappointed
there simply are no words for me right now. i am in shock. got online to check email and found out the horrible news. not much sleep tonight. check out msn.com, they misuse his words saying that nixon was quoted as saying that HST "represented that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of american character", sound familiar? FUCK msn.com WE WILL MISS YOU HUNTER
10 - david
Hunter Thompson dead?? and at is own hand? Doesn't sound Gonzo to me but he saw things the rest of us didn't .. his way of leaving the mess before getting nuked? Did he think we didn't need him anymore? That he'd said it all already and we'll get by on that? That would be Hunter but, goddamn, why leave in such a hurtful way man
11 - anony
R.I.P. Hunter, you'll always be remembered.
12 - TherRdoors
Went out just like Hemingway. It's so sad when writers have to leave before they are actually done.
13 - Cathy Linstrom
Hunter: Why???
14 - MissMacavity
I won a creative writing scholarship to Bennington, I have received numerous national awards for my writing, I have been published and paid to translate my visions into palatable, palpable words.
As a poet, I never did excell at factual journalism.
Who? HST.
What? Gone.
When? Now.
Where? Everywhere.
why have my words deserted me
yo no se
aloha
15 - s.a. griffin
fucking bats! goddamn fucking bats... rip/hst.
16 - Dave Nalle
It's Mahola, not Aloha, btw. As HST himself signed off.
As for going out the way he did, it makes perfect sense. He lived on his own terms and decided to die on his own terms.
I don't know how many details will get out, but I'll bet you my copy of Hey Rube that he planned this and had a damned good reason for it.
Dave
17 - godoggo
Lots of people I admire have left lately, but the right way, not like this. This makes me so sad in a way the others didn't. Well, he was a mean son of a bitch at the end, I understand. Keep a good thought.
18 - david
well bubba, a fucked up way to go out fer sure. maybe i always thought it would be too many chivas snowcones and a few thousand dynamite caps that the mercenary boys from soldier of fortune magazine accidentily left under the seat of an old jeep grand cherokee would send the whole shit pile skyward. indeed. now we will all have to wait out the excruciating process of an autopsy to see if there is any truth to my own personal suspicions that the dr. wa termianlly ill and not in it for the long haul. still, all of those that were touched either be his writings, himself personally, or both he shall not ever be forgotten for the insight, humor and eloquence. Res Ipsa Loqitor. R.I.P. hst
19 - david
i actually lived in aspen for a number of years, met the man, went to his house and collected many of my own and other stories. that being said i want to relate one that wa told to me by an old flyfishing guide/friend. it goes something like this: summer 1980. early morning maybe 6:30 a.m. woody creek at the time was very underdeveloped and "tom" let's call him is driving down the dirt road along the roaring fork on his way to basalt. all of a sudden a pale ghost white man, sweating profusely in nohting more than a dirty soaked t-shirt and jeans flags down his truck. said stranger is rambling nearly incoherently that some "crazy sonofabitch is trying to kill me with cocaine. we've been up for three days straight and i gotta get outta here. please take to the police or hospital or whatever, just get me outta here. that fucker's crazy!!" now have i paraphrased? yes. do i believe my friend? 100% and the person scrambling out of a ditch to flag him down? John Belushi. the person he was running from? HST. think about it. it doesn't matter if you believe it or not, i do bubba, i do. david.
20 - Mark Pugner
worth a read -- nice eulogy
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=1428