Hunter S Thompson was a shallow, selfish schmuck. Now, he made some at least moderately valuable contribution to the art of letters. His first person narrative style was innovative and highly readable. His adventures and rants were often more interesting than the idiot politicians he was writing about.
Hunter Thompson's work is real fun stuff for college boys to read while they're stoned, full of rebellion, and looking for cheap laughs. The guy could really sling some words in a highly entertaining fashion. It's easy to relate to him as a crazed, gun-totin' Kentuckian character, but indulgence has its limits.
Really, his behavior was pure childish narcissm and acting out. For example, take this typical adventure recounted lovingly by Tom Wolfe in his HST obit:
When we reached the tent, the flap-keepers refused to let him enter with the whiskey. A loud argument broke out. I whispered to Hunter. "Just give me the glass and I'll hold it under my jacket and give it back to you inside." That didn't interest him in the slightest. What I failed to realize was that it was not about getting into the tent or drinking whiskey. It was the grand finale of an event, a happening aimed at turning the conventional order of things upside down. By and by we were all ejected from the premises, and Hunter couldn't have been happier. The curtain came down for the evening.
Perhaps a teenager or college student might be considered mischievously charming for behaving like this. Thompson, however, was nearly 30 years old by this time. By that point, it's just getting to be pathetic and asinine- and that was his MO right through to the end.
His basic schtick got old real fast, but it was good for a yuck. HST gets assignment to cover a presidential campaign. He checks into hotel and proceeds to see how many drugs he can take at once, while showing up and making big public displays of drunk and disorderly conduct. Throw in lots of vague, dark denunciations of "greedheads" and some apocalyptic crap about how the country's going down for the count. Voila! Genius!
Not really. Really not at all. Other than as an exercise in style, his work mostly had minimal intellectual worth. For starters, it wasn't very good as journalism. He could write well, but he didn't have any more respect for facts than he did for other people's property. He didn't feel any particular need to actually tell the truth. How much is a journalist worth who doesn't care about telling the truth? He largely ruined any journalistic worth his work might have had by simple, dumb dishonesty.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - dead hunter
Yeah I hear what you're saying. Hunter was self-loathing (he shot himself - duh). I hate to say it but his writing and life will really fade from memory as nothing more than really, really funny entertainment. To describe him as important politically or as an important man of letters - as I've heard various writers espouse - is bullshit. People are in mourning, You're piece here cuts to the quick and I'm glad I read it. I think Hunter was a great American CHARACTER - nothing more, nothing less.
2 - Jill Horatio III
He hated rich people? Just because someone is not at helpful as Mother Teresa does not mean he hated the poor. He hated phonies. Poor rich popular of non. Liar scum should be hated.
3 - Thomas Hughes
Well, I guess now the Bloggers are going to solve the world's oldest and deepest problems, and fuck whoever doesn't pretent to devote their lives to caring about issues that are beyond them. The author of this entry is obviously a bored, non-intellectual with no imagination, whose TV is constantly flipping between CNN and FOX News and taking notes on why they're wrong. What you ignorant duetch bags don't understand is that trying to legitamately insert yourself into American politics is, has always been, and will continue to be an impossible predicament for a sane person, and is a sport of a proffession that only money grubbing perverts with black hearts and an appetite for proffessional sex at a bargain rate. Thomson never had much interest in being a proffesional whore, he had netter things to do, like enjoy himself. You are a jealous hippocrit and scum, whose thoughts today are on why a Great American Writer should not be taken seriosly. That is valuable internet space that you could use to "Bring the races together." Keep building your resume for political office, and maybe someday the people will all know your name and build statues of you.
4 - Thomas Hughes
Well, I guess now the Bloggers are going to solve the world's oldest and deepest problems, and fuck whoever doesn't pretent to devote their lives to caring about issues that are beyond them. The author of this entry is obviously a bored, non-intellectual with no imagination, whose TV is constantly flipping between CNN and FOX News and taking notes on why they're wrong. What you ignorant duetch bags don't understand is that trying to legitamately insert yourself into American politics is, has always been, and will continue to be an impossible predicament for a sane person, and is a sport of a proffession that only money grubbing perverts with black hearts and an appetite for proffessional sex at a bargain rate can tolerate. Thompson never had much interest in being a proffesional whore, he had netter things to do, like enjoy himself. You are a jealous hippocrit and scum, whose thoughts today are on why a Great American Writer should not be taken seriosly. That is valuable internet space that you could use to "Bring the races together." Keep building your resume for political office, and maybe someday the people will all know your name and build statues of you.
5 - Temple Stark
I didn't write that comment above - but I could have.
6 - Eric Berlin
Al, I was kind of with you through the first half of your post, but you lost me when you declared that Thompson's work lacks intellectual merit. In my opinion, that's simply not the case as he has influenced generations of writers with his fine and innovative style and outlook.
7 - Richard Crane
Yes, what a fool. Nice blog page.
8 - Shark
Al, I know you're trying to be provocative and all... tweak the dreaded "leftist pinkos" who just looooove HST, but:
1) Wow. It takes a lot of balls and a terrific amount of intellectual insight to shoot fish in a barrel, but be a man, dude: pick a moving target
2) You'd get more interesting 'action' inviting that guy who had the ape photo labeled "Janet Jackson" over to Blogcritics.
3) A GREAT IRONY that the guy who wrote: "...Hunter Thompson's work is real fun stuff for college boys to read while they're stoned, full of rebellion..." masturbates to photos of the Queen of College Boy Fake Literary Profundity, Ayn Rand.
4) What's with the "Nietzchean resentment"? Seems like every time you get in over yer head on an essay, you toss out some "Nietzchean [sic] resentment". Was Nietzsche big during your dorm room days? What the fuck is that supposed to mean, really?
5) what 'Thomas Hughes' said
9 - Shark
PS:
re: "...What did Hunter Thompson propose to do to make the world work better? What would he have proposed to do about fixing Social Security, stopping terrorists, or reconciling the races?
If you judge Thompson by the same standards you apply to the political puppets on the right and the left -- um, YOU DON'T GET IT:
Sometimes, it's enough of a 'contribution' to the cesspool of culture just to *piss on the parade.
Somebody's gotta do it.
* see all of Shark's writings for more
10 - Al Farker
Man, i just began typing up a long and icredibly sarcastic dig at Al Barger's incredibly lame post. Then i thought why waste my time with scum like him..
To qoute,
"He oft claimed that his journalistic beat was "the death of the American dream." Thing is, the American dream isn't dying or dead. It's in somewhere near as good a shape as ever."
Jesus Christ Al, do you live in America at the moment?
Hunter would be turing in his grave hearing that kind of jibberish.
I hope you and your 'like' die an early, painful death.
Thank the Lord i live in Australia where your perveted American Dream is diluted to the point that only fools and greedy money loving religous types are infected.
R.I.P - Hunter S. Thompson
11 - KOB
HST selfish?
People who drive around in SUVs do more damage in a year than HST ever did to a hotel room. Greedy? You don't think this country is a little greedy?
HST's personal behavior was a shock-value prop for writing about the hyprocricy of his times and ours.
You can't dismiss HST as some clever stylist, a turn-of-the-phrase artist. Read again the first few graphs of F&L; it's brilliant. And try to duplicate something on the level of his Hells Angels work. It's a work extraordinary personal courage, writing, and a challenge to every journalist. HST lived. He lived every day. Who among us can say the same?
12 - Temple Stark
I would generally agree with Al B on this but he goes too far in saying Hunter is worthless, which I never would say.
13 - Eric Olsen
nice job Al, art is not life
14 - the lasting jones
How someone could say that Thompson contributed little is astounding to me.
But so was the election of George W. Bush
Every screaming cell in Thompson's tortured, burnout body was a little Jesus Christ sacrifice to "true liberty". How many of our kids are locked up on bogus charges of possession of this or that fucken’ substance. What kind of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are they experienced in our great free country.
Thompson knew the darkened truth of every American life: not only can the government jail you for actual crimes like cheating, stealing and killing, they can jail you for ingesting a substance which you’ve decided might enhance your pursuit of pleasure. Thompson’ knew deep down to his chemically mutated genetics what the pitiful sheepish majority of the people fail to see: that a government best controls its people by the regulation of how they are allowed to pursue pleasure.
Thompson lived his life spitting in the eye of this control. His existence was about doing what ever the fuck you want when ever the fuck you want to: as long as it does not aggress on another. Sure he garbed a tit here and there and he suffered the legal ramifications there of and, of course, he was totally fucked up, he knew he had a right to be. He knew that inherent in the American wind that blew through Woody Creek was his inalienable right to liberty… Thompson style.
The press is failing the nation at the moment. A positive press pimple reared it’s ugly head during the 60’s and 70’s but we’ve since slipped backward like a posh, comfortable, middle-class house sliding down a rain saturated California hill.
The nation in these strange days of 2005 is saturated like a huge pile of wet dung and it’s ready to tumble and bury us in a pile of shit.
And as for the quote: “Thing is, the American dream isn't dying or dead. It's in somewhere near as good a shape as ever.” I assume that you must think that having a 52-inch plasma-full-injected, up-your-ass, vibrating TV (owned by Citibank VISA) set up in your living room and a Wal-Mart next door is living the American dream. I pity you man, I pity you and all the poor suckers out there.
The king is dead, long live the king.
The next to pick up the torch.
The next in a long line of Road Men for the Lords of Karma.
15 - Al Barger
Thomas Hughes [comment #3]- Ouch! I didn't see that critique coming. I'd hate for people to think that I'm some cheap do-gooder. However, I don't think I have much reputation for that. Feel free to ask around Blogcritics.
It's not that I expect everybody to spend all their time trying to fix everything, but it takes more than pooping on everything all the time to impress me.
16 - Al Barger
Lasting Jones, are you out of your tree? Setting Thompson up as a a little dashboard martyr is just dumb. In the first place, he never did any significant jail time, other than missing high school graduation cause he was in jail for a burglary. He certainly never did time for drugs.
More significantly, you're absolutely deluding yourself if you think that he'd have given enough of a shit about anyone else to be in any form martyring himself. Hell, he didn't care enough about his 6 year old grandson to take his suicide out in the woods or somewhere away from where he'd be directly exposed.
17 - The Lasting Jones
I don't think Thompson cared if he was a martyr or not.
I beleive he was so open about his substances abuse that it was danaggled carrotlike a constant challenge to the powers that be: "Here come get me and through me in jail you Nazi swine. I blow pot smoke in the face of your tiresome regulations."
Thompson was not a liberal.
He was a gun toting, explosion loving, NRA life member. A libertarian. A truth loving pragmatist. He knew you don't have to help a old lady across the street to be morally sound. You just had to not run her over.
18 - godoggo
Two more bits. Spend them wisely.
Obviously no-one's going to turn Barger's head regarding the fundamental stoopidness of Rand's writing, but, since the main topic is his moral judgment of one celebrity author's private life, I can't help wondering what he thinks of hers.
____________________
I was thumbing through one of those books of Hunter's letters (or maybe it was a review?), and was struck by a passage from an early one in which he discussed how he planned to contrive a persona so as to get famous. One of the obit (or maybe a blog discussion?) recalled a public appearance in which he pretended to be drinking JD and getting progressively drunk (not that he didn't do such things).
As to his writing, I think it was occasionally profound, not just inventive and funny. As to the actual person behind it, well, I'd say he was imperfect. Unlike me.
19 - Al Barger
No, Thompson was NOT a libertarian, but merely a libertine. He voted for Nader, not Browne.
And how do you get "martyr" out of any of this? Again, he was never jailed for his chemical indulgences. He partied hearty until he got completely bored with it, then blew his brains out. That sure doesn't make him Jesus.
20 - the lasting jones
I had to look libertine up:
1. One who acts without moral restraint; a dissolute person.
2. One who defies established religious precepts; a freethinker.
I guess your right.
I guess that's what I am too.
There is probably a litle bit of jesus in all of us. This girl or that girl, this job or that stinking job, there's a little sacrifice in every decision we make. I mean just think of what you could have been doing besides running for public office.
You could have been fishing.
You've squandered your time and martyred your manly hunting fising instinct
21 - Al Barger
I've martyred my manly fishing instinct? Yowsa! I'll have whatever you're having.
22 - Mark Saleski
so, a person is 'of merit' by some set of objective parameters?
you know, the butterfly effect works in just about any realm. just the fact that thompson inspired a bunch of folks to become writers is good enough for me.
23 - Ben Henry
Thought I'd post another response to another jackass opinion writer, but looks like the masses are well ahead of me in this case. It's OK, everyone knows you are not even close to capable of providing stimulative interesting banter from your article here, and I understand your frustration.
Hunter Thompson's books are in the fiction section at your library. Others would say that HST told more truth through his fiction than most true journalists. Anyhow, he never claimed his work to be true, so why are you picking on him as a journalist. HE WAS A FICTIONAL AUTHOR! He entertained he provoked thought, he just plain provoked.
Quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." If you can't relate to this then I don't think your opinion is even valid. Let the people who enjoyed his work alone to mourn. I really had no interest in books as a high school student until I read Fear and loathing. Within a year I read most of his work. Is that so bad that an author stimulates a youthful mind out of apathy and into looking at what is really going on and getting pissed and vocal about it? Sorry to say I lost interest in your article before I could get through it. I did read enough to know that you're probably jealous that you'll never be half the man as HST.
As for his suicide, the guy was in a lot of pain, crazy, and probably wanted to go out before he ended up a slobbering fool in a home. I think care-takers would be thankful for this.
Anyhow, nice effort to discredit an insane soul, who just so happened to be able to write incredible material, entertain, and be compared to some of the greatest writers of our time, speak out against gross injustice (go to lisl.com), and speak up for the less fortunate and downtrodden in the world.
24 - Billy Beck
Yo. Barger. I'm not here to interrupt the shit-storm or anything. But since you went and started talking about "facts" and "Nixon", then I'm here to point out that it wasn't Woodward and Bernstein who "took the bastard down". It was "Maximum John" Sirica who did that by squeezing the shit out of the burglars.
History is a wonderful thing, and the facts are there for anyone who wants to go get them and stop foisting ridiculous horseshit in the public record.
Happy to help.
25 - HW Saxton
Al,I'm not here to rag about ya slagging
off Thompson, as I really don't a f**k
one way or the other.His earlier books
were entertaining enough,but I've got at
least a hundred other writers I'd read
any day of the week before him.
I just wanted to give my take on what
you said about Thompson talking about
Nixon orchestrating the killings of the
Ohio St. students. Of course he did not
directly order this as you well know,you
were just looking for something else to
bash HST about.Again I don't care either
way. But,what Thompson's point was as I
am sure you fully comprehended was that
Pres. Nixon created the environment that
made this possible not in a direct sense
naturally but through his aggressively
pro Law & Order stance on the anti-war
movement all over the USA in the late
60's/early 70's.
I know you were just spinning this as to
have something else to bitch & rag about
as regards H.S.T but considering his um,
"colorful" life I'm sure you could have
done better than to accuse Thompson of
actually directly saying that Nixon had
those hippies gunned down. Again though,
Nixon layed down the groundwork for it
happen and the atmosphere to where this
kind of police state facsist bullshit
could happen in the first place.
As for the rest of your piece I agree w/
about 97% and I'm afraid if this f'ing
love fest for HST keeps up much longer
people are going to start pushing for
his canonization.