Dr. Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005
What a year. First Robert Quine decided to end it all last May, and now another huge influence is gone. Both via suicide. (And if you count the NHL....)
Discovering what the world looked like through the eyes of Hunter Thompson was a pivotal moment in my life, and not just for the wrong reasons. He was a gifted writer with a superb sense of irony, a caustic wit, and a scathingly self-righteous indignation that was never self-pitying. He knew the score and never candy-coated a single thing he ever said or wrote.
His description of speeding down a highway off ramp and skidding out to a perfect standstill (the fast heel-toe work on the accelerator and brake, etc.) - while being tailed by a state trooper! - is still one of the most memorable passages in the brilliant Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Death sucks any old time, but in this case it is truly "grim business."
Discovering what the world looked like through the eyes of Hunter Thompson was a pivotal moment in my life, and not just for the wrong reasons. He was a gifted writer with a superb sense of irony, a caustic wit, and a scathingly self-righteous indignation that was never self-pitying. He knew the score and never candy-coated a single thing he ever said or wrote.
His description of speeding down a highway off ramp and skidding out to a perfect standstill (the fast heel-toe work on the accelerator and brake, etc.) - while being tailed by a state trooper! - is still one of the most memorable passages in the brilliant Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Death sucks any old time, but in this case it is truly "grim business."
posted by Steve Caratzas at 5:47 PM
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1 Comments:
It's the end of an era.
My friend Suzanne lent me "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" when I was merely 17 saying, "You'll like this." She was right. She also made me read Tom Wolfe and Doris Lessing ... she was my second literary mentor (the first was my sister).
And when I moved to HST's hometown I found his childhood home and sat in my car and stared at it. Don't know what I expected ...
RIP.
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