Fear & Loathing in the Afterlife - Jackson Specific
Hunter S. Thompson, named by some in the hour of his self-inflicted death; a journalist, a writer, a clown, the godfather of gonzo, was all of these things and more. He was a fine writer, it can surely be said, a perceptive and frighteningly honest political commentator; an intelligent, merry prankster who grasped life by the ankles and shook, until spare change sanity struck the hard sidewalk of reality hard enough to evoke a hearty gut laugh. He was a true and shining shard of jagged glass in the splintered mirror crown worn by America.
Hunter S. Thompson lived a true American dream: a life without boundries, in which anything that could be imagined could be accomplished. He called the most powerful men in the nation the names we mutter to ourselves. He bent and broke laws of logic and literature. He enjoyed savage drug binges on someone elses' dime.
The story goes that, while covering the Kentucky Derby on assignment for Scanlan's Magazine, mentally spent and under deadline, Thompson ripped pages from his notebook, numbered them and sent them off to the printer, certain that it would be his last article. The piece, however, proved to be a success, and Thompson realized "if I can write like this and get away with it, why should I keep trying to write like The New York Times?" A new journalism was born, wherein the reporter not only observed, but served as an integral part of the story itself. Many believe that his acerbic personal style fathered bastard children the world over, and that his potent prose breach birthed the freshest face in the extended journalism family: blogging.
Regardless of whether the paternity test proves positive, his foremost intention seemed clearly, to me, to toss ice water on fevered egos, to lament the false idols of celebrity in all its forms, to tread the swiftly flowing currents of the most popular culture in world, offering life preservers of our baldest intentions, culled from the tidal wave mob mentality. To seek the honest face of any man, woman, or experience. He took drugs, it is true, but not, I believe, from any weakness of spirit. Here was a man who realized the true malleability of our shared reality and was not afraid to tweak it, any more than he was afraid to speak truth to wind; to call a spade a spade, and a rat, a rat.
Dead by his own hand, Hunter S. Thompson leaves us behind to wonder why. There are those who point to physical infirmity as the reason for his capitulation. Perhaps his surrender was an admission of guilt on his own part, having succumbed long ago to the darkest trappings of our pop culture; venerated, duplicated, satirized and sanitized, Hunter S. Thompson was a domesticated animal. A de-stunk skunk.
Turn on the television and listen to George W. Bush, full of braggadocio, ignorant or impudent in the face of reality. Hunter S. Thompson was a spirit of a true America, an America that right now feels very far away. Rest in peace, brave and insane soldier. We will carry on your work. We will aspire to your greatness. You cut a swath through a jungle of inequity. We follow behind, cursing the gnats.
Goddamn, these suckers're big.
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