Source request, 1 more for HST

[Harry Edwards]

It's on the SF Chronicle web site.         twissty


On Feb 23, 2005, at 11:05 AM, Frances Morey wrote:

> Is this from a print journalism source or did you find David Kipen on 
> the
> net somewhere?
> Good one,
> Frances
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Harry Edwards" <laughingwolf at ev1.net>
> To: "ghetto survivors" <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 7:31 AM
> Subject: 1 more for HST
>
>
>> 'Gonzo' behavior made him an icon, but check Thompson's writing
>>   - David Kipen
>>   Wednesday, February 23, 2005
>>
>>
>> There's a great scene early on in Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and
>> Loathing in Las Vegas" where Dr. Gonzo, the author's corpulent Samoan
>> attorney, loses a salt shaker full of cocaine to the slipstream 
>> rushing
>> around their red Shark convertible. "Oh, jesus!," the good doctor
>> exclaims, "Did you see what God just did to us?" To which the
>> semi-autobiographical narrator, Raoul Duke, shouts back, "God didn't 
>> do
>> that! You did it ..."
>>
>>   When I read "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," must be 20 years ago, 
>> I
>> underlined the question "Did you see what God just did to us?" in blue
>> ink. Don't know why, really. I just must have liked it. In retrospect,
>> it's still a great line, shot through with that signature Thompson
>> speedball of grandiosity, paranoia and pure poetry.
>>
>>   Thompson had had a rough time of it before his suicide Sunday night,
>> but speculation in such matters is always reckless, and usually vile.
>> For what it's worth, he'd lost his friend Warren Zevon to lung cancer,
>> and some of his mobility to a broken leg. Who knows but what he felt 
>> he
>> was losing his country too?
>>
>>   He'd lost America at least once before, to his nemesis Nixon, about
>> whom he always wrote with an invigorating Thompsonian lack of
>> gentility. In these times of servile journalism -- when "The NewsHour
>> With Jim Lehrer" can devote a whole segment to bloggers' takedown of a
>> CNN executive for suggesting that journalists might be getting fragged
>> overseas, and not even bother asking whether the suggestion might be,
>> you know, true -- small wonder if Thompson had lately forsaken
>> political reportage for an underrated sports column at ESPN.com.
>>
>>   What worries me is that Thompson's suicide may now make it easier 
>> for
>> the forces of reaction to dismiss his achievement. See what you get,
>> they'll say, for taking drugs, for mocking authority, for making
>> yourself part of the story? It took Hemingway's reputation years to
>> recover from his suicide, and he's still not all the way back. Death 
>> is
>> only a good career move for the romantic and the obscure. For the
>> hard-living, or the already famous, somebody's always ready to spin
>> suicide into a cautionary tale. To get a clearer perspective on
>> Thompson's true legacy, ring up writer Marc Weingarten, who's 
>> finishing
>> up a history of New Journalism tentatively called "Based on a True
>> Story."
>>
>>   "Without question," Weingarten allowed Monday morning, "Hunter is a
>> giant of 20th century journalism. I would put him up there with
>> Halberstam, Ernie Pyle, those guys. I don't think there's ever been
>> another journalist who combined high moral purpose with sublime humor
>> so brilliantly. I find it tragic that his fame as an icon overshadowed
>> the work itself, because this was a man who cared a great deal about
>> the craft of writing, the way sentences are constructed. He was
>> painstaking about it."
>>
>>   It's too easy to forget what a literary man Thompson was. He quoted
>> Melville on Hawthorne in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas": "Genius
>> 'round the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition 
>> runs
>> the whole circle 'round." So what if he puckishly attributed the line
>> to Art Linkletter? (He got it right in his final ESPN column, just 
>> last
>> week.)
>>
>>   And in "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" -- the
>> blisteringly funny book whose intro begins with Thompson strung out at
>> the Seal Rock Inn, "the final chapter still unwritten and the presses
>> scheduled to start rolling in twenty four hours" -- he reprints the
>> poem "Be Angry At The Sun," by his fellow contemplator of Pacific
>> views, Robinson Jeffers. It's the one that starts out:
>>
>>   That men publish falsehoods
>>
>>   Is nothing new. That America must accept
>>
>>   Like the historical republics corruption and empire
>>
>>   Has been known for years.
>>
>>   Be angry at the sun for setting
>>
>>   If these things anger you...
>>
>>   To paraphrase Joe Hill, don't mourn, read. Pick up "Hell's Angels," 
>> or
>> either of Thompson's "Fear and Loathing" books -- though watch out for
>> a ripoff by some guy named Kirkegaard. And in case you catch anybody
>> from Fox News or the Cato Institute this week, going on about how
>> Thompson's end only proves what a hack he always was, just remember
>> that Cato himself fell on his sword rather than live in a world ruled
>> by Caesar, and that after his friends found him and bandaged him up,
>> Cato finished the job by ripping out his own intestines. Does all that
>> unwrite a single word he wrote?
>>
>>   In the end, only Hunter Thompson knows why he did himself in.
>> Speculation consoles nobody. All that's left is to keep reading those
>> angry, funny, deeply patriotic books of his. That, and to ask, "Did 
>> you
>> see what God just did to us?"
>>
>>   E-mail David Kipen at dkipen at sfchronicle.com.
>>
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