No More Fear and Loathing.
It has taken me a few days to digest the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson.
I first encountered HST unknowingly in The Doonesbury cartoon strip. But, I admit that my first real engagement with him was via Fear and Loathing in Lost Vegas, the movie. I watched the movie and while I thought that the drugs were funny I felt that there was more to it than that. I was right. I realized that society, especially in that god awful year of our lord nineteen hundred and seventy two, was something worth insulating yourself from. But running right along with this was a love of life that I do not think will ever be out done by anyone. I noticed while I was reading Thompson's other works that life is something that sometimes you just walk right up to and spit in the face. Whether he was covering politics, sports or the general depravity of this, the American century, Hunter S. Thompson was right there getting the real story, getting his hands dirty or his face broken.
Thompson's suicide was (I believe) the ultimate manifestation of this love of life. The fact that one can be such a master of his own destiny and such a lover of experience that he can in good faith decide when his own life would reach its totality is exactly what I would expect Dr. Thompson. He was always in control even in the face of the imense power of the world. Never compromise!
I never met Hunter S. Thompson. I have only seen his pictures in books and magazine and read his thoughts that he had committed to paper. But I think that if people could look past the drugs and debauchery they would find a man that was smarter than the rest of us. I think they would find a man that was closer to figuring it all out then any of us will ever be. I do know that as far as I am concerned he has shown me a great many things and made me think about infinetly more.
He knew the edge because he had been over it.
Carry on.
I first encountered HST unknowingly in The Doonesbury cartoon strip. But, I admit that my first real engagement with him was via Fear and Loathing in Lost Vegas, the movie. I watched the movie and while I thought that the drugs were funny I felt that there was more to it than that. I was right. I realized that society, especially in that god awful year of our lord nineteen hundred and seventy two, was something worth insulating yourself from. But running right along with this was a love of life that I do not think will ever be out done by anyone. I noticed while I was reading Thompson's other works that life is something that sometimes you just walk right up to and spit in the face. Whether he was covering politics, sports or the general depravity of this, the American century, Hunter S. Thompson was right there getting the real story, getting his hands dirty or his face broken.
Thompson's suicide was (I believe) the ultimate manifestation of this love of life. The fact that one can be such a master of his own destiny and such a lover of experience that he can in good faith decide when his own life would reach its totality is exactly what I would expect Dr. Thompson. He was always in control even in the face of the imense power of the world. Never compromise!
I never met Hunter S. Thompson. I have only seen his pictures in books and magazine and read his thoughts that he had committed to paper. But I think that if people could look past the drugs and debauchery they would find a man that was smarter than the rest of us. I think they would find a man that was closer to figuring it all out then any of us will ever be. I do know that as far as I am concerned he has shown me a great many things and made me think about infinetly more.
He knew the edge because he had been over it.
Carry on.
posted by Daniel Feild at 4:29 PM
1 Comments:
In the words of someone else, "So it goes."
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