Hard to mourn a 67 year old man who lived and then died on his own freaking terms like no other.
I do mourn one crazy, rather uncompromising, deeply non-conforming voice no longer tossing some much-needed outrage out there.
For me, he was sneak reads of my older brothers’ books and envy when my middle brother brought the one closest in age to me on an outing to hear Hunter S. Thompson lecture at Salem State College. I was too young and way too unhip to hear his rambles, cocktails, cigarettes and couch on stage.
In my deepest fantasies, these pages are a nod to his gonzo style, when I try to go deep and go crazy and speak honestly. Funny that tonight I had dinner and worked on a couple of comedy sketches related to my own fuck you choice, defending my writing as something other than evidence of violent psychoses.
(Man, I was re-reading some of the most outrageous shit I wrote about the daily work grind. Some of that shit was fucking funny. Like this line:
If you’re sitting in a meeting and you can’t decide whether to stab yourself in order to get out of the room or stab whoever is inanely nattering just to make the noise stop, it’s a bad meeting.
I almost regret the unemployment, since not visiting such an asylum as that gig on a daily basis means less fuel for my funniest righteous indignation.)
But, back to Dr. Thompson. In ESPN’s obit they had the following quote from an AP interview in 2003:
Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairy-tale artist. You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you’re writing about before you alter it.
That pretty much sums up a lot of things for me, including why I’ve arrived so late at the comedy/writing table. It also relates to why my eyes roll back and I feel painful pressure from exploding veins in my gray matter everytime I listen to the “insights” and wordplay of the countless, banal 20-somethings littering the comedy-club landscape. In my fairy tale, the kids would be getting laid, drunk, fucked up, broken, hurt body, soul and heart, and dragging themselves back up again. You know, living.
I’m totally depressed about this. HST was one of the good guys, and one of the last liberal fucking warriors on the planet, but I just can’t quite applaud his suicide as “dying on his own terms.”
To quote Warren Ellis quoting someone else, “What a ripoff.”
It’s sad, and it’s pathetic, and it’s anything but noble.
Noble, no. But, I’m sure that my feelings on his suicide are colored by my feelings about my mom letting herself go at 71.
At some place I realized that for her, a combination of depression and ill health brought her to a place where living didn’t feel like the best alternative. Her logic infuriates me to this day, and I can see the glaring flaws in her reasoning.
But, and it’s a big but, she did exactly what she wanted, as fucked up as it might have been (not going to doctors and whatnot). So, when she left, I smiled that her own very strong will took over, and she did what she wanted.
I guess I feel the same way about HST and his suicide. His personality stayed pretty much in tact to the very end.
In fact, it’s like reading his work in a way. You read the shit and you’re thinking to yourself, this guy is fucking insane, why is he doing that?
It makes no sense, it’s insane, it’s infuriating, but then it’s still a fucking great story, because it’s him all the way.