“There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” -Hunter S. Thompson on “The Edge”

    This last Friday, February 20th, marked the four-year anniversary of the end of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s life. In early 2005 the famous writer and journalist was found dead in his kitchen at his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. He had taken his own life, as he always said he would. This may seem like a bewildering and unnerving fact for most people, but to those who knew him Hunter was a man who had teetered on the edge of what some would call sanity, of social niceties, and frankly the edge of reality itself for some great time. He fully knew and understood that one day he would fall over and make that transition from man to legend. As big as the Hawaiian god Lono which he claimed to embody, as dangerous as the Hell’s Angels he once traveled with, and as glamorous and decorated as the city of Las Vegas upon which he began his journey into stardom, Hunter S. Thompson lived a life on the edge. Why? So you don’t have to.

    My initial exposure to Hunter’s work should come as no surprise, as it was through Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the semi-successful big screen adaptation of Hunter’s book of the same title. The movie, despite poor box office numbers, gained a sort of cult status following its initial VHS release. You weren’t cool in many circles unless you’d seen the ultra-trippy drug-glorifying story of Roaul Duke and Dr. Gonzo as they tour and terrify downtown Las Vegas. I first saw the movie at a friend’s house who had fished the VHS out of a box near the dumpster of his apartments. I was inebriated and young, supposedly the perfect conditions for enjoying this film, but I found the plot impossible to decipher, and the imagery unnerving and disturbing. I drunkenly stumbled through the first half of it before a wave of boredom struck and I left to find more suitable fun.

    It was years before I came across the movie again and when I did, I found something else all together. While perusing another friend’s massive DVD collection, I came across an interesting looking large DVD box, which boasted the coveted “Criterion Collection” label across its top. Here was Fear and Loathing again, only this time there was something more. I opened up the large box to examine its bonus content, which included a few rather lengthy essays concerning the subject of the stories origins. According to the author himself, many of the events of the story were drawn from real life experience. Upon hearing this, my brain quickly flashed back to images of giant lizards and excessive drug use, and I found myself thinking, “There’s no way this actually happened”. My interest was now peaked and I began dissecting the events of the life of Hunter S. Thompson in the pursuit of some form of truth I thought I might find. I watched that movie every night for the next week. I enjoyed it more with every viewing and found myself falling deeper into a rabbit hole of utmost curiosity. I needed to know the story of this man.

    Hunter was born in Louisville, Kentucky on July 18, 1937. The son of an insurance adjuster, Hunter became “problematic” in school following the death of his father. Hunter was 14 years old. He took a liking to sports, a great passion that he pursued for the rest of his life, although his first love was always writing. Hunter excelled in writing from an early age and contributed to many local publications. But even early in life he had a taste for danger. An incident involving a stolen car landed him a sixty-day sentence in jail. He served thirty of them and joined the Air Force immediately following his release.

    While in the Air Force Hunter aimed to be a pilot, but found a better fit working as a sports columnist for the local paper at his base. Hunter was recommended for an early honorable discharge following some confrontational experiences with superior officers. Official documents state: "In summary, this airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy,”.

    Hunter set his sights on New York City and upon his arrival began climbing the ladder on his way to becoming a journalist. Among some of his earliest jobs were working as a copy boy for Time magazine, where he was fired for insubordination, and working for a paper called The Middletown Daily Record where he was fired for damaging an office candy machine.

    Not letting his early job troubles get him down Hunter found other opportunities that allowed him to not only heighten his writing abilities but to travel while he did it. During his early years as a writer Hunter traveled to Puerto Rico, Brazil, and eventually wound up in California in the city of Big Sur. There he became friends with folk legend Joan Baez and began work on his book The Rum Diary, a fictionalized account of his experiences in Puerto Rico. Although it was not published until 1998, The Rum Diary is an important work in the beginnings of what would eventually be known as Gonzo Journalism, a style of heavy-handed fictionalization of facts that make up an often-powerful story despite its fantasized version of the truth.

    I found myself becoming more and more obsessed with the reality behind the story of Fear and Loathing. For some strange reason I felt I needed to know what really happened on that crazed trip to Las Vegas. I could piece the basic facts together: Hunter was working on a piece for The Rolling Stone concerning the death of Chicano television journalist Ruben Salazar. There he met and befriended a man named Oscar Zeta Acosta, a known Mexican-American activist and attorney. Amongst the increasing racial tension surrounding Hunter’s investigation, an opportunity was presented to him by Sports Illustrated to cover the illustrious Mint 400 motorcycle race in Vegas. (Finally, the seemingly random motorcycle race of the movie had some relevance!) Feeling this would be a good way to escape the tensions surrounding his other story, Hunter asked Oscar to accompany him, along with a substantial drug collection, for a wild week in Vegas. What ensued is chronicled in his most famous work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, which originally appeared as a two-part series in The Rolling Stone magazine and was later published as a book. Now here was something. I quickly purchased the book and began my research on this strange story that suggested it was in pursuit of something called “The American Dream”. Was that what this strange journey was about? Were they actually in pursuit of some ideal that died with an earlier generation? Or were these just burnt out ex-super freaks too stoned to responsibly cover the task assigned to them? To find the answer I needed to know more about the mind that hatched so compelling a tale.

    Hunter’s first published book was entitled Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Apparently, Hunter had written a brief article for a publication called The Nation on the infamous motorcycle gang and after the articles publication he received several book offers. He decided the best way to compile research for his book was to take his wife and newborn son along for a cross-country ride with the notoriously troublesome biker gang, The Hells Angels. Things ended ugly when a confrontation broke out disputing royalties from the book. Hunter was severely beaten by several members of the Hells Angels and returning home, to lick his wounds, he finished his book which was considered a success and gained him no small amount of press. Keeping in mind that The Rum Diary was not yet published, The Hells Angels was the public’s first full look into the mind of Hunter S. Thompson. Although his later themes of Gonzo-style writing and “The American Dream” were not so prevalent in this book, Hunter’s sardonic and extremely sharp wit made it an instant success and his writing was hailed as being completely original by both peers and public alike.

    After the success of his first book, Hunter used some of the money to buy a large estate in a small town called Woody Creek, Colorado. The house he dubbed “Owl Farm” and he would continue to operate out of this very important facility for the rest of his days. Hunter loved his home and he often described it as his “fortified compound”.

    By this time, around 1970, Hunter S. Thompson was a well-known name in the writing industry. He was hailed for his bold stories and notorious for his extremely public position on the use of drugs and alcohol. His unmistakable behavior, even the way he walked and talked, were beginning to make up a very clear image in the public’s eye. Two very important events in Hunter’s life came at the beginning of the seventies. Feeling it was time to take his political views one step further, Hunter decided to run for Sheriff of Aspen County, Colorado. His platform for office included the decriminalization of drugs for personal use, banning large buildings that obstruct view of the mountains, and renaming Aspen “Fat City” in an attempt to ward off greedy vacation investors. The now shaven bald Hunter ran under what he and his followers called the “Freak Power Ticket”, and early polls suggested he was going to win. Although Thompson did in fact win in Aspen City, the voters of Aspen County were mostly opposed to his seemingly criminal ways and he lost the election with 44% of the votes. Footage of the results shows a clearly disappointed Thompson wearing a wig, the American flag draped over his shoulders, while he explains to the cameras that he has unfortunately proved what he set out to prove; that the American dream really is fucked.

    Another milestone came into his life while on assignment for Scanlan’s Monthly at the Kentucky Derby. He was sent to cover the race and meet there with a British artist who was to provide illustrations for the article. This would be the beginning of the odd and wonderful friendship of Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman. Steadman, a clean-cut British gentleman, was in for quite a ride. Hunter decided the only righteous way to cover the story was to introduce Steadman to psilocybin mushrooms. The result was an onslaught of slap-dash drawings of people and horses so grotesque and perverse that one would shiver at the thought of the twisted mind that birthed them. The increasingly note-worthy style of journalism that Hunter was creating now had the visual representation it needed to really take flight. With their article, The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved, came the official birth of Gonzo, the term originating from a peers review of Hunter and Steadman's Derby article which read: "This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling."

    As my experience with Hunter S. Thompson’s work expanded, I marveled at his boldness and dedication to a life filled with such non-stop craziness. I was sometimes appalled by his choices, but that was just it: Hunter lived a life, always in pursuit of his ideals of “The American Dream”, which often required him to go to the edges of some nasty extremes. He was an outlaw by definition; he lived outside the law because he believed that the horrors he submitted himself to were a price to pay for the greater good. One of his most famous quotes, “It never got weird enough for me”, seems hard to believe considering the astonishing events that were just around the corner in the life of Gonzo Journalist, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

Labels: books, heroes