
How Hunter S. Thompson Became a Legend - samclemens
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/rolling-stone-at-50-how-hunter-s-thompson-became-a-legend-w475222
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weston
"Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas" is one of the best books I've ever read. I
made the mistake of reading it on an airplane on my first trip out to Las
Vegas. The book is so funny that I'm sure the people sitting next to me
thought I had a few screws loose because I kept laughing so hard.

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spodek
On Rolling Stone at 50 -- trust being something you can develop over decades
and lose in an instant, do others feel like "A Rape on Campus" did in the
magazine?

To put on the front page something so sensational yet not fact-checked then
soon criticized to show multiple levels of abandoning journalistic practice
seems to show a move away from journalism and the public interest in favor of
agenda.

Curious how others see it.

~~~
nooron
I love HST, but a lot of what he wrote in Rolling Stone was not true either.
Publishing "A Rape on Campus" was a major error in judgment with very serious
and censure-deserving consequences. But RS has never been a magazine to
"trust" in the sense you are purporting it once was.

~~~
delazeur
Yup.

Gonzo: of or associated with journalistic writing of an exaggerated,
subjective, and fictionalized style. bizarre or crazy.

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abakker
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas#The_.22wave_speech.22)

That passage remains one of the most meaningful things I've read in my life.

However, his defining work in my opinion is Hell's Angels. It is prescient in
so many ways. Among the most interesting is how early he is able to see,
inside the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, the rise of so many later
developments in US politics. I will not ruin the surprise, but some of the
passages would make you swear that the man had a time machine. I've read it 3
times now.

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NoGravitas
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 will also make you swear he had a
time machine. I guess the scale at which things change is longer than we think
it is.

~~~
abakker
Yeah, absolutely. I went through a period last year where I read every HST
book in one continuous binge. One of the great pleasures I had was driving SF
to SLC via nevada route 50 and listening to the '72 on audiobook. Something
about that really helped it sink in.

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52-6F-62
If only he was with us right now. He'd have found a new lease on life. He
often said he needed Nixon in a way... Trump would have built him a whole new
legacy, I have no doubt.

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rhblake
Last year's US election often made me think of Thompson's brilliant book "Fear
and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail '72", in which he mainly followed George
McGovern's campaign, running against Nixon (Nixon ended up winning in a
landslide). McGovern's campaign chief Frank Mankiewicz called it "the least
factual, most accurate account" of the election... this quote in particular
stood out:

"This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves;
finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220
million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no
qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us
uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his
mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of
the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of
the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some
stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the
things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose... Jesus! Where
will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"

~~~
52-6F-62
Felt I should add this in a second comment, but I want to really recommend (if
you haven't read him already) Matt Taibbi.

He formerly wrote for an English language expatriate newspaper in Russia
during the chaos of post-Soviet society in the 90's (edit: and early 2000's),
and now writes for a few magazines in the US. He's covered Trump in a more
clearheaded take on HST's writing style.

ex: -------------------------

"En route to taking this crucial first beachhead in his invasion of the
capital, Trump did what he always does: stoked chaos, created hurricanes of
misdirection, ignored rules and dared the system of checks and balances to
stop him.

By conventional standards, the system held up fairly well. But this is not a
conventional president. He was a new kind of candidate and now is a new kind
of leader: one who stumbles like a drunk up Capitol Hill, but manages even in
defeat to continually pull the country in his direction, transforming not our
laws but our consciousness, one shrivelling brain cell at a time."

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rhblake
Thanks for the recommendation - and I'll have to check out "Where the Buffalo
Roam" too.

Regarding the 1972 election, Timothy Crouse's "The Boys on the Bus" (published
around the same time as HST's book) is also worth reading. It's about the
reporters on the road reporting on the campaign ("one of the first treatises
on pack journalism" sez Wikipedia) and includes various colorful characters,
including of course HST, who also wrote the foreword.

~~~
52-6F-62
Never heard of it! Thanks for the recommendation. It will help frame what else
I know about the time.

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NoGravitas
Fans of Hunter S. Thompson should check out Transmetropolitan, a comics series
(now complete and available in collected volumes) written by Warren Ellis. The
main character, Spider Jerusalem, is kind of a HST tribute, turned up to 11,
in a transhumanist cyberpunk future.

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Danihan
He may be a legend to some, I'd consider him a cautionary tale.

He had one child, who called him a "basket case"

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/12/juan-
thompson-...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/12/juan-thompson-
book-hunter-s-thompson-stories-i-tell-myself)

 _His resulting memoir nonetheless gives the impression that the good man in
Hunter S Thompson was sometimes hard to find. There were long, late-at-night
arguments that he, as a child, would try to mediate. Mostly, he writes in the
book, he ended up taking his mother, Sandy’s, side. “[My father] didn’t care
what she was trying to say, he cared about breaking her,” he said. In the
book, Thompson recalls his father’s “deliberate distortions and carefully
chosen words that would inflict maximum hurt”._

Hunter killed himself while his only son and only grandson were visiting.
Disgusting and traumatizing.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Disgusting and traumatizing.

People have mental health issues sometimes. Sad, not disgusting.

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taternuts
It's incredibly selfish to do that. Leave a note and go into the woods and
blow your brains out so your last act isn't traumatizing your family with the
sight of your gruesome corpse.

~~~
SirensOfTitan
This post really highlights a deep level of ignorance mental health issues
that's quite common in western society. Similar to depression, where a person
just can't "think happier thoughts," a mentally distressed person in many
cases cannot just suddenly get out of their own head enough to feel empathy
for others.

~~~
J-dawg
This can't be emphasised enough. It's utterly unfair to describe a victim of
depression as "selfish".

I'm curious, was there a reason you specifically mentioned western society? Is
there another region of the world that handles it better?

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Danihan
Life isn't fair, and is full of "victims," real and perceived.

Doesn't it grow tiring, constantly making excuses for people?

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Doesn't it grow tiring, constantly making excuses for people?

Not if you're a compassionate person. If not, some bitterness may apply, but
its only going to eat you.

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Simulacra
I strongly suggest reading his book "The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate
Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967" It's a collection of his letters, and
responses, from people he wrote during that era. Incredible insight into this
amazing man.

~~~
bluetwo
I'm a big fan of "The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time"
which is a collection of articles from the first part of his career. I haven't
read The Proud Highway but it sounds good.

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Dowwie
All energy flows according to the whims of the great Magnet

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praptak
'In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was
something or other — “but just call me Jimbo” — and he was here to get it on.'

I absolutely hate this style of journalism. It might have been fresh once, as
a contrast with the then dominant writing style. Unfortunately in general it's
a pain to read how it was hot and dusty and how the author caught a bus to get
into the hotel lobby and meet with whomever he's interviewing during this hot
and humid evening... just get to the fucking interview already, you moron.

~~~
52-6F-62
It was society-wakening at the time. He employed aspects of yellow journalism
to draw attention to the dark spots, to expose the mess lying underneath the
fading formica surface on American public life and society.

He had to engage. He had to annoy and disgust and enrage. It all started
around the time of Nixon's dirty tricks campaign and they bludgeoned politics
into the festering pit of corruption and back-hand deals it is now. That game
they played didn't slow down. People like Roger Stone doubled down each time
they had a chance, and they got rich off of doing so to the great detriment of
much of the US. There was no stopping. The "good" people in politics didn't
play the same way, and they continually got buried by drama and scandal.

You see, he couldn't just report on it. He had to make it real. The problem
was, with time the issues became decentralized and more common. That's when he
began to lose heart. This is why by the end of his life he had no laser-like
focus any longer.

I understand where you're coming from, but he shouldn't be conflated with the
type of the self-indulgent writing you get from the likes of Vice. Those guys
just often grew up worshipping this guy because it wasn't "boring" newspaper
reporting, and they all want to be him. It's nothing like the same.

There are still takeaway lessons, though. The whole gonzo thing got
journalists more interested in the field and long-term investigating on a
personal level. I've seen some great docs that occur in first person in really
interesting and sometimes life-threatening scenes because of the influence of
HST.

edit: grammar

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praptak
Just to make it clear - my beef is not with HSJ himself but with the
followers. Yeah, it made sense for him to write this way. But I hate digging
through this shitty "first-person, rich in detail" narration just to get to a
mildly interesting interview or report from an event.

~~~
52-6F-62
Ah, then your best not to turn to him or his followers for that kind of
writing.

As a rule I go to newspapers for terse/concise reports and interviews. I go to
magazines and long-form articles for a larger picture. Trying it any other way
will probably just be frustrating no matter who's writing.

