
The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved (1970) - keane
http://liamk.org/derby/
======
twic
In case anyone else is, like myself, a foreigner confused as to why this
article is on the front page of HN at this particular moment, two facts are
germane.

Firstly, the Kentucky Derby is this weekend.

Secondly, Hunter S. Thompson was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of
Fame last week:

[http://jat.uky.edu/ky-journalism-hall-of-fame.html](http://jat.uky.edu/ky-
journalism-hall-of-fame.html)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/hun...](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/hunter-
s-thompsons-pre-gonzo-journalism-surprisingly-earnest/361355/)

~~~
discreteevent
OK. I thought it was someone's idea to demonstrate how hypertext can
obliterate the experience of reading a good story because you are constantly
distracted by the thought that you are not clicking the links. I'm not being
sarcastic. I really thought it was a very clever demonstration.

~~~
keane
That was partially my intent, so thank you! The whole thing was done in a few
hours--almost exclusively research--so not saying this is a great project or
anything but here are some ideas to skim.

The inspiration? A recent article questioned the accuracy of some the story
(certainly parts are exaggerated). The article's author, a fan of HST,
believed that many placenames had likely been changed. And from that, 'who
knows what else'. When I found the address for the hotel mentioned, the story
seemed more plausible (rightly or wrongly) and more tangible to the Derby of
today. I felt these details were important context and that their inclusion
could be, as you suggest, a significantly different experience. But, and I do
hope this is the case, perhaps their presence could result in the reader/user
being more likely to believe the author.

I decided sidebars, inline/side footnotes, endnotes (even in printed products)
and tooltips are too distracting. The least distracting seemed to be
hyperlinks in a somewhat subdued but still accessible style. (Having them
hidden until interaction--like in the focus modes of some text-editors--was
tempting but I wanted to avoid hover states.) Ideas from anyone on less
intrusive ways of including asides are appreciated!

So I wanted to give context but, as TVTropes and Wikipedia demonstrate, links
can lead a reader away from the primary text. Knowing this, I decided to go
ahead and create a flawed experience and intentional demonstration...

This was the first article to be called 'Gonzo'. The word was coined after its
publication and so it represents the beginning of a style, widely imitated,
that HST would stick with for much of his career. If this is a foundational
text for the genre, what characteristics make it 'gonzo'? I guess one of the
main characteristics is that rather than give a detailed play-by-play of the
horserace, HST instead gives details about the spectators and his own
misadventures (resulting in a frank admission of unprofessionalism). These
details are specific: rather than say he had a beer, its a Colt45 malt beer,
just as a suspect might overcompensate with details in an interrogation with
police. And he goes on to namecheck company after company (after Ian Fleming
but before Tao Lin). I wondered: what would it look like if HST were drunk at
the Kentucky Derby today? His namecheckings and frustrations might be
expressed as at-replies on Twitter. This Gonzo post might be lost in the
millions of blogs. This struck me as funny (tragic?). To allude to the odditiy
of seeing a written work designed for another era and its mediums be tied and
fragmented in hypertext, I linked 'Hertz' to @hertz (kinda absurd, but a
fairly common practice) as well as a few others like that. It does seem harder
to take the words seriously as a whole when there are basic (maybe ironic?)
links.

So I had hoped to provide context and I still think much of it is useful, but
based on design limitations surrendered to the idea that this was desecrating
an experience many are used to. I ultimately found it incredibly amusing to
picture HST crafting hyperlinks in some bloated Soviet CMS to link to a
YouTube video of teenagers signing as perhaps the HST of today is currently
doing.

~~~
spc476
I talked about that in a webpage I made years ago
([http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/hypertext/fragment...](http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/hypertext/fragment/))
but unfortunately today, it also shows just how fragile links are on the web.

------
gonzo
I named my son "Hunter Speed". Our last name is Thompson.

~~~
xxtjaxx
Stockton would have been too obvious huh?

------
jballanc
If you've never seen it, this is (supposedly) the daily schedule that Thompson
stuck to when writing: [http://mentalfloss.com/article/33487/hunter-s-
thompsons-dail...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/33487/hunter-s-thompsons-
daily-routine)

------
ds9
If you like Thompson's writing or ideas, or would like to observe more of the
"gonzo" character, then in addition to the writings check out a 1978 BBC mini-
documentary "Fear and loathing in gonzo-vision". A journalist and cameraperson
go around with HST for a few days, there are casual interviews, some on-the-
scene scenes and some background. Vids with that or similar names may be on
youtube (I can't verify right now); also discs and torrents.

------
ableal
The link/story about the winning horse's owner is not bad either, if not
nearly as gonzo ...

 _" I went out there and sat for 21 days, 14 hours a day, waiting to shoot a
tiger that had killed 117 villagers in the surrounding countryside."_

[http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1...](http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1083588/index.htm)

------
rch
> “There’s going to be trouble,” I said. “My assignment is to take pictures of
> the riot.”

------
the_watcher
I read this every year on the morning of the Kentucky Derby. It's truly a work
of genius by a man who became more famous for his other works, and it should
be appreciated more.

------
leemcalilly
This essay is a great intro to Hunter S. Thompson.

------
nutjob2
I remember reading Fear and Loathing when I was 14 and thinking it was the
work of a genius.

------
RobSpectre
One of God's own prototypes - too weird to live, too rare to die.

~~~
ruggeri
> One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even
> considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
> —Hunter S. Thompson, Rolling Stone December 15, 1977, eventually part of
> Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Zeta_Acosta](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Zeta_Acosta)

------
benihana
If you enjoyed this, another fantastic article by HST is Strange Rumblings in
Aztlan[1] about the murder of Ruben Salazar and the Chicano movement against
the Vietnam war.

[1][http://s3.amazonaws.com/eob_texts-
production/texts/22/129780...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/eob_texts-
production/texts/22/1297809321_Strange_Rumblings_in_Aztlan_small.pdf?1297809321)

~~~
derwiki
Or if you _really_ enjoyed this, skip right to Hell's Angels: A Strange and
Terrible Saga[1]. Bonus if you currently live in the Bay area, because that's
where much of the story is set. It was Thompson's first "breakthru" book and
(in my opinion) one of his much more coherent writings.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Hells-Angels-Strange-Terrible-
Saga/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Hells-Angels-Strange-Terrible-
Saga/dp/0345410084)

~~~
dmix
HST's fiction and even most non-fiction journalism was never as good as his
letters to his friends (his friends included famous Beat writers and 1960s
literary legends). His writing quality follow this hierarchy:

Letters -> Journalism -> Fiction

Largely due to his inability to focus on long works due to his (hilariously)
reckless lifestyle. He was brilliant in small short pieces. I learned this
having read nearly all of his work over the last 5 years. I recommend his
collection of letters, published across a 3 book series, which he preserved
over the years from being teenager in the 1950s to becoming a famous
journalist in the late 60s.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Proud-Highway-Desperate-
Gentleman/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Proud-Highway-Desperate-
Gentleman/dp/0345377966/)

For example one of his letters that went viral recently, written while he was
20:

[http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/11/04/hunter-
s-t...](http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/11/04/hunter-s-thomspon-
letters-of-note-advice/)

~~~
hv23
I’ll have to check this one out!

Also highly recommended — "The Great Shark Hunt", a collection of his pieces
through the 60s and 70s. "Hell's Angels" is marvelous, "Fear and Loathing” is
probably his best-known, but nothing quite covers the range of HST's work like
this book.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Shark-Hunt-
Strange/dp/074325...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Shark-Hunt-
Strange/dp/0743250451)

~~~
benihana
Yep! The Kentucky Derby piece as well as the Strange Rumblings essay are both
in The Great Shark Hunt as well as some really interesting political
commentary and hilarious stories about the NFL.

------
QuantumChaos
>But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a
narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only
stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient—to the parents—than setting
their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and their
own ways. (“Goddam, did you hear about Smitty’s daughter? She went crazy in
Boston last week and married a nigger!”)

I don't know much about marriage patters on Southern states in the 70's, but I
find it amazing that Jews, Chinese, Africans etc. manage to mostly avoid race-
mixing, but also avoid the opposite extreme of literal in-breeding.

What is it about White people that, unlike every single other ethnicity, who
produce rich, vibrant cultures when left to their own devices, White people
turn into crazy inbred rednecks? I mean, I've never read a similar article
about close-knit Jewish communities in Brooklyn, or African immigrant
communities. Somehow those people manage to retain a distinctive culture and
lifestyle (and even some of the conservative values that the author
describes), without becoming the caricature the author describes.

EDIT: this post was a parody of anti-White sentiment such as the part of the
article that I quoted. I don't actually think White people are special in the
way I described. What is unique is the ridicule to which White culture and
White communities are subject by the mainstream media.

~~~
icegreentea
This honestly needs to be voted back up to at least neutral. I don't think
QuantumChaos is trolling or anything like that here, and it's honestly an
important point.

I don't know how many of you here have South or South East Asian parents,
especially those who are first generation immigrants. I live in Canada (in
Toronto!), so I get to talk to fellow immigrants about this all the time. It's
pretty much accepted that many of our parents are racist. I have a Tamil
friend who will only date other Tamils because of her parents. My Korean
friends know that their parents will disapprove of them dating non-Koreans. My
Chinese friend caused a stir in her family when she dated an African.

A lot of these parents will not have a problem with other ethnicities or
whatever. They're not going to call anyone a nigger, or a gwielo, or a
towelhead or whatever. They're not going to avoid talking to someone of a
different skin color. They'll happily go out and be real and true friends of
whoever. But they'll want their children to 'keep the tradition' or whatever.

This is a real thing. And it is a real racism. Whether or not we think its an
acceptable thing is one thing. But if we let the Korean immigrants get away
with it, then we can't get too upset at when the 'white people' do it.

~~~
QuantumChaos
Thanks for expanding on my point. I would also add that it's not just about
the _act_ of self-selection, but the way the communities are viewed in
themselves.

Exactly the same qualities are described in very different terms, e.g. a tight
knit community which upholds their traditions and values in the face of
modernity, vs inbred, ignorant bigots.

The main difference between my viewpoint and others who make similar
arguments, is that I'm not saying this is an actual contradiction. There are
many differences in context which mean that the two cannot be directly
compared. However, there is what I would call a discrepancy. The author of
this piece never made a logical argument, that what is good for White
communities isn't good for others. He simply painted a picture, which many
people might find compelling. If I can expose this discrepancy, people might
find these narratives less compelling.

~~~
apostal
The "discrepancy" you are oh-so-desperately trying to invent is, if anything,
the difference between a racist culture that has dominated a nation, and
reactions to that racism.

Hunter S Thompson's narrative IS compelling, because that racism was and is
still rampant in the United States.

------
aspidistra
Just checking department: do you have permission from the copyright holder(s)
to publish this?

~~~
robobro
I'm sure Thompson's rolling in his grave at the thought of someone being
naughty.

~~~
derwiki
I know you're just using a metaphor, but Thompson's remains were shot out of a
cannon over Colorado[1]. No grave.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2005/08...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2005/08/20/AR2005082001078.html)

