Hunter S. Thompson Commits suicide

[Arkons]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/02/21/thompson.obit/index.html



=(
I was a big fan of his. I've also been asked to pen a eulogy for my college rag. If anyone has any interest in reading it let me know. Don't know if he has any fans that visit this board, other than myself.

[Stoffer]

I'd like to read it.

[Detodos]

Interesting how so many writers are just straight effed up. Hollywood's portrayal of them might not be so far off...

[Arkons]

I'll send it your way when I finish it.

[ConanTheOBrien]

I was also a fan and dedicated reader of the good Docter. Seems like theres very few good things left in America, and now with Hunter gone the list is even shorter. He will be missed but not forgotten.
RIP HST

[Arkons]

Here's the article I came up with. There's some weird formatting shit as well. I can't get rid of it. Ignore the color changes.
Also there was an intro that my editor wanted me to write because the way I wanted it was like hitting the reader with a brick--which was my intent. Anyways I nixed the intro for you guys, because it was gay.
Sympathy for the Devil

Chase B. Johnson

The great-seeker author and journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, age 67, was found dead in his home in Woody Creek, Colorado Sunday night of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The shot was fired from a .45-caliber handgun. His body has been cremated and arrangements are being made to have his ashes shot from a cannon.

The timing of his death is a shock to most, especially his family. He had a few upcoming writing projects and a rumored movie in the works based on his novel, The Rum Diary.

The method of his departure, however, was not startling. Anyone who has studied or followed his career knew that he was a man who took destiny and his life into his own hands.

For those who don’t know who the man was, it is easiest to say that Thompson was the most prolific of the ‘new journalists’ that tended to bend or break the rules of conventional journalism for something that was less banal and more real. Hunter especially advocated subjective journalism over the old rules of objectivism. This and his liberal use of various drugs and alcohol gave him the most interesting journalistic perspective of the 1970’s.

He was begot of the baby boomer generation that was so optimistic in the 60’s but slowly sold out to the stale and stagnant 70’s. To him they were a “generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers.” Hunter, though he was a part of the culture, followed his own psuedo-60’s credo and lived it truly and unconditionally his entire life.

He once said of the 60’s that “we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave …” and that “you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

That was the moment the 70’s started, and when he really gained his notoriety. He worked for the Rolling Stone in its early days and first published his masterpiece, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, in those same pages. He later went on to be their Washington correspondent and covered the ’72 presidential campaign.

Richard M. Nixon was Hunter’s mutual arch nemesis until his death in 1994. Thompson, in his obituary of Nixon, wrote that the ex-president could “shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time,” and that “his body should be burned in a trash bin.”

Some writers are said to use words like a knife: jabbing them between the third and fourth rib and then twisting. Others use them like a blunt object to the temple. If one were to apply a similar analogy to Thompson it could be said that he used words like a tank, unrelentingly assaulting his enemies with a conflagration of hyperbole and slew.

He was a behemoth watchdog—the size of a rottweiler on steroids. If he caught the scent of something fishy he would tear the face off it and expose just how much there was to fear and loathe. Hunter was absolutely fearless when it came to exposing corruption and abuses of power, irrespective of his own personal safety.

But he managed to do it while keeping us all laughing. That combination of seriousness, rock-and-roll, and wit gave him a very strong connection with his readers. He was his own main character in every piece he wrote and was master of telling his own story.

Hunter S. Thompson was a true original: outlandish, irreverent and completely honest. He was no saint, but his lifestyle may be more indicative of our culture than we are ready to admit. His public persona was only mirrored by the society that entertained it, and perhaps he stands as a grim reminder of how decadent and depraved we’ve allowed ourselves to become.

I know Hunter was not a religious man, and neither am I. But if there were some sort of an afterlife or if his consciousness were still out there, I’d imagine him sitting in the Great Red Shark staring down the road of infinity and saying ‘fuck it’, as he drove straight into the maw of the abyss. Maholo, Doc.

[Stoffer]

good read.