It was a dull shock. Losing someone close to you is always hard to bear, but when you lose an icon, a celebrity, someone you never actually have met, the feeling is a little weird.
As the headlines reported last Monday, Hunter S. Thompson, famed "gonzo" journalist, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The crazed writer is best remembered by our generation by his book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and the 1998 Universal picture of the same name starring Johnny Depp as the protagonist Raoul Duke. But Thompson permeated throughout culture and is still ever-present in society today. He was the inspiration for the character "Uncle Duke" in Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" comic strip, and before Depp got his shot, Bill Murray played the doctor in 1980's "Where the Buffalo Roam."
Before his dive into the world of constant intoxication, Thompson served as a sports journalist in the military. His first published book, "Hell's Angels," was a chronicle of his personal experience following the Angels around for a year, ultimately ending in his hospitalization after an altercation with several of the members. But he is known first and foremost for his pioneering of "gonzo" journalism, a term he coined for his outlandish style.
Rather than simply depicting a story, gonzo places the journalist right in the middle of the action and follows the usually wasted and always outlandish behavior of the journalist, sometimes moving far past the intended scope of the story. Raoul Duke was Thompson's fictional self, an invention on which to blame strange behavior and to keep his life somewhat separated from the work.
Thompson's trouble was, however, that he became too popular to be separated from the stories. In the 1978 BBC documentary "Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood," Thompson freely talks about his depression and self-imposed exile from society. Even in '78, he felt that he "was starting to repeat [himself]" and that he was through with gonzo as a genre. Fame was something that he did not enjoy: "I'm part of the story now; I used to be able to sit in the back and absorb, but it's just not possible anymore." He claims to have been forced to sign more autographs than Jimmy Carter at a Carter Convention. As a political pundit, Thompson couldn't get out of the spectacle. The image of Duke had taken over the real Hunter: "I'm really in the way as a person; the myth has taken over. I'm no longer necessary -- it'd probably be much better if I died, then people could take the myth and make films."
All this, remember, was said in 1978, and he shot himself last week at age 67. Surprise or not, suicide is never taken lightly. According to recent newspaper articles, Thompson's son said Hunter frequently talked about killing himself and that it was ultimately expected as the way he would go out. But Thompson was always overstating; that's the nature of gonzo. It is surprising that all the chemicals he rammed into his system on a regular basis didn't kill him before last week. But Thompson isn't done yet, not by a long shot. His one and only novel "The Rum Diary" has been contracted for a film and signed with Johnny Depp as Hunter again; it is listed on the Internet Movie Database, but not yet in production. His funeral is also going to be an interesting affair.
In the BBC documentary, Thompson talks about his memorial service in an almost joking manner. His hope is that his ashes will be shot out of a huge monument on his ranch in Colorado. His ranch near Aspen was his place of exile, home to his wife and son, and soon to be the site of a giant monument in memory of Hunter and the gonzo movement he started. The several-hundred-foot sculpture will feature a double-thumbed fist at the top (the accepted symbol of Thompson and gonzo). At his memorial service, his ashes will be shot out of the giant fist and scattered over the valley. As I initially viewed this interview, I thought he was joking, but then I started looking online after his death, and the "ash ceremony" is supposedly going to take place sometime this summer and should be open to the public.
Only such an amazing character as Thompson could and should go out with such a fantastic occasion. As he states in the interview, there will be no prayer vigil and no ritual other than one thing: Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" playing very loudly.
And if that's what he wanted, "Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves, the haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach, far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow. Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today until tomorrow."
Brett can be reached at meeks@cavalierdaily.com.
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