Hunter S. Thompson: Pioneer or degenerate?
On the back of the new biopic of Hunter S. Thompson opening in the UK, Ali Harper wonders what his contributions to the craft of journalism actually were.
By Ali H on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 - 635 words.
“Politics is like the guinea worm,” Hunter S. Thompson once wrote for Rolling Stone, “it sneaks into your body and grows like a cyst from within.” This kind of internal affliction can be a life-long health risk, particularly when coupled with a compulsion for writing; a habit “worse than heroin” in an industry “full of drunks and misfits and failures.”
When the occupation becomes the occupational hazard, the dangers include — but are not limited to — “death, depravity, incarceration… and of course those bastard editors.” If a writer can avoid all four as far as possible, his task becomes to report the truth. Not the truth in a conventional sense, but in a more slippery, Jamesian sense in which writing can only ever be compared to its own concrete standards of validity, to the “confusing contexts of whatever reality surrounded the act of writing.”
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Becoming submerged in these realities also involves taking risks style-wise. It provides an antidote to more conventional, dispassionate reportage which, as journalist Michael Shapiro has said, tends to produce pieces with “a dullness, a numbing predictability, a growing sense of stories crafted less with a desire for greatness than with an eye for avoiding mistakes.” This isn’t to say that facts are thrown aside, only that they are acknowledged as existing as an incomplete part of a larger, more meaningful picture.
Thompson believed that the lean towards Objective Journalism was a strong contributing factor to the continued corruption of American politics, and the phrase itself a “pompous contradiction in terms.” As a result he wrote it like he saw it: Nixon was a “swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president”, Hubert Humphrey a “shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack”, George Bush a “golem-like goofy child president”, and those who voted for him “flag-sucking half-wits.”
In essence, he wrote with his heart as well as his head. His scathing farewell to Nixon, entitled “He was a Crook” is the only obituary to really accurately sum up the man’s aborted presidency. His retrospective on the 1960’s is also one of the most lyrical and hopeful passages of reportage to have been written from the hangover of the early 70’s. Until his suicide in 2005, Thompson wrote eloquently, passionately and often angrily about political issues ranging from his local bi-elections to the occupation of Palestine to the nocturnal habits of George W. Bush.
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There’s a lot of hype surrounding the man himself. Curtis Robinson, a former editor at the Aspen Daily News, has likened him to the Dalai Lama. On recounting interviews with him, journalists have often given more page space to his already notorious drink and drug appetite than to his professional work. Thompson himself was also an eager self-publicist, sketching himself as a trouble maker (“I was a juvenile delinquent… I bit a woman on the back”), a waster (“I was drunk at all times. People trembled and cursed when I came into a public room and started screaming in German”) and even an ambassador of fate (“I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma”).
Sadly, the image has somewhat overshadowed the writing. And you can find fault with that too: most of his commentary on political figures quickly dissolves into caricature, many of his arguments are structureless or illogical, and all of it is completely one-sided.
But what it does show is a writer deeply involved with and curious about the world, and willing to take risks to express how he felt about it. His books and articles deserve to be read for this, and also for their insistence that when faced with journalistic conventions that might require the writer to dumb down or leave unexpressed elements he feels are important, the best thing to do is to abandon them altogether; to “shred the fuckers up and start over.”
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Nice piece Ali. I saw the film and thought that he came across as a real egomaniac, who could have used his talent to actually hurt people doing evil things, but instead go caught up in this caricature.
In terms of his contribution to journalism, I think he was a very important figure. I totally agree with his ideas on the fetishism of 'objectivity' which doesn't exist in any journalism. The benefit of his work was you knew what his angle was, whereas in mainstream newspapers today people read as if its the truth without questioning the underlying presuppositions that are all over it.
And stylistically I think he was great, his little phrases to sum up individuals remind me a bit of Christopher Hitchens nowadays (another drunk who lost his way)….
You mentioned that he was acerbic about Palestine and Bush etc., but I never saw it. He could have been much better if he hadnt descended into his dissolute life, but then maybe his great work could never have happened without that either…
I think as his memory fades he will become more and a more a caricature, shorn of any serious political position, because that's what happens to dissidents. And his style will let that happen, because even though he wrote nicely, you didn't learn a whole lot from him. He wasn't like Orwell who had insights into human society, or a John Pilger who analyzes empirically lies and disception, he just rambled away… More a novelist than a journalist maybe….
I think HS was a pioneer and I'll always remember him with a smile. I can't judge him harshly. No one is perfect.
The man was a genius and Alex Gibney's film wasted so much potentially great material. If anyone wants to read some rare articles by the Good Doctor that you won't find anywhere else then stop by Totally Gonzo and check out our rare articles section.
http://totallygonzo.wordpress.com
Naw, it wasn't rambling. That's a misconception. Indeed, even when he was, you know, totally lying himself, he was telling the truth. Or rambling, when he did it, reflected the the context in which the rambling occurred: the context of rampant drug use which, for its part, served as the high octane petrol (or whatever) of the American counter cultural Saturn V.
You see, even when someone is analyzing an issue while sober, it might not really get the whole picture. Sure, shit man, politics are ALWAYS lying and deceiving people. That's their job. Who the hell should bother with trying to decode the motivations. Their motivation, at best, is getting re-elected and, at worst, probably involves cleverly killing Castro somehow.
Like when he claimed Ed Muskie ate Ibogaine during the '72 Democratic primaries. That was false, but it served to characterize Muskie's own inexplicable raving on the Campaign Trail. There's no reason to try to employ empirical analysis to these bozos' behavior. Also, he totally had insights into human society. Read his piece about the Kentucky Derby. His conclusion: humans who attended that Derby were, for all intents and purposes, filthy pigs, heavily armed and hat wearing, strolling around their own annual swine carnival.
Here's the full text: http://thebivouac.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/the-ke...
And sure, the embalmed memory of Hunter S. Thompson will decay eventually into a caricature. However, he won't become like Orwell. There's absolutely no way authority can co-opt his image to better suit itself, except for the possible exception of Jimmy Carter whom HST once saw speak about civil rights in the 70s and mentioned a fondness of the soon-to-be POTUS. Basically what Carter said, speaking in like 1975 at University of Georgia law school, is that nobody would come out and say "Hey, I think we should just turn back the clock on civil rights to 1955." That's was the quick, decisive triumph of the civil rights movement.
But I digress. Finally, HST was by no means a mere novelist. He was a journalist and a legitimate one at that. And while I feel he did understand and appreciate the sincere and honest youth opposition to a jackbooted establishment, he was still able to understand and express the fundamental iredeemability of American politics. And, in a world like HST saw it, who needs to strenuously analyze the moral motives of politicians. Better to focus on the next football game, the upcoming gutting of the Miami Dolphins or whatever, sit back and have a few drinks, shoot some guns, and hang out in Colorado. Fuck all that Washington jazz.
The only thing I think we can blame him for is killing himself right when America needed him the most.