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I don't remember seeing a dedicated Hunter S. Thompson thread on the forums before. I searched and couldn't find one so here's this. BIO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson Quotes: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson Hunter is my favorite writer for a multitude of reasons, most of which are beyond the drug addled craziness he's famous for and more to do with his intelligence and sense of humor It's not often I read books that actually make me laugh out loud, for instance, and have to set the book down or go grab a highlighter so I can recall it. I think his real talent, aside from his amazing mastery of language, rhythm, timing and pace was his ability to make the horrible and tragic truth of a matter palatable by making it funny. quote:“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” - Mark Twain Hunter cited this quote once and obviously took it to heart. His words rarely felt forced, lazy or off and usually "struck lightening" - even in his later stuff where many think he fell off quite a bit. I never thought the slide was as big as a lot of people do but it did seem obvious that his lifestyle was interfering with his work. He was remarkably prescient about a lot of things. I'd love to see what he would write now and, had he lived to see Trump. He'd have plenty to work with. Then again, Kerry's loss in 2004 supposedly depressed him greatly and contributed to his hopelessness and suicide so The Donald may have sent on a mass shooting spree. I often wonder what he would have felt about Obama's election and if he would have gleaned any hope from it. Obviously his raging alcoholism probably sped up his depression as much as anything. Also, I think near the end, he was really falling off and into 9/11 truther poo poo and talking about a GOP pedo ring or something. I've been re-reading his letters collections, "The Proud Highway" and "Fear and Loathing in America", and remembered that a third volume was supposed to come out called "The Mutineer", which for some reason has been delayed for like 16 years now. The letters books are incredible, hilarious and a nice time stamp on the various periods of when they were written. Funniest thing to me about them is reading him constantly complaining about writer's block and deadlines while he's typing these 4 page screeds to his friends. Here's one of my favorite letters that he wrote to a newspaper editor: quote:"On Xmas eve we are going to burn a dog with napalm (or jellied gasoline made to the formula of napalm) on a street where many people will see it. If possible, we will burn several dogs, depending on how many we find on that day. We will burn these dogs wherever we can have the most public impact. There was another one that stood out to me, where he wrote to a young kid who wanted to join the Hell's Angels after the book came out, where Hunter told the kid the several reasons why that was a lovely idea but I can't find it. There's a lot of good movies about him, which are on the wiki page and one I saw recently about his friend and colleague, Ralph Steadman called "For No Good Reason" which was quite good I really miss him, wish he was around now and is one of the few authors whose books I actually re-read. I always find something new. I guess that'll do for an OP...
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Aug 8, 2017 16:29
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What'd you think of his son's memoir, Stories I tell Myself?
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Aug 8, 2017 16:44
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An Apple A Gay posted:What'd you think of his son's memoir, Stories I tell Myself? It was pretty heavy and it hit too close to home for me. Doesn't seem like HST was the greatest dad in the world, or husband for that matter. My mother is suicidal so it was hard to read. Jaun seems smart and well put together though. To be honest, I don't remember that much about his book for some reason. I think I tuned a lot of it out for the reasons I mentioned. I enjoyed Steadman's, "The Joke's Over" quite a bit. Ralph is awesome and I think Hunter was jealous of him on a certain level.
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Aug 8, 2017 16:53
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I thought Juan's story was really good. I liked thinking about Hunter in his 60s sneaking over to the neighbor's pool at night and drinking a 6er. At a certain point the letters get awful and I'm sure the mutineers is held up by either his widow or the rolling stone guy. Both seem terrible. I picked up a fifth of wild turkey 101 for under twenty dollars at the walmart neighborhood market. cheers.
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Aug 8, 2017 19:57
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An Apple A Gay posted:I thought Juan's story was really good. I liked thinking about Hunter in his 60s sneaking over to the neighbor's pool at night and drinking a 6er. At a certain point the letters get awful... When and how so? I found the letters books enthralling and actually some of his best writing. They were all so stream of consciousness, honest, passionate, angst ridden, immediate and, funniest of all, so very well written and structured that I couldn't put those books down. They're like reading someone's personal diary where they lay out their fears, bravado, whims, moods, spontaneous ides, their ego and creeping insecurities in real time; like a "reality TV show" where we get to see a highly functioning, intelligent, immensely talented yet tortured and very troubled addict gradually succumb to a nervous breakdown, only in written form. I always viewed them like Hunter's "jam sessions" of a sort, where he was working out what might eventually become a song, practicing and just flushing out his mind, which must have been grinding constantly; much like outtakes, demos and bootlegs from a musician you might like.
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Aug 8, 2017 20:29
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I understand your point, and it is cool to read him working through his rhythm, but he's pretty much asking for money, following up with jobs, and explaining his procrastination. Just kinda boring and awful. I do love the sports stuff he wrote for ESPN for his last few years. Its called Hey Rube and its the last thing he published before his death. I do have two interview books, Ancient Gonzo Wisdom and Conversations with HST. I like the interviews more than the letters I guess. An Apple A Gay fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Aug 8, 2017 |
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Aug 8, 2017 20:49
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An Apple A Gay posted:I understand your point, and it is cool to read him working through his rhythm, but he's pretty much asking for money, following up with jobs, and explaining his procrastination. So basically being Hunter S. Thompson then? That's how he lived his loving life, in between absolute saber strikes of pure literary brilliance. I found what he was writing enlightening, informative and narrative in a real time sense. Somehow that motherfucker got away with it all and had the last laugh in a sense. Seems weird to read real narration from the guy doing it and find it off putting. You're the first person I've ever conversed with that didn't like the letters books. The reality of him being constantly broke makes perfect sense to me and the idea that he couldn't write anything amidst really good insane 5 page screeds at 2am strikes me as funny for some reason. The pure writing itself in those letters is razor sharp and pure. Also consider he did it all with a typewriter and couldn't easily go back and edit things like we can now - and as I have done probably 5 times in this post alone. I have a friend who used to work at Woody Creek Tavern that told me Hunter never did paid his bar tab.
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Aug 8, 2017 23:55
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My attitude toward any steady job I've had in the last decade has been soured by hero worship of a man who loved his work and had no respect for his job. I've been burning through The Great Shark Hunt during down time at work, and it's interesting a man could survive so long as a professional wild card.
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Aug 9, 2017 00:10
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Dirt Wizard posted:My attitude toward any steady job I've had in the last decade has been soured by hero worship of a man who loved his work and had no respect for his job. I've been burning through The Great Shark Hunt during down time at work, and it's interesting a man could survive so long as a professional wild card. Same, but it's a dangerous way to loving live anymore and I think it's almost instinct as a way to go about things. The jobs I've had over the last 10-15 years or so treat you like complete child, stifle innovation and creativity, allow for little or no flexibility, and base their entire approach towards their workers around a punitive, systematic and quite often outright adversarial and sometimes combative attitude that seems entirely based around mathematics and Rules. Sure, you can freelance and wing it to a certain extent, but see how far that check goes without health insurance benefits or if you have a kid. I'm often uncertain if reading Thompson has been, overall, a benefit or a curse towards my general approach and overall attitude towards traditional 9-5 type work but, like him, I don't suffer fools very easily and tend to get bored very quickly if I find myself creatively stifled and generally left unchallenged, so I tend to bounce around a lot. Also, no one gets paid for writing or any sort of art at all anymore really beyond a select few. It's always been that way but it's way, way worse now in an age where music is free, stock photos are routinely stolen from the internet and traditional journalism has been reduced to Twitter feeds. Look at this abomination of a "website" from my #1 local "news" station. http://www.actionnewsjax.com/ What great reporting. Half the bosses I've had can't compose a simple e-mail that's not riddled with typos and grammatical errors; to employees, customers or otherwise. Perhaps worse, is that reading, being able to write, free thinking and questioning tradition or authority are increasingly viewed as elitist, snobbish and off putting, like the first act of Idiocracy. No wonder the motherfucker shot himself.
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Aug 9, 2017 01:12
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An Apple A Gay posted:I understand your point, and it is cool to read him working through his rhythm, but he's pretty much asking for money, following up with jobs, and explaining his procrastination. Just kinda boring and awful. Agreed, Hey Rube was great because he clearly had a passion for some aspects of the sporting world and found it fascinating enough to try and elucidate that passion. Not to mention he wound up talking politics sooner or later, in almost every article. Is there an archive or publication that collected any of those pieces?
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Aug 9, 2017 01:45
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mdemone posted:
http://www.espn.com/page2/s/thompson/030722.html That's interesting to hear because most people consider that stuff (Hey Rube/ESPN) to be drivel and some of the worst stuff Hunter's ever written. The 9/11 pieces he did were amazing and it was weird that it happened at a time when he was basically just getting paid for his name and spewing nonsense about sports and gambling. I gobble up anything Thompson ever wrote because like, say Prince, Dali or Jack Nicholson, or even Stephen King, their worse stuff is just so god damned good and their mastery of the art is so apparent that it's still better over half the poo poo anyone else does. Sad there is no more because he'd be absolutely on loving fire right now. Trump makes Nixon seem like a left wing fever dream.
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Aug 9, 2017 02:45
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Have you read the book of stories from his friends around Aspen? The Kitchen Readings I think its called. Thats one I haven't checked out yet. What'd you think of Curse of Lono or the Rum Diary? His fiction is just okay. He was best at stuff that bordered on fiction. The surreal stuff in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is right up my alley.
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Aug 9, 2017 19:20
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An Apple A Gay posted:Have you read the book of stories from his friends around Aspen? The Kitchen Readings I think its called. Thats one I haven't checked out yet. I didn't care his fiction (or the Rum Diary movie) but I loved the art in Lono. Screwjack was funny but really really short. I read it in one shot in a used book store without paying for it. I never read the Kitchen Readings one on friends in Aspen. Will look into that one though. Sounds interesting. he had a really odd cross section of friends. Don Johnson, Pat Buchanan, Ed Bradley, PJ O'Rourke...there was a lot of crossover you wouldn't tend to expect but I think the common denominator was he just liked being surrounded by smart people.
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Aug 9, 2017 20:45
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I don't mean to bump my dead thread that no one cares about but I stumbled upon this. HSt TV show. https://www.avclub.com/get-shorty-showrunner-davey-holmes-is-developing-a-hunt-1819820763 Not sure how I feel about the idea BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Oct 25, 2017 |
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Oct 25, 2017 02:01
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i checked out the kitchen readings from the library, and its bullshit, skip it. His friends all tell their stories but with a bad case of "show don't tell", they say things like hunter was wild hunter did a crazy thing what happened while we watched football will never be repeated, but it was nuts i probably won't bother with that tv show, and its gross they're making it
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Oct 27, 2017 13:26
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I just got the Jann Wenner bio from the library, sticky fingers, the index shows a fair amount of hunter, I'm looking forward to it.
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Nov 15, 2017 17:33
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An Apple A Gay posted:I just got the Jann Wenner bio from the library, sticky fingers, the index shows a fair amount of hunter, I'm looking forward to it. I'll have to check that out. Thinking about closing this thread though since no one ever writes in it
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Nov 15, 2017 21:05
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dude hunter would never close a thread he'd shoot it
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Nov 16, 2017 17:21
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BiggerBoat posted:I'll have to check that out. Thinking about closing this thread though since no one ever writes in it Nah, don't. The last thing people need right now is to be allowed to forget that journalism used to exist. Dirt Wizard posted:My attitude toward any steady job I've had in the last decade has been soured by hero worship of a man who loved his work and had no respect for his job. I've been burning through The Great Shark Hunt during down time at work, and it's interesting a man could survive so long as a professional wild card. My favorite thing about The Great Shark Hunt now is the Nixon references and that you can replace "Nixon" with "Trump" and it reads present day in a completely bizarre way. It provides an interesting perspective as far as how often we as a nation enjoy cyclically repeating the same loving stupid mistakes.
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Jan 7, 2018 02:22
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I'm still baffled about what's going on with The Mutineer; the last collection of letters. Gonna go out on a limb and say money has something to do with the hold up but god drat you figure they'd have sorted it out by now. I'm friends with a guy who used to work at Woody Creek Tavern and he said Hunter never did pay his obviously massive bar tab.
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Jan 7, 2018 03:38
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13Pandora13 posted:My favorite thing about The Great Shark Hunt now is the Nixon references and that you can replace "Nixon" with "Trump" and it reads present day in a completely bizarre way. It provides an interesting perspective as far as how often we as a nation enjoy cyclically repeating the same loving stupid mistakes. Nixon and Trump aren't very similar at all
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Jan 7, 2018 04:02
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A human heart posted:Nixon and Trump aren't very similar at all No poo poo, hence the "completely bizarre way." P. 22: quote:Nixon, at least, was blessed with a mixture of arrogance and stupidity that caused him to blow the boilers almost immediately after taking command. By bringing in hundreds of thugs, fixers and fascists to run the Government, he was able to crank almost every problem he touched into a mind-bending crisis. About the only disaster he hasn’t brought down on us yet is a nuclear war with either Russia or China or both. . . but he still has time, and the odds on his actually doing it are not all that long. But we will get to that point in a moment. For now, we should make every effort to look at the bright side of the Nixon Administration. It has been a failure of such monumental proportions that political apathy is no longer considered fashionable, or even safe, among millions of people who only two years ago thought that anybody who disagreed openly with “the Government” was either paranoid or subversive. Political candidates in 1974, at least, are going to have to deal with an angry, disillusioned electorate that is not likely to settle for flag-waving and pompous bullshit.
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Jan 7, 2018 04:12
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13Pandora13 posted:No poo poo, hence the "completely bizarre way." quote:Nixon, at least, was blessed with a mixture of arrogance and stupidity that caused him to blow the boilers almost immediately after taking command. By bringing in hundreds of thugs, fixers and fascists to run the Government, he was able to crank almost every problem he touched into a mind-bending crisis. About the only disaster he hasn’t brought down on us yet is a nuclear war with either Russia or China or both. . . but he still has time, and the odds on his actually doing it are not all that long. But we will get to that point in a moment. For now, we should make every effort to look at the bright side of the Nixon Administration. It has been a failure of such monumental proportions that political apathy is no longer considered fashionable, or even safe, among millions of people who only two years ago thought that anybody who disagreed openly with “the Government” was either paranoid or subversive. Political candidates in 1974, at least, are going to have to deal with an angry, disillusioned electorate that is not likely to settle for flag-waving and pompous bullshit. Sounds pretty loving similar to me. If Hunter hadn't offed himself when he did, Trump's victory would certainly have triggered it; which is a shame because, yee-gods, would it have been fun to read Thompson rant about this bullshit. I've heard that GWB's re-election depressed him greatly. Donald would have brought about full on psychosis. For as drunk and has drug addled as he was, Hunter was remarkably prescient a lot of the time. Even going back and re-reading parts of "Hey Rube!" it's crazy how often he hits the mark. Although it was strange reading him dabble in 9/11 trutherism and, apparently, some secret GOP led pedo ring or something. EDIT: I stumbles upon some recordings of lectures that are pretty funny. This link will get you started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRJ-bJTeb1s Holy poo poo. You want to hear 2 people mumble an entire interview, here's Doc interviewing Keith Richards. So, the two most unintelligible speakers on teh loving planet. Never seen this before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UKBQgR97R8 BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jan 7, 2018 |
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Jan 7, 2018 15:54
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BiggerBoat posted:Sounds pretty loving similar to me. As enjoyable as an HST take on Trump would have been, I think his analysis about blind optimism during the Obama years would have been better. The increase in drone strikes, increase in prosecution of government leakers and whistleblowers, increase in deportations, etc. all happening under the guise of "progress" would have been...interesting. The Richards interview is great.
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Jan 7, 2018 18:27
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13Pandora13 posted:As enjoyable as an HST take on Trump would have been, I think his analysis about blind optimism during the Obama years would have been better. The increase in drone strikes, increase in prosecution of government leakers and whistleblowers, increase in deportations, etc. all happening under the guise of "progress" would have been...interesting. Wasn't it? A lot of modern folks would laugh at it and make fun of two people who have lived more life than most anyone combined. It's odd watching two masters of their art, champions of their craft, barely even forming coherent sentences that are open to easy ridicule, yet still able to communicate and make salient points in between obvious cuts so they can snort more lines. I think Hunter's take on Obama would have been basically the same as the stuff he wrote and said about Bill Clinton. He would have proudly voted for him I'm sure. He's a bit like me in as much as he likes Carter, McGovern, Kerry and Gary Hart , and the manner in which he hand waved Bill as a band aid and a bit of an empty vessel that we had to vote for to stave off pure evil. He supported a lot of born losers, such as it is, but he's not wrong most of the time, which is amazing given how often he was tripping or hopped to the tits on coke, smashed on Wild Turkey and what have you. I think Hunter imagined and wanted a world where McGovern, Kerry, Mondale, Gore and even Dukakis had won their elections and may have created a much more inhabitable and just world for most of us. Imagine what the States or the world might look like had that happened. Seriously. I'm not shy about saying that the U.S. would have been better off had history taken a different turn along those lines and the way things were breaking genuinely seemed to contribute to his depression and fear for the future. As drunk and as hosed up as he was, he basically predicted Trump and everything that comes with that. He was right more than he was wrong and shone a light on the illusion of "freedom" that America likes to advocate in the form of used car dealership ads and cheap flags. I really miss him and am happy to discover a lot of this You Tube stuff. Trump would have broken his loving brain but drat if that wouldn't have cultivated a ton of great writing. Who's doing this stuff now? poo poo, I didn't mean to rant or write that much. BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jan 7, 2018 |
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Jan 7, 2018 23:07
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I really need to read more of his stuff as Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas is one of my absolute favorite books
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Mar 19, 2018 03:02
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drrockso20 posted:I really need to read more of his stuff as Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas is one of my absolute favorite books I'd go with "The Great Shark Hunt" if F&L is all you've read.
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Mar 19, 2018 12:04
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Agreed. I still pickup "The Great Shark Hunt" & flip through it every five years or so.
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Mar 19, 2018 17:15
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I miss him too, but he killed himself because he got old and a lifetime of rampant alcoholism had taken its toll, not because of the political situation. I wish there were more people like him at his best, when his deep respect for human life and appreciation for craft in writing shone. I wish he'd actually written more before descending into a haze of wild turkey and sports columns. He had an absolutely explosive sense of cadence and prosody and virtually nobody writes as effectively in the modern era. (And people do get paid for writing - quite frequently, in fact. But you're right in that he wouldn't be given nearly as much license today before ending up in the same spot of being known for being unreliable and often irresponsible.)
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Mar 19, 2018 18:47
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Orikaeshigitae posted:I miss him too, but he killed himself because he got old and a lifetime of rampant alcoholism had taken its toll, not because of the political situation. His sports columns regularly go off the rails (in a good way) and veer off into politics. He was writing them during 9/11 and the lead up to the Iraq invasion so it was almost impossible not to. Some of the things he wrote were (still) prescient. Even at his worst, his rhythm, humor and absolute mastery of prose still shine through and he almost always makes me laugh out at some point even if the piece is meandering. I like all of his books to varying degrees. drrockso20 posted:I really need to read more of his stuff as Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas is one of my absolute favorite books Also, if F&L is your thing, The Curse of Lono is probably the closest thing to that style.
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Mar 20, 2018 12:23
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I have Hey Rube as well, but I think somewhere around Desert Storm he hit a crisis of confidence - to me his writing loses a lot of joie de vivre around there. I haven't read Juan's memoir, but perhaps it explains it.
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Mar 20, 2018 18:14
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Orikaeshigitae posted:I have Hey Rube as well, but I think somewhere around Desert Storm he hit a crisis of confidence - to me his writing loses a lot of joie de vivre around there. I haven't read Juan's memoir, but perhaps it explains it. I think it's a simple matter of him becoming more and more a slave to his lifestyle and addiction and less to his writing. Plus everything that goes along with being a celebrity and having some money. The hunger is missing and, along with it, a bit of the passion. You can sense it for sure and the drop off in focus and quality is evident but until the end he could still really rattle the keys and play a type writer like a pianist. He was never a dummy, no matter how hosed up he got, and even his meandering poo poo I usually at least found interesting. I think he sort of "wrote himself into a corner", persona wise, and he spoke about this a bit as he got more famous. He was extremely smart, very funny, razor sharp and just masterful with language and composition. I'd laugh out loud reading his stuff. I still do. I've never read anyone that just makes me laugh so much. I enjoy going back and re-reading things I read when I was MUCH younger, only now with a wiser eye. A lot of it didn't hit or really resonate when I was 23 but it does now.
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Mar 21, 2018 02:11
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AV Club has a pretty good article up on F&LiLV https://film.avclub.com/fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas-captured-the-fading-myth-1826274302
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May 25, 2018 09:48
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