The Great Gonzo is gone.
Feb. 20, Hunter S. Thompson mumbled something to his son and daughter-in-law about how he wanted “a great big funeral” with his remains shot out of a cannon – “Typical Hunter,” his son told reporters.
As his 6-year-old grandson played on the living room floor, Thompson walked into the kitchen and called his 35-year-old wife, who had gone to a health club. He told her he needed her help with his ESPN.com column and asked her to come home.
Then, while Mrs. Thompson was talking to him, the good doctor calmly put a .45 caliber pistol to the roof of his mouth and fired.
So ended the life of one of the most original writers this country has ever produced.
In the past week and a half, there have been numerous obituaries, tributes and personal accounts from friends and fans of the writer who dove headfirst into everything mad and twisted about America in the 20th century, but each of them has glossed over the sad elephant sitting in the center of Dr. Thompson’s living room.
The drugs and booze had killed Gonzo Journalism long ago.
He could still turn out a great column once every couple of years or so when a topic moved him, like the 2004 election or the predictions of an apocalypse on the eve of Y2K.
He could still add to the myth, like when he ran for sheriff in his rural Colorado county on the Freak Power ticket, nearly winning with a platform that consisted of banning cars in town and allowing deputies to indulge in psychadelic mushrooms.
But the Great Shark Hunt had come to a stalled and sputtering end, the once-brilliant intellect and mastery of language long gone, evaporated like so much spilled bourbon.
Thompson had ceased being a great writer and became a literary brand name, churning out substandard work for an easy paycheck because it’s all his worn-out brain could muster. Anyone who has read Thompson’s most recent books or columns could see it, and it was tragic.
That may sound cold in the wake of his death, but it needs to be said and said now, lest his legacy fall victim to the Dead Rock Star Syndrome – years of romanticism and cultish hero worship, followed by an iconoclastic backlash where everything is rejected simply because the myth outshines the man and his work.
Hunter was better than that. He deserves better than that.
As someone who is still amazed every time I read something from Thompson’s glory days (the early-mid ’70s), I couldn’t help but feel sad when word of his death hit the Internet late that Sunday night.
Thompson had done something only the greatest of visionary writers ever do – voiced all the hopes, frustrations and horrors of an entire epoch. He pulled back the veneer of the latter decades of the 20th century, exposing a cynical America crawling with fear and loathing.
Notice I said “epoch” and not “generation”. While the naÜve 60s American dream that Thompson mourned has been relegated to little more than a display in the Baby Boomer wing of the great museum of pop culture, the post-apocalyptic American nightmare that Thompson chronicled is as alive today as it was 30 years ago.
He was the poet-laureate of an insane world where dark forces (both internal and external) conspire daily against all that is noble and human in each of us.
“So what?” you might ask. Most literature of the past 100 years or so can be summed up as one long mediation on “the Long Dark Night of the Soul,” so why is Thompson so special?
For starters he was one of the rare writers to wield such existential concerns with lightness and grace.
Where Camus and most writers of his ilk were prone to a dull detachment when writing about the fundamental pain and confusion of human life, Thompson got out there, cajones to the wall, and lived in it.
He spoke with the authority of someone who had met the devil in some dark Vegas alleyway, spat in his eye, maybe even fired off a few rounds to scare him away then went to back to the hotel bar to laugh about it over a bottle of Bacardi Gold.
He was great because he was a writer of unique and extraordinary power. His writing demanded a new genre be christened specifically for him: Gonzo Journalism.
While Thompson was using Gonzo as a vehicle to explore the savage nooks of the American psyche, he did it without indulging in the post-modern nihilism that traps so many other writers who tread on that ambiguous ground.
Whatever you think of his personal habits, Thompson was a deeply moral writer, always demanding decency while railing against dishonesty and inhumanity, whether it be in the White House or at a casino in Vegas.
Yes, over the course of his life he had ingested enough poisons to wipe out the penguin population of Antarctica several times over.
Yes, he had a fetish for firearms and explosives, and a propensity for erratic and violent behavior.
But even if the real surprise shouldn’t be Thompson’s manner of checking out – it should be that he stuck around as long as he did – his manner of exit now runs a risk of overshadowing everything that was great about the man in the first place.
If you’re a Thompson fan only because you liked Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas do Hunter a favor and check out the book, or better yet, read The Great Shark Hunt.
If you want to find out how politics in America really work, go with Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72. You’ll be glad you did.

Author