Source request, 1 more for HST

[Frances Morey]

Is this from a print journalism source or did you find David Kipen on the
net somewhere?
Good one,
Frances
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harry Edwards" <laughingwolf at ev1.net>
To: "ghetto survivors" <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 7:31 AM
Subject: 1 more for HST


> 'Gonzo' behavior made him an icon, but check Thompson's writing
>   - David Kipen
>   Wednesday, February 23, 2005
>
>
> There's a great scene early on in Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and
> Loathing in Las Vegas" where Dr. Gonzo, the author's corpulent Samoan
> attorney, loses a salt shaker full of cocaine to the slipstream rushing
> around their red Shark convertible. "Oh, jesus!," the good doctor
> exclaims, "Did you see what God just did to us?" To which the
> semi-autobiographical narrator, Raoul Duke, shouts back, "God didn't do
> that! You did it ..."
>
>   When I read "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," must be 20 years ago, I
> underlined the question "Did you see what God just did to us?" in blue
> ink. Don't know why, really. I just must have liked it. In retrospect,
> it's still a great line, shot through with that signature Thompson
> speedball of grandiosity, paranoia and pure poetry.
>
>   Thompson had had a rough time of it before his suicide Sunday night,
> but speculation in such matters is always reckless, and usually vile.
> For what it's worth, he'd lost his friend Warren Zevon to lung cancer,
> and some of his mobility to a broken leg. Who knows but what he felt he
> was losing his country too?
>
>   He'd lost America at least once before, to his nemesis Nixon, about
> whom he always wrote with an invigorating Thompsonian lack of
> gentility. In these times of servile journalism -- when "The NewsHour
> With Jim Lehrer" can devote a whole segment to bloggers' takedown of a
> CNN executive for suggesting that journalists might be getting fragged
> overseas, and not even bother asking whether the suggestion might be,
> you know, true -- small wonder if Thompson had lately forsaken
> political reportage for an underrated sports column at ESPN.com.
>
>   What worries me is that Thompson's suicide may now make it easier for
> the forces of reaction to dismiss his achievement. See what you get,
> they'll say, for taking drugs, for mocking authority, for making
> yourself part of the story? It took Hemingway's reputation years to
> recover from his suicide, and he's still not all the way back. Death is
> only a good career move for the romantic and the obscure. For the
> hard-living, or the already famous, somebody's always ready to spin
> suicide into a cautionary tale. To get a clearer perspective on
> Thompson's true legacy, ring up writer Marc Weingarten, who's finishing
> up a history of New Journalism tentatively called "Based on a True
> Story."
>
>   "Without question," Weingarten allowed Monday morning, "Hunter is a
> giant of 20th century journalism. I would put him up there with
> Halberstam, Ernie Pyle, those guys. I don't think there's ever been
> another journalist who combined high moral purpose with sublime humor
> so brilliantly. I find it tragic that his fame as an icon overshadowed
> the work itself, because this was a man who cared a great deal about
> the craft of writing, the way sentences are constructed. He was
> painstaking about it."
>
>   It's too easy to forget what a literary man Thompson was. He quoted
> Melville on Hawthorne in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas": "Genius
> 'round the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs
> the whole circle 'round." So what if he puckishly attributed the line
> to Art Linkletter? (He got it right in his final ESPN column, just last
> week.)
>
>   And in "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" -- the
> blisteringly funny book whose intro begins with Thompson strung out at
> the Seal Rock Inn, "the final chapter still unwritten and the presses
> scheduled to start rolling in twenty four hours" -- he reprints the
> poem "Be Angry At The Sun," by his fellow contemplator of Pacific
> views, Robinson Jeffers. It's the one that starts out:
>
>   That men publish falsehoods
>
>   Is nothing new. That America must accept
>
>   Like the historical republics corruption and empire
>
>   Has been known for years.
>
>   Be angry at the sun for setting
>
>   If these things anger you...
>
>   To paraphrase Joe Hill, don't mourn, read. Pick up "Hell's Angels," or
> either of Thompson's "Fear and Loathing" books -- though watch out for
> a ripoff by some guy named Kirkegaard. And in case you catch anybody
> from Fox News or the Cato Institute this week, going on about how
> Thompson's end only proves what a hack he always was, just remember
> that Cato himself fell on his sword rather than live in a world ruled
> by Caesar, and that after his friends found him and bandaged him up,
> Cato finished the job by ripping out his own intestines. Does all that
> unwrite a single word he wrote?
>
>   In the end, only Hunter Thompson knows why he did himself in.
> Speculation consoles nobody. All that's left is to keep reading those
> angry, funny, deeply patriotic books of his. That, and to ask, "Did you
> see what God just did to us?"
>
>   E-mail David Kipen at dkipen at sfchronicle.com.
>