it's been three days of mulling this one over, round and round in my head; it's been an interesting three days in there. when i first saw the headline on yahoo news, late sunday night after a few drinks, i was completely floored. for the first few moments, and the next few hours, i felt as if i were a table and someone had just ripped off one of the legs. i was still standing, i could still function relatively the same, but i had been undermined in some fundamental way.
i didn't get it. it made no sense to me. i kept trying to find something in any one of the countless news reports that were published in the next twenty four hours that would give me some sort of insight into how and why this happened. i felt like there was just a critical sentance or two missing from the accounts, which seemed the same at every news source, and that the discovery of this missing information would make this whole thing compute. didn't happen. at least not in the way i thought it would.
i called my friend pat, who is a fellow thompson admirer. we have always passed our thompson books back and forth. on a trip from new york to florida a few years ago, we traded off driving and reading aloud, and our book of choice was dr. thompson's generation of swine. we went to see the cinematic adaption of fear and loathing in las vegas together; we smoked cigarettes in the theatre, sunk down in our seats in an attempt to remain covert. he was the person who ferreted out where the buffalo roam at our local video store, to further our goal of soaking up all things thompson. he was the person i needed to speak to on monday. he was the person who's take i wanted to hear most. and i found him, as i suspected i would, in the same boat; set adrift without a paddle.
we pooled information, commiserated on how absolutely perplexing an idea it was that hunter thompson would take his own life. eventually we agreed to settle on the notion that hunter was still alive, and had faked his own death and gone underground with the help of his family and closest comrades. it seemed the only explanation that could stand against the idea of hunter thompson that we had formulated in our minds over the years that we'd been reading him.
i thought about that for a while, and it made me feel some relief from the confusion and loss i was experiencing. and it was fun, in the way that imagining hunter doing any of the things that hunter did or may have done was fun. he was always an enormous spectacle, and it was an amazing thing to behold, even in print. i can only imagine what it must have been like to witness in person.
then, a some point yesterday i had a thought. and once i'd had it, the confusion went away and i don't expect it will return. the thought was this: it isn't any of my fucking business why he did it. i am a fool to think that I can assign my own notions of what makes "sense" to things that other people do. we all get taught this lesson every day, yet it is impossibly hard to retain. for a brief moment, i had started to feel as if the fact that i didn't see hunter as the "type" who would off himself somehow called his entire incarnation in my heart and mind into question. but the truth is, the way he lives in my heart and mind is because of the way his work connects with my own sensibilities and makes itself a part of me. it doesn't necessarily work the other way around. hunter's choices regarding his manner of death had nothing to do with me, and to attach my own meaning to an action that was so purely private and personal is not valid. this is what i've come to. i thought about this: if hunter had merely passed away, i would have felt sad, i would have felt a loss, but it wouldn't have rattled me the way this did. and that's me. i'm responsible for the differences between those reactions.
the esteem in which i hold the good doctor is nearly unparalleled among people i do not personally know; there is but a handful of these persons who have been both a friend and teacher to me through their written words, and even in death, hunter thompson is teaching me something . i have never thought to imitate, to aspire to be, hunter in my own writing, for one simple reason; it is impossible. hunter did not get to be hunter by imitating anyone. he simply was, from moment one to moment last. and there isn't any way to imitate that. the only thing of any consequence that anyone can hope to glean from someone like hunter, someone so utterly, unfailingly originial, is a simple concept that is exceedingly rare, most likely because it cannot be practiced or learned. you must be only, absolutely, yourself. in this way, hunter can be emulated, but never imitated. here, henry miller says it far better than i can:
"understanding is nothing. the eyes must be kept open, you must relax, not strain. don't be afraid of falling backwards into the bottomless pit. there is nothing to fall into. you are in it, and of it, and if you persist, someday you will be it. i don't say you will have it, please notice, because there is nothing to possess. neither are you to be possessed. remember that! you are to liberate yourself. there are no exercises, physical or spiritual, to practice. all such things are like incense, they awaken a feeling of holiness. we must be holy without holiness. we must be whole. complete. that's being holy. any other kind of holiness is false, a snare and a delusion."
i have decided that i will post some of my favorite thompson excerpts over the next few days, if only because it will be nice to see them, to read them again. and also for the sake of sharing with those who might not be familiar with his work. he is one of the few people who inspire in me a feeling of great satisfaction, and comfort, in knowing that he merely exists out there somewhere. i think that is the root of why i was so affected by his passing. for a moment it scared me to think that hunter was no longer physically present in the world. but i think hunter knew, and somewhere i do too, that physicality is really incidental. especially for someone like him.
for starters, i am including links to two written eulogies, one by tom wolfe and one by christopher hitchens, both of whom have done a terribly difficult thing extraordinarily well.
hst
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