Ah, Hunter...ya bugger...

Caught a note this morning saying that Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note - or at least apparent suicide note - is going to be published in Rolling Stone. Seems kind of a sick thing. I know that Thompson had a huge relationship with the magazine - publishing his greatest works in serialized form there before they came out as books - but it just seems a rather morbid thing to me. Much less morbid than the weird memorial service held recently for him. Feel free to help fund the service by buying some artwork of it.

I am a huge fan of Hunter's writing. Fear and Loathing in las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, The Great Shark Hunt, Hells Angels, and "The Search for the Brown Buffalo" are some of the finest things that I've read. When he was inspired, Hunter could produce amazingly moving prose that seemed to be coming directly from his brain without editing or consideration. At his best, his typewriter and mojo machine (an early version of a fax machine that he used to transmit his early stories) spewed forth a venom that captured a near-perfect version of his world.

At his worst, his writing was a poor copy of his best stuff. He would be wacky and nasty and drgu-addled in attempts to recapture the glory of his great works. he walked a fine edge, and when it worked it was magnificent, glorious writing. His description of the depression that set into the young people after the revolution of the 60's appeared to lose steam and fall back...

We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark— the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

...was incredible and captured the feeling that I can only imagine - hope dashed against the rocks for no reason at all.

Feel free to read more of his greatest quotes over here.

All that being said, he was a craphole of a man in a lot of ways. I read a biography of him once and tried to avoid knowing much about him after that. He went into the military and shirked his duties, doing nearly everything he could to earn a discharge. He was abusive and violent toward his first wife. He was a petty thief as a child, and he could be amazingly cruel. He was a drunk and a drug user. At public appearances, he would often show up drunk and simply insult the crowd for their stupid questions, never providing anything but a show of how to be a boar.

My mother once got tickets to go see Hunter speak because she knew that I really liked his writings. I declined the tickets because I had begun to understand that just because someone can make great things doesn't make them a great person.

Hunter is gone, and his words will be missed. I don't know, however, whether the man himself will be nearly so missed.