No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun.
No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or
wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun—for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy.
Act your old age. Relax—This won’t hurt.
- Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide note to himself,
2005
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of
being a man.
- Dr. Johnson in the preface to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971
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| The buffoon |
His buffoonery just barely contained a violent rage. That’s
the key to Hunter S.Thompson. The guns, the drugs, the explosives, the destruction, were
necessary to hold back despair.
And it’s the despair that makes his writing completely
unique. There are no Tom Wolfe pyrotechnics; no Gay Talese in-depth profiles;
no Ken Kesey hippy-dippy West Coast Zen trips. Not required.
 |
| Picture of the Artist as a Young Man |
Thompson was overwhelmed by the absurdity of Life – for
whatever reasons. The drugs dulled the pain and transmogrified fear and
loathing into raucous phantasmagoria of politicians/police/ land
developers and whomever else drifted by.
And when he could no longer move away from the absurdity –
well, then he swung to face what he called The Big Fear. He decided to relax,
act his age, and check out.
 |
| Relax—This won’t hurt |
Hunter Thompson once told a friend, “I would feel trapped in
this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time.” That’s a serious existential
commitment.
When the pain of being a man had made him ‘too bitchy’ and
slow, he followed the warrior’s code and exploded the brilliant brain that
always seemed so untethered.
His ashes were dynamited into the heavens, his spirit
finally free to follow the dictum of his favorite song:
To dance beneath
the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the
sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and
fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about
today until tomorrow