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February 22, 2005

Some Kind of Electric Snake...Coming Straight At Us

Hunter S. Thompson taught a generation of fratboys to glamorize their gluttony! Like me!

For the hundreds of snippets of dialogue which I've committed to memory from sundry television programs and films (some good, some, ahem, not so good), it's somewhat shameful that I can't recall more than a handful of lines from books. This is not for a lack of reading; I churn through books pretty aggressively. But, for whatever reason (probably something to do with hearing the words spoken versus just reading them), there are only a few passages from books that are in heavy rotation in my Quotables playlist.

Thinking it through, the qualifiers are a pretty eclectic bunch: Scott Fitzgerald, Douglas Adams, Orson Scott Card (oh do I tip my hand!), David Foster Wallace, Neal Stephenson, and, of course, Hunter S. Thompson. That is, to this day and for the 12 years since I first read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, I am incapable of looking at a messy room without thinking, in Thompson's words, "[T]he room looked like the site of some disastrous zoological experiment involving whiskey and gorillas."

(You could make a pretty compelling argument that said passage has remained in my vocabulary due to my, ahem, extended adolescence/ overgrown-fratboy lifestyle. There's a fairly strong possibility that I've seen more than the average share of drunken-primate ravaged rooms. I mean, YIKES, look at the piece I wrote on Friday -- that thing is brimming with clumsy primate references.)

In the broadest possible sense, I did not "get" Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I first read it my junior year of high school. Errrrr, giant flying serpents? Las Vegas? The relative debaucherousness of Los Angeles' gentlemen's clubs versus those of Las Vegas? Ummmmmm. Mercifully, I still don't get most of it (though I have been to Vegas). At the same time that I didn't get it, I thought it was hilarious. The language, the humor, the bravado -- I thought it was just the cat's meow. That this guy could at once be so self-destructive and so clever really opened my eyes -- hey, you can be smart AND a little crazy! Mind you, I couldn't begin to grasp the intricacies of the context in which he wrote that book. I didn't really understand the counterculture, didn't know Rolling Stone to be about anything more than pop music, and had no conception of the cultural evolution of Las Vegas. Nope, I just thought he was really clever. Hunter S. Thompson made gluttonous slobs seem smart. Even better: he made the act of writing about those gluttonous slobs -- in the most aggressive, profane, insightful, and funny way possible -- cool. (Certainly cool to me.)

It's far beyond my remit to attempt to properly arbitrate Hunter S. Thompson's place in the cultural memory. How much of actual frat-boy humor must call him an influence? Ultimately, he didn't actually produce a large catalog of quality writing; he was more a flashes-of-brilliance sort of guy. In fact, you could argue that he hadn't really written anything of great consequence in 30 years. Yet his public persona and celebrity lingered. The rumors of a drunken HST planted on the front porch of his secluded Colorado home spraying shotgun blasts at unwanted visitors still makes me smile. His late writing (featured on ESPN .com's Page 2) was occasionally amusing, but mostly irrelevant. He'd lost his fastball. But it was cool nonetheless.

I tried to dig out my copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas when I heard the news this weekend. Couldn't find it. I know exactly what the copy looks like too: the pages are completely yellowed, the red and yellow cover is half torn off, and there are page numbers circled (you know, the ones with the especially funny passages). You can never find the copies of your most favorite books -- you've lent them too many times, to too many people, to really expect them to find their way back to you. Of course, "my" copy of Fear and Loathing wasn't actually mine in the first place -- it was given to me by a friend (but it was a keeper...err, at least I think it was). Looks like Fear and Loathing will be making its way onto my bought-it-more-than-once list (inasmuch as I never bought it in the first place).

In the meantime, I shall raise a glass to Dr. Gonzo and toast his honor! Cheers to you, Good Doctor! If there's a Las Vegas in heaven, I hope you get to spend eternity trashing the penthouse suite.

Posted by thatkid at February 22, 2005 9:07 PM under The Papers

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