Goodbye Gonzo, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Feb. 21st, 2005 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraSo Hunter Thompson finally pulled the trigger.
Don't quite know how to respond. The only one of his books I ever managed to get through cover to cover was Hell's Angels, an extraordinary piece of journalism, I still think. But everything else, including the much-vaunted Fear & Loathing series, I found unreadable – brilliant word spillage, yes, but I have 19th century prose sensibilities: word play has to be metered, set off in sturdy workman-like prose, otherwise its cumulative effect is the literary equivalent of one of Liberace's supper jackets.
No, the real reason I liked Hunter Thompson is because he took a lot of drugs, and did so unapologetically. Way to go! says I. He was one of the last great sideshow attractions of the Sixties, the era in which I came of age. I think we may learn that a doctor handed him a terminal diagnosis in the period just before his death. If we don't, then I'm kind of mad at him for killing himself: inevitably, his self-inflicted demise will be used as a further indictment of the various experiments in freedom that flourished when I was a young woman – free sex! free drugs! free Angela – and that means it will become propaganda for the myriad repressive influences peddled top-down today. A bullet through the head is an effective way of negating the authenticity of one's life experiences, and this is the reason I will never kill myself. Yep, life is tough, and very few of us asked to be born (although this may be changing if you believe in reincarnation now that in vitro fertilization is a 2 billion dollar a year industry.) But if you off yourself, you are in essence saying there was no truth whatsoever to your testimony. And testimony, ultimately, is the only thing we have to give.
Not that life as a counterculture icon is ever easy. In the early eighties I "dated" Huey Newton for a couple of months. I use quotes advisedly because after a couple of dinners at cheap Mexican restaurants, the relationship settled into a pattern of late night phone calls, cocaine and blow jobs. I suppose you could say I was being used, although the way I looked at it then was that I was being an adventuress: this was a man who was a bona fide footnote to important historical events and I got to see what his cock looked like. In my own way, I was channeling Hunter Thompson! At this point in his personality unraveling, Huey was kind of a sweet, confused guy in a lot of psychic pain. He talked about his mother a great deal: she was apparently a strong Southern lady of Christian sensibilities who had been terribly disappointed in him and that was the reason why he'd gone back to school after his trip to Cuba and subsequent legal misadventures and gotten his Ph.D.
There were a lot of late night car trips since I never slept over. Frequently we drove past the Rainbow Car Wash on the corner of Broadway and MacArthur. This is where he shot the hooker. Nothing alleged about that, he did it. The two hung juries deadlocked for reasons having nothing to do with the facts of the case.
Anyway, one night I was feeling particularly stoned and sassy: "Lots of rainbows in your life, huh Huey? Rainbow Coalitions, Rainbow Car Washes. You might say it's a motif!" I laughed and hiccoughed and began crooning, "Some- wherrrrre over the rainbow, waaaaaay up high!"
You might expect him to slap me across the face so hard he'd break my jaw.
He didn't.
Instead, he started to cry. A true Winston Smith moment.
In other news, the store did reasonably well this holiday weekend although probably not as well as it would have done if the weather had been sunny. Something strange happened to me though: both days I went in to man the cash register, I freaked. I had to call Ben: "I'm sorry, I can't sit here one more moment." I've always had trouble separating public from private personas, and I think my life right now – all output, no refractory – has exhausted me to the point where I simply cannot tell those states apart. Every person who walked into the store and left without buying something was a personal rejection.
As soon as I got home yesterday, Lucius called. Lucius is chronically depressed and I suspect he has a number of pals he keeps on speed-dial. "Can't talk to you now, Lucius," I told him. "Bravo is doing a Project Runway marathon."
"What the fuck is Project Runway?"
"You don't know? Project Runway is simple the best reality television show in the history of reality television. Villains! Heroes! Personality clashes! Four letter words bleeped over, not out; you can still here Jaye saying, 'She so wants to fuck me' behind the bleep. Talented people doing something they're passionate about!"
"What channel is Bravo on?" asked Lucius.
"In Seattle? Who knows? Sometimes you gotta do your own research, Lucius. Oooops – Austin's taking the rollers out of his hair. Gotta go, Lucius –"
Thereafter, at every commercial break between episodes. Lucius would call me for a quick dish. "You're sick," were always his first words. "So. What did you think of Austin's postal uniforms? I think that judge got it exactly right: it looked like something Doris Day would wear."
Project Runway saves another brilliant writer from despair!
Which raises an interesting question: if Hunter Thompson had known about Project Runway, would he still be alive today?
Don't quite know how to respond. The only one of his books I ever managed to get through cover to cover was Hell's Angels, an extraordinary piece of journalism, I still think. But everything else, including the much-vaunted Fear & Loathing series, I found unreadable – brilliant word spillage, yes, but I have 19th century prose sensibilities: word play has to be metered, set off in sturdy workman-like prose, otherwise its cumulative effect is the literary equivalent of one of Liberace's supper jackets.
No, the real reason I liked Hunter Thompson is because he took a lot of drugs, and did so unapologetically. Way to go! says I. He was one of the last great sideshow attractions of the Sixties, the era in which I came of age. I think we may learn that a doctor handed him a terminal diagnosis in the period just before his death. If we don't, then I'm kind of mad at him for killing himself: inevitably, his self-inflicted demise will be used as a further indictment of the various experiments in freedom that flourished when I was a young woman – free sex! free drugs! free Angela – and that means it will become propaganda for the myriad repressive influences peddled top-down today. A bullet through the head is an effective way of negating the authenticity of one's life experiences, and this is the reason I will never kill myself. Yep, life is tough, and very few of us asked to be born (although this may be changing if you believe in reincarnation now that in vitro fertilization is a 2 billion dollar a year industry.) But if you off yourself, you are in essence saying there was no truth whatsoever to your testimony. And testimony, ultimately, is the only thing we have to give.
Not that life as a counterculture icon is ever easy. In the early eighties I "dated" Huey Newton for a couple of months. I use quotes advisedly because after a couple of dinners at cheap Mexican restaurants, the relationship settled into a pattern of late night phone calls, cocaine and blow jobs. I suppose you could say I was being used, although the way I looked at it then was that I was being an adventuress: this was a man who was a bona fide footnote to important historical events and I got to see what his cock looked like. In my own way, I was channeling Hunter Thompson! At this point in his personality unraveling, Huey was kind of a sweet, confused guy in a lot of psychic pain. He talked about his mother a great deal: she was apparently a strong Southern lady of Christian sensibilities who had been terribly disappointed in him and that was the reason why he'd gone back to school after his trip to Cuba and subsequent legal misadventures and gotten his Ph.D.
There were a lot of late night car trips since I never slept over. Frequently we drove past the Rainbow Car Wash on the corner of Broadway and MacArthur. This is where he shot the hooker. Nothing alleged about that, he did it. The two hung juries deadlocked for reasons having nothing to do with the facts of the case.
Anyway, one night I was feeling particularly stoned and sassy: "Lots of rainbows in your life, huh Huey? Rainbow Coalitions, Rainbow Car Washes. You might say it's a motif!" I laughed and hiccoughed and began crooning, "Some- wherrrrre over the rainbow, waaaaaay up high!"
You might expect him to slap me across the face so hard he'd break my jaw.
He didn't.
Instead, he started to cry. A true Winston Smith moment.
In other news, the store did reasonably well this holiday weekend although probably not as well as it would have done if the weather had been sunny. Something strange happened to me though: both days I went in to man the cash register, I freaked. I had to call Ben: "I'm sorry, I can't sit here one more moment." I've always had trouble separating public from private personas, and I think my life right now – all output, no refractory – has exhausted me to the point where I simply cannot tell those states apart. Every person who walked into the store and left without buying something was a personal rejection.
As soon as I got home yesterday, Lucius called. Lucius is chronically depressed and I suspect he has a number of pals he keeps on speed-dial. "Can't talk to you now, Lucius," I told him. "Bravo is doing a Project Runway marathon."
"What the fuck is Project Runway?"
"You don't know? Project Runway is simple the best reality television show in the history of reality television. Villains! Heroes! Personality clashes! Four letter words bleeped over, not out; you can still here Jaye saying, 'She so wants to fuck me' behind the bleep. Talented people doing something they're passionate about!"
"What channel is Bravo on?" asked Lucius.
"In Seattle? Who knows? Sometimes you gotta do your own research, Lucius. Oooops – Austin's taking the rollers out of his hair. Gotta go, Lucius –"
Thereafter, at every commercial break between episodes. Lucius would call me for a quick dish. "You're sick," were always his first words. "So. What did you think of Austin's postal uniforms? I think that judge got it exactly right: it looked like something Doris Day would wear."
Project Runway saves another brilliant writer from despair!
Which raises an interesting question: if Hunter Thompson had known about Project Runway, would he still be alive today?
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-21 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-24 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-22 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-24 02:18 pm (UTC)and I continue to bow to you
Date: 2005-02-23 06:49 pm (UTC)I love reading your entries.
(oh god, I'm fawning)
I've been reading/lurking for so long now, that it's ingrained in me, like breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
(oh lordy, still fawning)
Huey Newton huh?
That's hillarious. you're right, I would have expected the slap before the tears.
(less fawning here - more just observation)
Thanks for writing so well.
It's an absolute pleasure to read you.
Re: and I continue to bow to you
Date: 2005-02-24 02:17 pm (UTC)