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create his famous ‘Uncle Duke’ character in Doonesbury,
and Spider Jerusalem, the main character of
Warren Ellis’ fine comic book Transmetropolitan, is
obviously inspired by the good Doctor.
Back in the early 70s when his fangs were still sharp
no one could draw blood like Thompson. There is no
reason for me to write that Vegas and Fear And Loathing
On The Campaign Trail ‘72 are seminal works,
many people have said it many times and there is no
point in dwelling on it now.
Thompson was a creature of his times. He thrived and
grew on the possibilities of the 60s and turned viscous
when cornered by the reality of the 70s. He rose and fell
with Nixon, running out of steam when his favourite
villain was finally run out of town. Thompson’s own
description of Nixon’s ignominious departure after his
resignation, which can be found in his article ‘Fear and
Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises,’ reprinted in
The Great Shark Hunt, is surprisingly joyless. Thompson
writes:
“The end came so suddenly and with so little warning
that it was almost as if a muffled explosion in the White
House had sent up a mushroom cloud to announce that
the scumbag has been passed to what will pose for now
as another generation. The main reaction to Richard
Nixon’s passing – especially among journalists who
had been on the Deathwatch for two years – was a wild
and wordless orgasm of long awaited relief that tailed
off almost instantly to a dull, post-coital sort of depression
that still endures.”
Indeed, it is worth noting that The Great Shark
Hunt is dedicated to none other than Richard Milhous
Nixon and that in the introduction he writes, “I feel like
I might as well be up here carving the words for my
own tombstone … and when I finish, the only fitting
exit will be straight off this fucking terrace and into the
Fountain, 28 stories below and at least 200 yards out in
the air and across Fifth Avenue. No one could follow
that act.”
One of the great literary ironies of the century that
just ended may be that Thompson has lived long
enough to fade away and not met the sort of spectacular
end which he imagined for himself. Thompson himself
has publicly recognized the awkwardness of his situation
in the introduction to his first volume of letters,
The Proud Highway, when he writes of pretending to
be dead while his old correspondence was brought to
light, and again imagines a spectacular end for himself,
this time a high speed motorcycle wreck.
With the publication of his first volume of letters,
and the subsequent publication of The Rum Diary,
which was billed as “The Long Lost Novel,” but was
none of those things Thompson seemed to prove that
he is content to sit back and watch as the sort of works
that generally get published after an author’s death hit
the market.
BUY Hunter S. Thompson books online from and
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