Hunter

So today I was watching an interview with Hunter Thompson on Charlie Rose. And I became excited - hanging on every word. I teach Hunter to my students to talk about style. He's one of the only people recognized and known by his first name - that shows you a lot. Well, maybe not - his last name is pretty common, but the point sounds nice doesn't it?

The thing about Hunter is this: he's like Lynard Skynard. Bear with me. see Skynard is not a bad band. In fact, they are great. But their greatness is outshined by a particular idea of them; by a popularity of a few songs; by a backwards idea of the South. Similarly, most people that I know know Hunter by way of Johnny Depp. So they think Hunter is cool because he did drugs. Most people who relate to Hunter would be about like someone thinking they relate to Marco Pierre White because they like to eat pheasant.

If you read Hunter's journalism, you quickly understand that he's not reducible to a drug addled writer. In fact, the drugs he does are the least interesting thing about his writing. What's interesting about his writing is that he locates him self in the muck. He is like an archeologist of muck - digging, exploring, putting pieces together to give us a theory of the muck. But see Hunter isn't a nihilist - he's a modernist - at the end of the day a believer in the possibility of the American Dream.

My two favorite pieces by him are his essay on the Kentucky Derby and a particular Super Bowl involving the Dolphins and somebody else. In both of the essays Hunter blows apart the idea of objective journalism. What is real is the muck and the best that can be done is to explain what it feels like - how it cakes on the skin. Hunter dissolves muck with booze and amphetamines, but only after cataloging it. A literary scientist; a grammatical pharmacologist.

When HST sits at a table during an interview he's always drinking. The man loved booze. But booze fuels him. He's not less articulate - he's more intense. But he's never a caricature in real life - only in films. He's like Bob Dylan. Dylan actually is still walking around, but you'd never guess given the amount of documentaries on the guy.

Sometimes Matt Taibbi is referred to as the modern HST. And I don't think is a terrible comparison. Taibbi has talked about this. He claims that he's considered Gonzo because he used to do drugs and he writes in first person. In fact one time Taibbi had to call Hunter because he (Taibbi) was asked to edit a collection of Gonzo journalism. Hunter asked him "Do you need the dough?" Taibbi said, "yep," and Hunter said "well do it."

I love that story and I love Matt Taibbi, but the modern version of Hunter seems to me to be David Foster Wallace. Well let me be clear. DFW is not a copy or a 2.0 version of Hunter, what he is is the next logical step. David Foster Wallace not only put himself in the middle of all his essays, he basically made the reader experience the subject through him. What better way to show that reality is reliant on perspective.

When I read A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, I'm reminded a lot of Hunter - this persona of filterlessness. And I wonder if their endings connect them in some other, more profound way. I cannot speculate on this and I don't want to. But I miss them both.