The End of the Counter-Culture: Hunter S. Thompson, 1939 - 2005

Weekly Standard.com ^ | 2/22/05 | Stephen Schwartz

[Sonny M]

I'm sorry to say it, but this guy peaked along time ago, and his career was simply living on the fumes of the past.

[Borges]

The Beats were important in that they were the first generation of writers to turn away from the impersonal modernism of T.S. Eliot and his followers and go back to the confessional free wheeling style of the Romantics and especially Whitman. And they set the stage for Postmodernism which has unquestionably produced some great writers (Pynchon, Delillo).

[SteveMcKing]

In reality, he described a nightmare from which America awoke years ago.

That's deep. Deep enough to be the stupidest thing ever written, next to his useless essays.

[Harpo Speaks]

"...may definitively mark the conclusion of the chaotic "baby-boomer" rebellion..."

Nonsense...there are tens of thousands of Ward Churchills in academia, alone. When it comes to rebellious baby-boomers, Thompson's death was a drop in the bucket-kick.

[Texas_Jarhead]

"Indeed, it would be one thing to say that Thompson and the others like him, such as Burroughs and Ginsberg, are dated. Even embarrassingly old-fashioned artistic works, bereft of immediacy for those who are not part of the environment from which they emerged, have the capacity for revival. But Thompson produced a clamor without content. Doubtlessly, the most pathetic aspect of the '60s phenomenon was the absolute conviction of Thompson and those who encouraged him that "living in the moment" really did count more than anything else in the world, that history never existed and that the future was their property."

"He was flattered to be described as chronicler of "the death of the American dream." In reality, he described a nightmare from which America awoke years ago."

[Constantine XIII]

While the Schwartz is undoubtedly correct, isn't it a little dirty to kick the hippy while he's, um, down.

Well, at least so soon after he went down. :P

[Sonny M]

Deep enough to be the stupidest thing ever written, next to his useless essays

One of the great jokes over the last few years (at least) is that he would write articles or essays and get paid for it, when it was pretty clear he would have written them anyway and anyone could have gotten it for free.

In some ways, he was almost like a con artist, he told big stories, drank alot, had the whole mans man shtick down, and sold editors or anyone else stupid and loose with money, that what he was writing, was somehow, of the highest value, and they should want it and he even had a whole historical spin on everything he wrote.

He was really just a washed up hack who was milking his glory days and living on fumes from the past to put money in his wallet in the present.

[Billthedrill]

Sorry, it won't do. Kesey's Sometimes A Great Notion and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest were wonderful novels. Can't say the same about Burroughs, although Naked Lunch forever turned me away from heroin. (Ginsberg "structured" that novel from scraps of paper in Burroughs' bedroom). Ginsberg's stuff was original when it came out - the genre decayed around him. And that's precisely what happened to "Gonzo" journalism: the genre decayed around its originator. It seems trite now only because the notion of a journalist not attempting to be objective has become trite. At the time of its inception it was pretty exciting stuff.

Thompson's earlier prose - Hells Angels especially - stands on its own and will still be read half a century hence. Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas is outrageous, over-the-top, but underneath a vivid and frantically-paced piece of writing. Thompson himself was an intensity addict who finally ran out of drug, rather after he ran out of art if I may criticize the recently deceased. I think he may have known that.

[22cal]

Couldn't be 1939 if he was 67. His birth year was 1937 or 1936 depending on his birthday.

[tallhappy]

I like that Thompson slagged the weasel Trudeau/Doonsbury hard.

Thompson didn't invent anything. He was, like many others, imitating Kerouac.

[tallhappy]

The Beats were important in that they were the first generation of writers to turn away from the impersonal modernism of T.S. Eliot and his followers and go back to the confessional free wheeling style of the Romantics and especially Whitman

Yeah, but Kerouac is the only one who has produced anything lasting. That is because he was not dallying in social/politcal nonsense but trying to write and create. Ane Kerouac was never anti-American pseudo Marxist and believed in God seriously.

Thompson was a Kerouac imitator in terms of style.

[Tom D.]

Pynchon is incomprehensible. I have tried to read Mason & Dixon and just cannot get through it.

[Recovering_Democrat]

...Thompson looked into the mirror and saw that nobody needed a gonzo interpretation of the world after September 11...

Right on. Too bad he never found peace in his heart; but the writer is accurate. May we never forget 9/11.

[Petronius]

He may well have understood that the drugs, gunfire, motorcycle mishaps, public rantings, and widespread adulation in which he was immersed were evanescent, and that his books were too thin to keep his memory alive for very long.

Oh Stephen Schwartz you shallow little nebish. No man's memory stays alive for very long: "For all things soon pass away and become a mere tale, and complete oblivion soon buries them. And I say this of those who have shone in a wondrous way. For the rest, as soon as they have breathed out their breath, they are gone, and no man speaks of them." Marcus Aurelius

This pathetic no-one-will-remember-him line not only reeks of envy, it could be applied to anyone. It's also a bit early for such pronouncements (assuming it's important to be remembered by future generations).

Johnson quipped that "strange things never last. No one remembers Tristram Shandy." To the contrary, Dr. Johnson, to the absolute contrary!

[beyond the sea]

Thompson himself was an intensity addict who finally ran out of drug, rather after he ran out of art if I may criticize the recently deceased. I think he may have known that.

Yep ........ he knew.

[beyond the sea]

Thompson didn't invent anything. He was, like many others, imitating Kerouac.

There's nothing new under the sun .......

[bankwalker]

The only book of his that I read was Hell's Angels where he went and lived with the club for a while. In the end he got his butt kicked and was sent on his way. He was way out of his league.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

The counter-culture is over? Gee, do the kids in Seattle know? Have liberal college professors been informed? What about Hollyweird? How about the porno wings of the Dems? Howard Dean? Jacko? Paul Shanley? Tina Brown? Jennifer Anniston? The cast of Friends? Senator Boxer? Michael Moore? Can someone call the organizers of The Vagina Monologues and tell them? The militant multiculturalists could probably use a heads up on this. And the courts in Massachusetts.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Ward Churchill, call your office..."