Gonzo

Once again I'm back into Hunter S Thompson's biography by Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour - GONZO: The Life of Hunter S Thompson. At about the halfway point it continues to be very, very good. Part of that feeling is, I suppose, the fact that I've never read another one written in this way. It is described as an oral history and was compiled from hundreds of interviews with the people whose lives were impacted most by Thompson. A few submissions are very short paragraphs while others run a couple of pages. Many of them are detailing aspects of the same events but from these different people's points of view. Everything is arranged chronologically right from boyhood onward.

Back in my teens and twenties I read Rolling Stone regularly and always looked forward to Thompson's work. I found elements of Kerouac and Kesey in his writing - the whole hyped up stream of consciousness flow that drew me in. As time wore on I became less enamoured of him as the whole public persona became for me a caricature of his former self. (The Uncle Duke character in Gary Trudeau's 'Doonesbury' cartoon was a direct steal of that persona.) Eventually I stopped searching him out, stopped reading his material. In the books foreword Wenner details some of Thompson's writing which he considers to be among his best. Out of respect for the man I'll do my best to track it down and check it out because when Thompson was on, he was smoking hot. He cracked me up, he scared me and gave me chills of excitement.

I recalled having seen this article about the memorial held a few months following Thompson's death by suicide. Talk about going out in unforgettable style. I'll link to it here: it is published by Associated Press and I found it at msnbc. The link will be taken down by request.

This book, Gonzo, was obviously a labour of love devoted to celebrating a writing genius. I highly recommend reading it.