*big sigh* i too first read him in RS when they serialised what later became F&LILV. then living in the freak house upstate NY, just down the road from Big Pink, i found his Hell’s Angels book one night and i was MIA for the next few days.

it occurs that on some level, not only did i immediately ID w/the man but i’ve been trying to be him in a way–actually, it’s a tidy little answer to the question of why i can’t really write about anything w/o it starring me.

still gutted here. thanks again.

Update – Scratch that. I can’t quit editing it.  Figures—they always had to pry his manuscripts away from him with force to get him to leave ‘em alone.

I’ve been reading Hunter since my teens, when I first discovered his articles in Rolling Stone. Since then, he has helped define and inform my worldview, and it was always a comfort knowing he was out there somewhere, keeping an eye on the world for the wierd and the doomed.

—-

I ran across an ad for “Hunter Thompson Poster on E-Bay” a bit ago, so I went over there and searched on his name… Unbelievable…

Not only signed and first-edition books going for high dollar, but even normal editions of books that I suspect are actually still in print going for 10x – 20x the cover price (and getting bids).

I guess this drove more than a few HST fans off their nut…

Wish I could afford a copy of the Gonzo poster (shown above).  Today sure ain’t the day to buy it, however…

Hunter Thompson sensed that we are right back where we were before the sixties, that we have to fight the same goddamn battle one more time, and he just didn’t have the stamina….or the right drugs….to enter the fray again. In “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72”, when Nixon was on his way to being elected, Thompson asked “Jesus, where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to become president?”. I’m afraid that, 32 years later, he came face to face with the god-awful answer to that question, and simply couldn’t live with the reality of what he learned. Hallucinatory bats coming at you at a hundred miles an hour are one thing, but witnessing the end of humanity as we know it is quite another. While many of us who grew up the sixties and early seventies understood that along with the mind-twisting acid trips and pill-induced manic roller-coaster rides came random moments of clarity, epiphanys that (almost) made the schizophrenic ride worth the price of admission, we also had to live with the gnawing realization that at some stage we had no choice but to re-enter the Reality Zone. It was a sobering thought for each and every one of us, and almost unbearable for those, like Thompson, who literally resided in the heartbeat of the Movement itself.

http://www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/FaulkingAround/1022.html