"On our way back to the motel after Friday's races I warned Steadmen about some of the other problems we'd have to cope with. Neither of us had brought any strange illegal drugs, so we would have to get by on booze. 'You should keep in mind,' I said, 'that almost everybody you talk to from now on will be drunk. People who seem very pleasant at first might suddenly swing at you for no reason at all.' "He was a brilliant man with an acid tongue, who wasn't afraid to say exactly what he thought. This got him into trouble, but it also made him a kind of cult-hero. Someone for bitter, disenchanted youth such as myself to look up to.
"My first feeling was a wild desire to drive a stake in the sand and claim the place for myself. . . . I had never seen such a place. I wanted to take off all my clothes and never wear them again."When you read Hunter Thompson, you get this feeling, that if you were to hang out with the man, you would fear for your life, and yet, if somehow he got you killed, it would be worth it. It would be the most dazzling, spectacular death the world had ever seen.
"No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction--towards anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat."Passion, intoxication, and brutal honesty. What more could you ask for in a journalist? Oh, there's talent. That was never an issue.
He lived.
Goodbye, Raul Duke
Quotes: 1) from "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" 1970.
2 and 3) from "The Rum Diary," started: 1959 published: 1998.
1 comment:
I share in your sadness. As junky as Rollingstone Magazine has become over the years, one of the best sections still remains "national affairs" on which Hunter S. Thompson headed up. I wonder what will become of it.
Post a Comment