The Day Hunter Thompson Died

"The Doctor has finally left the building," they will say, but no one will meditate on the addiction of fame that destroyed him, since they aspire to fame themselves. They'll make him into some sort of psychedelic Hemingway, blowing his brains out when he found there was no more big game to go after -- save himself.

After Thompson's initial successes he became a brand name, a commodity known not only to his fans, but also to himself. With the success of Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas and then Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Thompson gradually started to believe his own myth, and eventually became a parody of himself.

Writers can't afford to believe their public personas, even if those personas bring them notoriety, fame, money. When they do, they lose their edge and cease to exist. Thompson ritualistically dulled his edge, so that the formula became rigid and mechanical. The reader in reading the Loathing series sees how it was done, feels that had he had access to the same chemical tools that he could get there himself. But far from informing Thompson's consciousness and his journalism, the drugs hid it.

Thompson never bothered much with being there, only on getting there. He became the story, our own countercultural celebrity journalist. He bullied editors to allow him free range to exercise and exorcise his demons real and imagined for our entertainment, and he became -- and was encouraged to become -- our amazing dancing literary bear.

He allowed this to happen. Hell, it was a living and a good one, and it was easy. Plug in a subject -- golf, guns, the Super Bowl, politics -- drop some chemicals, mix it up.

Apparently he didn't think too much about the consequences, and who does who's in the middle of them? The myths one creates about oneself -- especially those one inherits from the public and allows oneself to believe -- are the most addictive and destructive.

Thompson became a fly in the ossifying amber of his time. As everyone else "moved on", he was still there.

It was far easier for people to make him into a symbol than to try to keep his metaphor pliant, to encourage that burning observational intelligence. But Thompson had become too far gone himself to notice what he was doing. By the early 70s, he had become Dr. Gonzo, Uncle Duke, a clown.

We expected that from him, and apparently so did he, at least until it was just too painful and his "medications" were no longer strong enough. Getting old isn't for sissies. He was ailing, had legal problems, of course, and perhaps suicide appeared to be a viable solution. Maybe he was just play-acting; he liked to blow up things. Maybe it was a defiant act, taking himself back from himself.

Perhaps the notion dawned on him that he was wasting his talents, kidding himself slavishly promoting anthologies of recycled magazine journalism when he should have been going after bigger game, just like Papa.

Perhaps unable to pull himself back from the psychic brink he'd been teetering on for years, he finally said "I'm outta here." Or maybe it was realizing that eventually he'd wind up on one of those celebrity poker shows. Only so long can you be angry at the world without turning it on yourself.

Or maybe he ended his life being true to what he believed, that he had let us -- and still more, himself -- down.