Anticlimax: The Suicide of Hunter S. Thompson

He shot himself. What an anticlimax. I always expected Hunter S. Thompson to go out in a blaze of gonzo. I pictured him crossing a verbal line with his drug suppliers and being ground into hamburger and fed to his peacocks. I pictured him gunned down, naked but for a vest of blotter acid, charging the White House on the back of a Black Rhino, the cherry of his Cohiba lighting his way. I expected something interesting, not the cliched ‘tortured genius’ exit. Hemingway did it. That Cobain kid beat him to the punch. Yawn.

Is it fair of me to expect to be entertained by the death of one of my role models? It’s a question I’m struggling with, but after the initial shock faded, I had to face the fact that I simply felt let down. I’m not angry with Thompson. I don’t plan on unleashing a screechy Courtney Love-esque rant on the cowardice of suicide. I didn’t know Hunter S. Thompson, the writer, so I have no idea what he was going through that led him to such a drastic and final act. I did feel I knew Hunter S. Thompson, the drug fuelled force of mayhem I read about in the works of Hunter S. Thompson, writer. The gunshot on the weekend killed both a gonzo journalist and the recurring character in his writing.

When a run-of-the-mill celebrity snuffs it, there’s an outcry of betrayal from their fan base. “I felt like I knew him!” “How could he do this to me?” They didn’t know that person. They knew a construct built by the media (a term that covers tabloid journalists, the celebrity’s publicists, and the fan’s own fantasy life). What makes Thompson different is that he was the media that constructed his own twisted public image. Sure, there were some movies, comic strips and biographies that contributed to the mythology of Hunter S. Thompson, but the blame lies mostly on the ribbon of Thompson’s own typewriter. With the birth of Gonzo journalism came the death of Hunter S. Thompson: private citizen. Well, figuratively speaking.

The literal death of Hunter S. Thomson still seems figurative to me and after the short time it’s taken me to write this, I don’t think that’s unfair of me. His suicide is the disappointing epilogue tacked onto an otherwise fine piece of work. Words on a page.