Hunter S. Thompson: You're Shooting at Angels, Now

I'm reading a lot of blogs and they're all quoting Hunter S. Thompson, who as you probably know by now, fatally shot himself yesterday. And various shmoes are going on and on about how his writing changed their lives. And exactly one of them actually has the balls to seem honest about Thompson's influence on him as an individual. The rest are just paying perfunctory lip service to a reclusive author they know best for writing about his brief period spent acting like a complete jackass to everybody in Las Vegas.

I doubt any of us step out of our living rooms far enough to actually try to experience the American Dream as Thompson dreamt it. In the end, he lived his life as few could ever hope to duplicate. And for every one of you who only think of Thompson driving a big red convertible with the top down through Barstow, I wonder if you can ever really reflect upon his writing and look beyond the veneer of crazy imagery he presented. Thompson didn't report facts, he reported the Truth, however you may wish to define it. His gift was for expressing not the who, what, where, when, and why of a situation. He could, somehow, wonderfully transport you there, next to him, wherever it was, by telling you what to feel, and what others were feeling as well.

Thompson's writing didn't change my life. I would not call him a role model (by any stretch of the imagination). But I can happily attest that I've been there and done that, exactly in step with him the whole way. I've felt the sun on my shoulders in that big red shark. I've been shocked into feeling paranoid, hungry, grungy, and disoriented. Often all at the same time. No other writer is so visceral with his story, nor so dedicated to cutting into the situation with a bowie knife and exposing on the tip of its blade the raw, pulsating nerve the lies underneath it. No other writer is so honest and so perceptive.

And of all the Hunter S. Thompson quotes I'm encountering today, none is so succinct nor as short as my personal favorite. (And I'm not just inventing this on the spot: it really is my favorite quote.)

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."